In a surprise move today, the Wal-Mart board announced that CEO Lee Scott was stepping down and that Vice-Chairman Mike Duke, who runs Wal-Mart’s international division, would take his place. In 2005, I wrote an article for the Prospect that told the tale of Jim Bill Lynn, a true-blue Wal-Mart executive who, upon discovering appalling conditions for workers in Wal-Mart’s Central American factories, reported his findings to his superiors – all the way up the chain to Mike Duke. Lynn was then subjected to harassment and surveillance from the company, until he was compelled to resign. For the role that Wal-Mart’s new CEO played in this disgraceful tale, read Jim Bill Lynn’s sad story.
It's (almost) official: Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State in the Obama administration. For homework, read Spencer Ackerman on the loyalists Clinton will likely bring to State and how that could affect Obama's foreign policy.
Al Franken is claiming that the ongoing Minnesota recount now has him behind incumbent Norm Coleman by double digits, with about half of the ballots counted. And for true political junkies, you can watch a live feed of the recount here.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed last night while concluding a speech at the Federalist Society but was released from George Washington University Hospital this morning. A battery of tests indicated "he had not suffered a stroke or other heart-related incident."
Barack Obama's 21-month campaign for raised half a billion dollars online, according to The Washington Post. The president-elect has also extended his influence to pitching for Jim Martin in a Georgia radio spot and recording a video promoting Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Marin Cogan has an excellent piece in The New Republic on conservatism's new phantom menace: reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. On the same subject, this post by Nate Silver comes about as close to the Platonic ideal as I've ever seen towards explaining the relationship between talk radio to the conservative movement: "There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion. ... Stimulation [what conservative talk radio does -MD], however, is somewhat the opposite of persuasion. You're not going to persuade someone of something when you're (literally, in Ziegler's case) yelling in their ear. The McCain campaign was all about stimulation. The Britney Spears ads weren't persuasive, but they sure were stimulating! "Drill, baby, drill" wasn't persuasive, but it sure was stimulating! Sarah Palin wasn't persuasive, but she sure was (literally, in Rich Lowry's case) stimulating!" (emphasis in original)
A popular new meme concerning the revival of conservatism seems to be the "technology will save us all" approach toward what Jonathan Stein calls "The GOP's Internet Insurgents." This is all interesting stuff, but at the end of the day the ability to communicate more effectively and more widely isn't the same thing as making the GOP brand more appealing, which is the real problem.
The only thing I don't understand about this AP story reporting that Fred "future of the GOP" Thompson is returning to acting and abandoning his (quest?) for the RNC chairmanship is why the AP chose to claim Thompson is returning to acting; hasn't he already been playing the part of a laughably unambitious politician for the better part of a year now?
And finally, Michelle Bachmann is now claiming that her McCarthyite rant last month is actually just an "urban legend." Uh-huh. Shorter Bachmann: I respect the intelligence of my audience so little that I assume they don't recognize the existence of the video recording technology which captured my unhinged rant in the first place.
This morning, I was wondering if there was a way for Obama to provide any kind of effective policy leadership on the economy before he is inaugurated in January, since the current status quo has left any progress in this area at loose ends. Well, perhaps I have my answer:
Then in what has become a common occurrence, the final hour of trading turned volatile again. Stocks surged this afternoon after CNBC and Wall Street Journal reported that New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy J. Geithner will be nominated to be Treasury secretary in the new administration.
The Dow closed up 6.5 percent, or 494 points, at 8046. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 6.3 percent or 48 points, to 800, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq spiked 5.2 percent, or 68 points, to 1384.
Well, that's something. Now about that stimulus package, President Bush ...
Zeeshan Aleem is Fall 2008 Prospect editorial intern.
More than 10,000 supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr protested peacefully against the Status of Forces Agreement in Baghdad today. This reminded me that the word "anti-American" is consistentlyused to refer to Sadr and the sentiments of his supporters.
But what does it mean to be "anti-American"? And why is this adjective used only on stances towards the United States? American citizenry are never divided among "pro-Iraqi" and "anti-Iraqi" camps, at least by the media. "Anti-American" blurs nuance, connoting a primal animosity, rooted in an abject resentment towards the essential condition of being American, of possessing American values and culture. It suggests that Sadr's followers are irrational and unable to distinguish between American foreign policy and the general American populace. Those who are "anti-American" are not discerning thinkers defined by their allegiance to sovereignty, but a crowd with a consuming opposition to the very idea of the U.S, regardless of what good or bad it does. Anti-Americans don't think and have grievances; they hate.
"Hard news" reporters would be better served by describing Sadrists as critical of the US occupation under any conditions; such a description would re-legitimize their interests and drop the unjustifiable clash-of-civilizations aura that surrounds every discussion of their sentiments.
Today, House Leader Nancy Pelosi held a press conference explaining what the Big Three automakers have to do in order to access a federal loan, asking for a written plan regarding three issues:
[O]n the accountability side, no dividends, and no bonuses for people making over $200,000. ... In addition to that, on the viability side, it talks about as they go forward, how they plan to make investments in the advanced technologies so that they can compete in the marketplace, so that the people will want to buy their cars.
We are all in this together. ... I reject those who say, let them go bankrupt and then we will deal after that. I just think that would be digging a hole far too deep, and just would have a devastating impact on the workers, on the economy, on the manufacturing base and on the confidence of the country.
It seems that congress has learned at least one lesson from the bailout, which is that any business socialism that goes on needs to come under strict provisions and with a very clear idea of who exactly is helping who. As to the idea of the loan itself, it is a good idea to work through a restructuring with federal aid because simply letting the firms slip towards what would likely be Chapter 7 bankruptcy would have disastrous economic results in a variety of sectors. But allowing the automakers to continue as they stand is unacceptable. Jon Cohn'sarguments resonate.
From the Post, this note: "If Detroit bites on this, this will represent a significant and at one time unthinkable step forward in federal government control of how a private business runs itself. Think about it: This is Congress telling GM how to set corporate policy, at least for the term of a loan, which could be up to 10 years." To which I say, if the three automakers would like to run their businesses without the help of a government loan and the conditions attached to it, they can continue on in as they have been. Of course, continuing running their companies into the ground could prompt cries for nationalization, given the very negative national outcomes associated with the potential collapse of the companies.
Also, just for fun, Pelosi on corporate panhandling optics: "CEOs getting off a corporate jet rattling a tin cup is not a good image."
Pastor Amos Brown of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco is also president of the local branch of the NAACP. Tonight he's holding an NAACP fundraiser, only many other ministers won't be attending. They are angry at Pastor Amos over his opposition to Prop 8:
Rochelle Metcalfe, a former writer for a local African American newspaper who now writes a community column on the Internet, said some black ministers are upset with Brown.
"I've been hearing about people who are upset that he supported the No on 8 campaign," she said. "He knows some people don't agree with him so I don't think the boycott is a surprise.
"But it is a hurtful issue because it is splitting our community."
Brown is convinced that some NAACP members are not attending the dinner because of his politics. He recently had a Sunday sermon interrupted by another minister who was upset that he was using the pulpit to show his support for gay marriage.
I happened to be interviewing Brown for an unrelated story, so I asked him for his thoughts on the subject. Brown does not perform gay marriages in his church, but he nonetheless opposes any measures making it illegal to do so, adding that "we don't live in a theocracy". Brown tied his opposition to Prop 8 to his experience growing up black in the forties and fifties, recalling the moment when he first saw Emmitt Till's mutilated body on the cover of Jet Magazine when he was only a teenager. "When I saw that picture," Amos says, "I promised G-d myself, never would I be mean to people who were different."
He also notes a connection between the some of the religious groups opposing gay rights and those who remained on the wrong side of the black liberation movement in the United States. "The Southern Baptist convention was organized because southern folks wanted to keep their slaves." Amos said. "They failed us on integration...Jerry Falwell opened the Christian academy that became liberty college in later years, because he and his members didn't want their children going to integrated schools."
Amos placed most of the blame on the religious organizations who funded and organized the Yes on 8 campaign, comparing them to churches in the past that acquiesced to racist laws rather than challenging them. In the meantime, the President of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, decided at the last minute to attend the fundraiser, possibly in a show of solidarity with Amos. Gov. David Paterson of New York, who pushed his state to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, will also attend.
Amos had more to say about religious groups pushing Prop 8: "They're so insecure full of fear and fright that they're doing the same thing to gays that they did to black people when they came out against interracial marriages. They said there would be a mongrelization of the race, that it would tear up America."
"This is what was said. I heard that when I was young. I saw that. So why should I turn around and become that which I hated?"
The New York Daily Newsreports that Obama campaign political director Patrick Gaspard will be the White House political director. There's already been some controversy over the White House Office of Political Affairs office and some demands that the directorate be eliminated; I argued that the office was a good idea. The president -- who is one political actor among many -- simply shouldn't be flying blind. And so, though we haven't heard an official yes or no on keeping the office itself, it seems that there will be someone whose job will be handling the vital work of what I like to call policy making by other means.
See also GOP operative Ed Rollins'defense of the office this morning.
Scrapping along the heels of my better-sourced colleagues, here's the fake-ish news of the day:
Hillary Clinton accepts Secretary of State offer. Or so sezThe New York Timers, which would not run with their very decisive lede if they didn't have it down cold. Right? This is a strong choice for Obama, presuming that he has made clear that it will be his foreign policy, not hers, and also that the White House will retain a significant role in choosing deputies. Ensuring the right candidates fill the middle-levels of the State Department is a key step towards fully implementing Obama's foreign policy vision, as Spencer Ackerman explains here.
Tim Geithner will be Secretary of the Treasury.This from MSNBC's Chuck Todd, who thinks that Obama will announce his economic team on Monday. The choice is not all that surprising; Geithner has acquitted himself reasonably well throughout the financial crisis as President of the New York Fed, and functions effectively as Larry Summers without the baggage. Learn more about this potential public servant in Bob Kuttner's aptly titled September story, "Meet the next Treasury Secretary." The usual suspects -- Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee and Dan Tarullo -- are in the mix for Council of Economic Advisors, National Economic Council or a domestic policy position. Sort those three at will.
Bill Richardson is in the running for Secretary of Commerce. This one, also from MSNBC, is the furthest out there. Richardson, who has a resume fit for many tasks, doesn't really seem like the right person for Commerce. There is presumably a rationale for this pick, traditionally given to business-types, perhaps surrounding the importance of the global economy or the development of green infrastructure.
Ben Adler has a provocative piece at Campus Progress arguing that mid-distance light rail -- such as the L.A. to San Francisco project that passed on the California ballot -- is over hyped.
While making the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco by high-speed rail instead of by flying would save some CO2 emissions, the bigger problem is not that you can’t get from L.A. to San Francisco fast enough by train, it’s that you can’t get around L.A. or San Diego, the nation’s second and eighth largest cities, respectively, without a car. ...
I don’t want to set up a false dichotomy between inter-city travel like the high-speed rail initiative and intra-city and commuter transit like city buses; each is beneficial in their own way. But, assuming there is a competition among scarce resources, there must be a healthy debate about not just the need for rail redevelopment in general, but what should be a top priority.
Indeed, with the economic crisis hitting state budgets especially hard, it isn't unreasonable to ask these questions. Ideally, we'd be able to move forward on plans like the California initiative while simultaneously making sure light rail lines link up usefully to regional and intra-city transit systems. After all, if there's no way from your train stop to your job, family member's home, or to tourist attractions, you can't fundamentally alter the way you get around. But in a situation of scare resources, it might be smarter to focus first on getting people onto mass transit for their commutes. The California light rail line will impact some longer commutes, but in general, won't allow most workers to leave their cars at home.
Yesterday, the illustrious American Prospect published short essays by various youth politics activists and thinkers, responding to the question, "How do we keep Obama's youth voters mobilized?" While it's a great thing that young voters are being taken seriously as a political constituency, the question is a bit condescending in its formulation.
The better question to ask is, "How will youth voters continue organzing themselves?" or even "How can progressives engage with youth voters?" Millennial generation-focused youth politics groups are already beginning to organize a summit early in the coming year to discuss the future of their movement during an Obama administration and what the goals of youth political participation should look like. One of the great things about Obama's youth outreach program is that it didn't dumb itself down or expect young people not to have ideas of their own, and that should be kept in mind all future work with on these issues -- not that anyone in the piece necessarily forgets that.
Cautions aside, the query generated some interesting responses from the participants (which included several youth leaders), including this one from Peter Levine of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement:
During the campaign, Obama gave youth many ways to plug in, from "friending" him on Facebook to taking a semester off to organize. Now that the election is over, he needs to offer a similar range of opportunities to cement their engagement. An issue like climate change requires a full spectrum of participation, from pledging not to drive once a week, to advocating legislation, to weatherizing homes as an Americorps volunteer, to becoming an EPA scientist. At a time when jobs are scarce and the public sector is weak and archaic, citizens' work should be the hallmark. Then, there will be Obama Democrats in 2060 the way there are New Deal Democrats today.
This is exactly right. Youth voting participation, both in terms of share of the electorate and percentage of young people who voted, both rose several points from previous elections, but the important phenomenon was the percentage of young voters who supported Obama, which was through the roof compared to any previous election in the last twenty years. I pointed out in this op-ed that first-time participants in the political system often set ideological preferences for the long term; Ronald Reagan, by winning majorities of the youth vote, helped build the conservative coalition. Many of these new progressive voters will continue supporting progressive candidates and policies, and giving them the opportunity to further commit to these ideals -- and to public service -- is very good idea.
Terrence Samuelconsiders the meaning of Joe Lieberman:
Still the narrative that emerged this week was that Lieberman's shape-shifting abilities had saved him yet again. He was the survivor. But while he will chair a powerful and important committee, Lieberman has no margin for error. While Harry Reid and Democrats -- salivating over the potential of having 60 filibuster-busting votes -- made their deal with the devil to preserve the possibility, Lieberman has tied his fate to the whims of a Democratic caucus that will regard him with an unstable mix of caution and suspicion. His days as a free agent are over.
And Harold Meyerson explains the context of Henry Waxman's defeat of John Dingell and explains why Californians have come to dominate the House Democratic caucus.
With his victory, Waxman now joins a small group of longtime California allies who are running key congressional institutions. Howard Berman, his political sidekick since they took over the California Young Democrats in 1965, chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee. Like George Miller, who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee and who is Nancy Pelosi's consigliere, and like Pelosi herself, Berman and Waxman are the political protégés of the late Phil Burton -- the militantly liberal San Francisco congressman of the 1960s and 1970s who was probably the single most effective liberal legislator the House has ever known. One of Burton's achievements was to persuade the House Democratic caucus to change its rules on committee chairmanships, so that seniority wasn't the sole criterion in determining a committee's chair. With the backing of the Democratic Watergate classes -- the new members elected in 1974 and 1976 -- Burton changed the process so that the caucus itself was sovereign, and could depose old Southern segregationists from their chairmanships. Thirty years later, Waxman has taken advantage of the Burton reforms so that the generation of California liberals whom Burton schooled in the ways of power are now the most powerful members of the House.
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Glenn Greenwaldunloads on Obama for potentially considering John Brennan for Director of the CIA or National Intelligence:
To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers). Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.
I think Greenwald is right to criticize Obama on this point -- at the very least Brennan's prominence sends a mixed message. While Obama has repeatedly said he will end the practice of torture as U.S. policy, he has made few concrete explanations of how he would do so. Reports suggest he will appoint a pro-civil rights, anti-torture attorney general in Eric Holder and the anti-torture former Gen. Jim Jones as National Security Adviser. Yet, in Brennan, Obama is considering a torture apologist for the very agency where changes need to be made to end the practice forever. Reports also suggest Obama won't prosecute those who are responsible for committing torture in the past: political realities aside, there's simply no way to acknowledge the moral catastrophe of torture without holding those who were involved responsible.
At the same time, it still comes down to how Obama draws the line. I don't have a personal vendetta against Brennan, my issue is with torture itself. If Obama said explicitly that he would force the CIA to stick to the rules outlined in the Army Field Manual, if there were a very specific agenda put forth outlining exactly how this practice would be ended forever, either through legislation or executive order, I wouldn't be completely unsettled by a Brennan appointment. But we haven't seen that, we've seen a lot of broad moral declarations about torture, not so different from those the White House's current occupant has made in the past, and at the very least a mixed message through the language of his reported appointments. But while a Brennan appointment says one thing, the Holder and Jones appointments would send the opposite message. It's far from clear that Obama has capitulated on this issue.
--A. Serwer
The judge, in an unusual added comment, suggested to senior government leaders that they forgo an appeal of his ruling on freeing the five prisoners. While conceding that the government had a right to appeal that part of his ruling, Leon commented that he, too, had “a right to appeal” to leaders of the Justice Department, Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies, and his plea was that they look at the evidence regarding the five he was ordering released. “Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to their legal question is enough,” he commented.
This brings the grand total of arbitrarily held detainees released by the federal courts to ... five. If I understand correctly, to many Republicans this means that out-of-control judicial activists are essentially running American foreign policy. In fairness, since when has scrutinizing wholly arbitrary executive detentions been considered a function of the judiciary?
Jeffrey Goldberg is trying to come up with a list of the top-50 philo-Semites. There's something uncomplimentary about the term; it suggests, as Goldberg writes, "anti-Semites who like Jews." In other words, Christian Zionists such as John Hagee, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell, who love Jews so much that they want us all to leave America, go "back" to Israel, and be smote by Jesus.
But there's another class of philo-Semite, a group who actually do seem inspired by Jewish teachings and culture. Goldberg counts Barack Obama as a philo-Semite, and I'd agree. In a 2004 interview with Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Cathleen Falsani, Obama said, "[I]ntellectually I've drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith." Other people I'd add to the list? Princeton professor Cornel West, who's involved with the American Jewish peacenik movement Tikkun, and Newark mayor Cory Booker, who, as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, became president of the Jewish L'Chaim Society. The group's founder, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, has called Booker “the most effective non-Jewish exponent of Judaism in the entire world.”
Of course, it's no coincidence that all three of these individuals are African American.
I'd also count Christopher Hitchens as a philo-Semite. At the age of 38, Hitchens discovered his maternal grandmother was Jewish. That means according to the Jews, he's one of us. (And many of us see no contradiction between atheism and 21st century Judaism.) Hitchens came to identify as ethnically Jewish.
Who are the Somali pirates? Why is piracy surging now? Why don't merchant ships just arm themselves? If a question can't be answered in an animated short, then it's just not a good question...
The economy continues to worsen, and the experts are not pleased that the current lame duck government has left economic policy blowing in the wind until the new guys take over in January. Paul Krugman looks at why this is a bad thing, but doesn't get into what the president or president-elect should be doing to solve this problem. Floyd Norris, on the other hand, is more straightforward:
By resigning from the Senate before the current session began and allowing it to appear that a sense of drift could prevail until he is inaugurated, Mr. Obama may have missed an opportunity to exert leadership.
Maybe. While the consequences of the government's failure to act now are clear, it is less clear what Obama could and should be doing to influence policy before his inauguration. Even if he had maintained his Senate seat, it seems doubtful that he could gin up support for an automaker rescue package in the face of a presidential veto and filibustering Republican minority. There is the question of decorum -- branch overlap between Obama's future executive position and his current legislative one, and overlap between his goals as president and Bush's. I'm all in favor of setting aside decorum in favor of achievement, but I'm not sure I see a path for Obama to really exert any power until he's ensconced in the Oval office with larger Democratic congressional majorities.
Folks have been discussing moving inauguration closer to the election in the future, I don't see any reason why this is bad idea so long as adequate time is left for transition; we've already changed the date once in our history and it's clear that contemporary communications technology, among other advances, has created a situation where the new president could be in office around mid-December while the incumbent has a month remaining on the docket. An agreement could presumably be made that Bush would support, or refuse to veto, certain items that the new president will be supporting in January, but it's hard to imagine the present incumbent agreeing to such a power sharing agreement.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is likely to become Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, which would leave the governor's mansion in Republican hands and probably remove any serious competition to John McCain in 2010. Although, as Think Progress observes, DHS has become a dumping ground for political cronies of Michael Chertoff and George Bush, burrowed into the agency under the guise of preparing for a smooth transition. Gov. Napolitano is certain to have her work cut out for her.
In other transition news, Penny Pritzker has turned down an offer to be Commerce Secretary, and John Kerry, still a remote possibility for SoS, will take the gavel at the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee which he first appeared before as a serious young Vietnam veteran in 1971.
Henry Waxman has prevailed over John Dingell to win the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Harold Meyerson: "Now, after a 14-year winter, it's legislating season again. Greenhouse gases are rising, the farms and factories producing the things we ingest have been spread across the globe, the number of uninsured has risen. Obama needs an ally on the Hill who can craft bills and obtain votes for the change he's pledged to deliver. He needs a master legislator. He needs Henry Waxman."
Steve Clemons floats the idea that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State could set up a good-cop, bad-cop routine: "If Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these. ... Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones. ... He intends to, in part, be his own secretary of state, focused on re-sculpting America's global social contract and working in partnership with a diverse team of hard-edged policy players like Clinton to make even his rivals do his direct bidding."
Even as Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken has been reduced in the Minnesota recount, some ballots are leaving state officials in a Rashomon-like state of confusion. Try this quiz, courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio, to see how you would call these ballots.
Recalling Matt Yglesias' short essay at Cato Unbound on practical politics compromising libertarian purity, Brian Doherty suggests that even though the idea of Barack Obama appointing Ron Paul as Treasury Secretary will never happen, it remains "a good idea." Perhaps it never occurred to Doherty that the very reason why such an idea is so implausible is because, you know, it's just a really bad idea.
One hopes that the rest of George Bush's life resembles this video from the G20 summit where world leaders simply ignore the 43rd president while he walks about, in the words of Rick Sanchez, "like the dejected most unpopular kid in high school."
Chris Bowers has a good post on the shaky future of the Democrats' 50-state strategy now that the election's over and DNC workers are being laid off.
Yesterday, Colombian vice president Francisco Santos Calderon reported that cokeheads were destroying the environment. Speaking before the Association of Chief Police Officers in the UK, he released the sober statistic that four square meters of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of nose candy snorted. FromThe Guardian:
"He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, the middle-class social user who drove a hybrid car and was concerned about the environment might not take the drug if they knew its impact."
Calderon then went on about the land cleared for coca plant cultivation being dominated by guerillas.
First, it's unfair to single out drug users as a primary driver of environmental degradation, especially when the consumption of something as seemingly innocuous as chocolate bars is responsible for far greater eradication of rainforests than cocaine ever will be. Palm oil used for chocolate, cooking and fueling products is bought in mass volumes by companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Nestle, Hershey, Kraft and Burger King. It's used as an ingredient in a substantial amount of cosmetics, as a cheap vegetable oil and increasingly as biofuel for vehicles -- but the amount of trees cut down for palm oil production releases far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than is saved by switching some cars from fossil- to bio-fueling. In fact, the greenhouse gases released from deforestation is far greater than that released by all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world.
Ed Kilgoresays that "a critical plurality of Americans don't much like abortion but care a whole lot about when and why abortions occur." Assuming that this is true -- and there's some evidence for it -- the obvious answer is that since there's no way of inscribing "women should get abortions only when a Mythical Abortion Centrist says they're appropriate" into a legislative enactment, the best way of addressing this majority is to leave the decision to women rather than to, say, panels of doctors enforcing inherently arbitrary standards.
Ross Douthat, conversely, simply pretends that random regulations have the effect of reducing "abortions of convenience," while failing to adduce any evidence that the regulations actually have these effects. (Tellingly, he cites Glendon, but one of the crucial flaws in her book is that she focuses on the abortion laws in statute books but makes little attempt to find out how these laws actually operate in practice.) Of course, this is a somewhat difficult question for the same reason that it's an appalling suggestion on the merits: Who says what an "abortion of convenience" is? (One would think that it would be an even more meaningless and offensive term to a pro-lifer than it is to me, but I guess not.)
At any rate, there's no reason to believe that putting up arbitrary barriers in front of women seeking abortions has much effect on why women choose abortions; rather, they just make it more difficult for some classes of women (poor, rural, single mothers, inflexible working hours) to obtain them. Similarly, Douthat argues that "in a similar 'no abortions of convenience' vein, you could also imagine a law that banned repeat abortion." Omitted is any justification for assuming a priori that a second abortion is an abortion "of convenience."
Basically, attempts to tie various random regulations to mythical abortion "centrism" is a giant scam. Making women wait 24 hours to obtain an abortion isn't going to stop educated women who live in major cities from obtaining an abortion no matter what the reason, and they make it more difficult for a poor women who lives 150 miles from an abortion provider to obtain one even if William Saletan himself would bless her choice. Which is why -- even leaving aside the question of why we should care what Ross Douthat or William Saletan thinks about a woman's reasons for obtaining an abortion in the first place -- leaving the choice to the affected women with a minimum of pointless restrictions is the right policy choice.
In an article from our November issue, Tara McKelvey reports on how counterinsurgency theory has come to dominate military thinking -- and what implications that has for the Obama administration:
John Nagl's memories of Vietnam are vague, at best. He was, after all, only two years old during the 1968 Tet offensive and was in grade school in Omaha, Nebraska, during the fall of Saigon. It is perhaps for this reason that Nagl, a former tank commander turned military strategist, does not see Vietnam as a symbol of dishonor, the way older military officers do. Rather, the Vietnam War is a subject to be studied: Nagl's acclaimed book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, explores lessons from the American experience in fighting an insurgency in Vietnam. He's been one of the foremost proponents of applying those same techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tim Fernholz writes that Obama's transition has been downright ... boring:
When it comes to the transition, the most important cliché is this: If you know, you don't say, and if you say, you don't know. The work going on among the Agency Review teams and the personnel office remains hidden, leaving reporters to fixate on high-level appointments. And there haven't been many. Sure, Rahm Emanuel publicly agonized over his appointment for a few days, and there have been constant (and conflicting) reports about Hillary Clinton's potential role as secretary of state. But standards have dropped: In the past, good insider information told who was stabbing whom in the back to become Treasury secretary. Now the press just wants to know who got the job. Pretty please?
And nine youth organizers, writers, and progressive-policy thinkers weigh in about how to keep young voters engaged in politics now that the election is over:
Brief evaluations of possible Attorney General nominee Eric Holder'srecord have shown him to be pro-civil liberties, anti-torture and anti-extraordinary rendition. Conservatives have brought up two fairly lame objections: The first faults Holder for the pardoning of Marc Rich, as though it was his decision, while the second is the claim that, because Holder previously worked in Washington under the Clintons he doesn't represent "change." Of course, if Obama was filling cabinet and White House positions with friendly, inexperienced incompetents the objection would be that he was engaging in cronyism and that isn't change either.
At any rate, Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jonesweighs in with a more substantive critique of Holder, namely that he failed to distinguish himself as U.S. Attorney by fighting municipal corruption in the District:
Previous US attorneys in the District, who were white and Republican, had spent an inordinate amount of time and resources trying to put Marion Barry behind bars. Those decisions earned them little outright hostility from city residents, so Holder's appointment and approach came as welcome change. Even so, members of the DC Council and other public servants working to clean up the city government complained that Holder had gone a little too far the other way. They thought he was depriving the city of some of the much-needed sunshine that can come with a public trial. Holder's reluctance to pull the trigger on many of the investigations generated by law enforcement in DC ensured that many of those responsible for the city's dysfunction continued to flourish. (As the former city auditor told me at the time, "No one ever makes the bad guys pay back the money. If you don't mind a little embarrassment in DC, you can steal to your heart's content.")
Some, like Jeralyn at TalkLeft, have expressed concerns over whether he can display the necessary independence to be an effective AG. These folks may interpret Holder's behavior in DC as evidence he won't rock the boat in the White House either, even if necessary. But I'm inclined to give Holder the benefit of the doubt, both because he took the right positions on the right issues back when doing so was practically considered treason, and because of his expressed views on the position of AG, both of which Glenn Greenwaldhighlighted earlier this week.
--A. Serwer
Britain is to lead an armada of EU warships to the Gulf of Aden next month to tackle the escalating problem of piracy, in a mission expected to last 12 months.
The naval fleet, under UK command, would "disrupt and tackle the scourge of piracy", foreign secretary David Miliband said yesterday on a visit to Beirut. Piracy threatened trade and prosperity, he added.
EU military planners this week drew up a mandate, including rules of engagement for the use of force, for the mission at a meeting at Northwood, Britain's joint operations centre in north-west London. Plans for the EU fleet, led by HMS Northumberland and known as Operation Atalanta, are due to be formally agreed early next month, European defence officials said yesterday.
The EU contingent will relieve several ships currently operating under NATO command. This represents a serious commitment on the part of the EU to anti-piracy activity. It's also significant in terms of expanding the institutional military footprint of the European Union. In related news, the United Nations is imposing additional sanctions on Somalia (directed at those regions benefiting from piracy), and Russia is deploying additional ships to the area.
One potential list here. I must admit that I have a strong sympathy for Sonia Sotomayor, given her role in stopping MLB's attempted bad faith union-busting in 1995, but she seems too moderate to be a good first choice on a Court with four doctrinaire reactionaries and no Brennan/Marshall/Douglas style liberal. Marshall's former clerk Elena Kagan -- who's only 48 -- seems a lot more promising.
Since many progressives are understandably less-than-enthused about the possibility of a Sunstein appointment, the best news I can give is that one logic of my critique of Sunstein's "minimalism" is that the effect it has on a justice's votes is very minimal. It's true that Sunstein has said some bad things about Roe; it's also true that he ends up in the same place (with, in this case, a rationale that's actually better and more expansive.) I suspect he'd cast the same kind of votes as most other potential Democratic nominees even if they would sometimes be justified with a little more hand-wringing.
As Dananoted yesterday, there's an e-mail circulating in religious right circles, slamming Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland who's running for chair of the Republican National Committee. Steele's offense: an insufficiently anti-Roe stance during a 2006 interview with the late Tim Russert on Meet the Press. His allies have come to his defense, noting that he's the only one running who has been endorsed by the hard-line National Right to Life Committee. (None of the other candidates, to my knowledge, have, like Steele, run for public office, thus opening themselves up for an NRLC endorsement or non-endorsement.)
Don Wildmon of the American Family Association (which this year is selling your very own burning cross as a Christmas decoration), has endorsedKaton Dawson, chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, and brought up the Russert interview as one reason he was lobbying against Steele. (He did not explain why he was passing over Chip Saltsman, who's also running for the RNC post, and who managed the presidential campaign of Wildmon-approved Mike Huckabee.)
Now Steele has defended himself against the charges, taking to the reporters and editors of the Washington Times to explain his position: he's against Roe, he's for amending the constitution to criminalize abortion, and he's in favor of the legality of abortion being decided by the states. (Doesn't that cover all the bases? You know, because if you want the states to decide the issue, a federal constitutional amendment is surely the way to go.) He's also throwing in a bit of Huckabee-style populism, saying the GOP has a "country club mentality" and has focused on superficial outreach rather than coalition-building.
It's the Wildmons of the Republican Party who were the target of the lately marvelous Kathleen Parker , who earlier this week warned that the party is headed for extinction if it soldiers on with the "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP."
But Steele's not ready to let go of the religious right base, either, telling the Times that he didn't think that religious conservatives had too much control over the party. Steele exerted himself in appealing to the religious right base at this year's Values Voters Summit, with talk of a "relentless assault on [our] core values," wondering "when did being a Christian become a pejorative in this country?", claiming "how being on God’s team impacts communities, family, the nation," and gearing up the already Palin-manic crowd to "not underestimate this woman . . . . any woman who raises five kids. . . . she can do any daggone thing she wants. You don’t want to mess with this woman, she shoots moose. What do you think she’s going to do to a donkey?"
The Los Angeles Times has a piece this morning on anti-war activists' fears that the Obama cabinet will be stocked with hawks.
True enough, many of his principal foreign policy advisers, including his Vice-President Joe Biden, voted for the war in 2003 but have become critics since then. The article points to the potential decision to keep the incumbent Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, in his job for a year as a sign that Obama is going to be more hawkish, but it's really the exact opposite: Gates will be used as cover to draw-down forces in Iraq; though he is a Republican, he is not a neoconservative and has been in touch with the reality of the Iraqi occupation. John Kerry is mentioned as a potential adviser who would be criticized for his vote for the war in 2003, but would anyone deny he has become a serious anti-war voice in his own right since then?
Even worse, the article assumes that cabinet officials are the most important, when in fact most foreign policy decisions will be made in the White House. Two important aides names aren't even mentioned: Leading National Security Adviser candidate Jim Steinberg began calling for a withdrawal timetable as early as 2004, and Susan Rice, Steinberg's likely Deputy and the campaign's top foreign affairs aide, has been an opponent of the war since the very beginning. These are two very important aides whose views will impact Obama's policy making from the get-go.
But part of the problem is that anti-war groups who worked hard to elect Obama may be expecting him to be anti-war in general as opposed to anti-the Iraq war. No doubt many of them do realize that. But despite this, Obama and his team will withdraw the troops from Iraq; there's no dissent surrounding the necessity of that decision. And I would worry less about Hillary Clinton, who never apologized for her war vote, as Secretary of State. Obama will not bring her on board unless he will be confident she will advocate his administration's views in public even if her private advice is more hawkish.
Even the article's attempt to increase paranoia about the 16-month deadline seems a little off. We've seen those attempts before, and they've been wrong. While there will obviously be some flexibility as planning continues, don't be surprised if 16 months remains the gold standard.
Incidentally, while it's totally appropriate for various constituencies on the left to hold Obama's feet to the fire, I think they should try and pick their battles. Obama has no incentive to stay in Iraq and will likely pull out as promised, but he has every incentive to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. While I still think that may be the right decision, if I were solidly anti-war that's where I would be focusing my efforts.
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