Obsidian Wings

Tested?

by hilzoy

Today, Hillary Clinton released this ad, which I regard as the spiritual heir to Bush's "Scary Scary Wolves" ad from 2004:

The Obama campaign put out this response within hours:

But now, as is typical, the Clinton campaign delivers the coup de grace to itself. I'm going to try to embed the audio here, but just in case it doesn't work, here's a link to the National Journal's Hotline, where I got it. It's from a conference call with senior Clinton staffers. If you haven't already heard it, you must.

[UPDATE: I removed the audio link, since it seemed to be crashing some people's browsers. But definitely go to the link above and listen. END UPDATE.]

Hotline's summary:

"Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military."

Ooh, that's not quite fair: they also said that "it was a moment of test" (sic) when she went to Beijing and spoke about women's rights at the Fourth World Conference on Women. It was a good speech, but I'm not exactly clear how it prepares her for that call at 3am.

Matt Yglesias adds:

"How could they go forward with that ad without having a good answer to the question on hand? It's inept in the extreme."

Yep.

Reforming Foster Care

by hilzoy

Every so often, a story appears that reveals just how inadequate our foster care system is. Here's one:

"How do you lose a chubby-cheeked and fidgety 5-year-old and not notice she's gone? For most parents, 15 minutes out of sight would be enough time to worry. For the state of Florida, it took 15 months.

A foster child removed from her drug-addicted mother's custody, Rilya Wilson was supposed to be living in Miami with Geralyn Graham, who says she is Rilya's grandmother (...) While in Graham's care, the child should have received monthly visits from caseworkers at Florida's Department of Children and Families. (...) The girl's caseworker resigned in March, amid accusations she had falsified visitation reports in other cases; when DCF began to examine the worker's old paperwork, it contacted Graham and realized the child had vanished.

DCF is supposed to conduct background checks on foster parents. But the Miami Herald reported that the agency placed Rilya with Graham despite the woman's convictions for grand theft and fraud, her use of 20 aliases, and a medical diagnosis that she suffers from "a psychotic syndrome.""

That case prompted an investigation that revealed that the Florida foster care program had "lost" 88 other children. There were thousands more elsewhere. Presumably, a number of these just ran away, and haven't been found because they don't want to be. But it shouldn't take the realization that one state's foster care program "lost" a five year old girl to get people to investigate and discover that children are missing.

Here's another:

Three Trillion Dollars

by hilzoy

This article is worth reading in its entirety. It's about Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics and has now written a book estimating the cost to the US of the war in Iraq:

"Appetites whetted, Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, is that in fact Bush's Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. And in doing so they have achieved something much greater than arriving at an unimaginable figure: by describing the process, by detailing individual costs, by soberly listing the consequences of short-sighted budget decisions, they have produced a picture of comprehensive obfuscation and bad faith whose power comes from its roots in bald fact. Some of their discoveries we have heard before, others we may have had a hunch about, but others are completely new - and together, placed in context, their impact is staggering."

I tried to figure out which bits to excerpt, but I couldn't; it's just one appalling revelation after another. Here, though, is one I have to quote:

"Then there was the discovery that sign-up bonuses come with conditions: a soldier injured in the first month, for example, has to pay it back. Or the fact that "the troops, for understandable reasons, are made responsible for their equipment. You lose your helmet, you have to pay. If you get blown up and you lose your helmet, they still bill you." One soldier was sued for $12,000 even though he had suffered massive brain damage."

Think about what we could have done with that money:

"By way of context, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what even one of these trillions could have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century. America, says Stiglitz, is currently spending $5bn a year in Africa, and worrying about being outflanked by China there: "Five billion is roughly 10 days' fighting, so you get a new metric of thinking about everything.""

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will cost us $1.6 trillion to repair our aging infrastructure. This would make us more productive and competitive as a nation, it would provide good jobs, and by preventing bridge collapses, levee failures, and the like, it would save lives. No one can figure out how we are going to come up with all that money, even though investing in our infrastructure is obviously a good investment. Yet somehow we managed to embark on an ill-conceived war without bothering to think seriously about the cost. Because, as we know, while every nickel spent on the health of children counts as wasteful government spending and must be fought for tooth and nail, defense spending doesn't count as spending at all.

Telecoms, Canadians, And Stuff

by hilzoy

Those mean ungrateful telecoms! According to Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker, Roll call reports that despite everything the Republicans have done to allow them to break the law with complete impunity, they aren't expressing their gratitude in the, um, concrete forms the Republicans seem to have expected:

“It’s quite discouraging,” said one GOP leadership aide, referring to the disparity in giving from the telecommunications industry in light of the FISA debate, but also the broader lack of support for Republicans from the business community in general.

“These companies just won’t do anything,” the aide said. “Even when you have the Democrats working against their bottom line.”...

[A Republican lobbyist said] “There’s no question that from time to time staff, and maybe some Members, say to fellow travelers: ‘Are you giving us some air cover? Are you helping us help you?’”

I love that last bit: "Are you helping us help you?" It makes the quid pro quo so delightfully explicit.

Kiel continues:

"The news is not all bad. The telecoms still give more money to Republicans than to Democrats, Roll Call reports; "Of the four major phone companies, only Sprint is now favoring Democrats overall." The other three, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, still know their bread and butter, but are favoring Republicans "by slimmer margins than in years past." The reason is clear: with the Dems in power, of course, the telecoms need to spread the wealth. (...)

Perhaps, as one GOP leadership aide puts it, the telecoms will find religion again when they realize “these guys are not good for business.”"

Personally, I don't think the Republicans are good for business. They are great at handing out favors to particular businesses, but their fiscal mismanagement hurts business as a whole. And let's not even get started on their failure to exercise any oversight at all over mortgages and their derivatives. That might have looked "good for business" a couple of years ago, but it doesn't look that great now.

***

In other news: CTV reported that an Obama staffer called the Canadian Ambassador to warn him that he was about to criticize NAFTA, but that "the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value." The Obama campaign responds:

“The news reports on Obama's position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Senator Obama’s consistent position on trade. When Senator Obama says that he will forcefully act to make NAFTA a better deal for American workers, he means it. Both Canada and Mexico should know that, as president, Barack Obama will do what it takes to create and protect American jobs and strengthen the American economy -- that includes amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards. We are currently reaching out to the Canadian embassy to correct this inaccuracy."

The Canadian Embassy weighs in:

"A spokesman for the Canadian Embassy to the United States, Tristan Landry, flatly denied the CTV report that a senior Obama aide had told the Canadian ambassador not to take seriously Obama's denunciations of Nafta.

"None of the presidential campaigns have called either the Ambassador or any of the officials here to raise Nafta," Landry said.

He said there had been no conversations at all on the subject.

"We didn't make any calls, they didn't call us," Landry said.

"There is no story as far as we’re concerned," he said."

***

And while I'm posting, let me just say that Matt Drudge is a jerk for posting that Prince Harry is serving on the front lines in Afghanistan. I refuse to link to his story, which has to set some sort of horrible new record for irresponsibility.

Debate Open Thread

by hilzoy

Thus far, I have an unbroken streak of unwatched debates. That changes tonight. If anyone wants to discuss the debate, this is your thread. If you want to discuss anything else, you can do that too.

I've Got A Little List

by hilzoy

The last time Mark Halperin crossed my radar, he was confessing that he spent the last two decades holding the ludicrous belief that "that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president." However, he said, he had decided that he was wrong: that "We should examine a candidate’s public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance." (Really? You think so? What a novel idea!) Unfortunately, it looks as though he's fallen off the wagon again, to judge by this list of "Things McCain can do when running against Obama that Clinton has been unable to do well or at all." It includes such gems as:

"6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama. (...)

8. Play dirty without alienating his party. (...)

11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism."

What Halperin is talking about is encouraging xenophobia and bigotry. As Mark Kleiman notes, "Mark Halperin would say that he's merely describing tactics the McCain campaign might use against Barack Obama, not advocating them." But that's not right. There are all kinds of things that McCain could do against Obama that Clinton could not do. He could run on the idea that JM is a peculiarly presidential set of initials. He could advocate military service as a precondition for the Presidency. He could challenge Obama to a beard-growing contest. Clinton could not do any of these things.

So why pick the particular sixteen things on Halperin's list? What is it a list of? Frankly, I have no idea. One possibility is that it's a list of things McCain could do that might work. But some of them are pretty strained on that score: "2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction" doesn't seem like a particularly good strategy, given the unpopularity of the war, and "14. Link biography (experience/courage) and leadership (straight talk) to a vision animated by detail – accentuating Obama’s relative lack of specificity" seems like a loser, given the vagueness of McCain's policy proposals, and the specificity of Obama's. (I mean, McCain attacking Obama for lack of specifics would be almost as bizarre as McCain attacking Obama on the grounds that he's too old to be President. People might not notice the problem until the debates, but they would surely notice then.)

Personally, I'm inclined to think it's just a list of the various things that popped into Mark Halperin's head, since I can't see what else it could be. But in that case, I have to ask: why publish it? What, exactly, is the point? The downside of publishing it is that it repeats a bunch of bigoted, xenophobic attacks, complete with their connections to genuinely ugly lines of attack (e.g., "Manchurian Candidate".) And the upside is -- what, exactly?

Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!

by hilzoy

From the DoD, via TPMMuckraker:

" The Department of Defense announced today that General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes II is returning to private life next month."

Pardon me while I dance about my study, cackling with glee. That's some of the best news I've had since, well, since the announcement of the ceasefire in Northern Uganda. (Hard to top that.)

Haynes might have gotten in trouble because of this little gem from last week, based on an interview with Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo's military commissions:

"When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes--the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department.

"[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.'"

Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders.""

This, for the record, is one of the people Bush tried -- twice! -- to appoint to the federal court of appeals, where he would have gotten to rule on the fairness and legality of all sorts of cases. Delightful thought, isn't it? However, there is so much more to Haynes' dreadfulness than his insistence that all the Guantanamo trials end in conviction. For instance:

Haynes led the working group that wrote one of the most appalling torture memos (pdf). This memo argues that the President "enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his Commander-in-Chief authority", and that "In light of the President's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the President's ultimate authority in these areas." Also: "Any attempt by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief authority in the President." (p. 23) Or, in other words: when we're at war, the President does not have to obey the law.

This memo asserts that we live in a dictatorship. As long as the President is exercising his authority as commander-in-chief (which extends not just over the battlefield, but all the way to Guantanamo), he can do whatever he wants. If he decides he needs to strangle someone in the exercise of that authority, he is not liable for murder. If he decides to lock citizens up without charges or trial, he can do that too. If you think we live in a nation of laws, not men, this memo says you are wrong.

Michael Froomkin wrote:

"The Constitution does not make the President a King. This memo does. (...) This memo is labeled “draft”. Even so, if the second half is like the first, then everyone who wrote or signed it strikes me as morally unfit to serve the United States. If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes."

And just because I don't want one much smaller idiocy to disappear into the memory hole, I have to bring up Haynes' brief in Center for Biological Diversity v. Pirie, whose text seems to have vanished from the web. [UPDATE: No, it's here (pdf). I love our commenters. END UPDATE] However, I quoted from it in a post I wrote a few years ago, when it was still available:

"In this amazing brief, Haynes argued that bombing a nesting site for migratory birds would benefit birdwatchers, since "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." Moreover, he added, the birds would benefit as well, since using their nests as a bombing range would minimize "human intrusion". The judge's comment on this novel line of argument: "there is absolutely no support in the law for the view that environmentalists should get enjoyment out of the destruction of natural resources because that destruction makes the remaining resources more scarce and therefore more valuable. The Court hopes that the federal government will refrain from making or adopting such frivolous arguments in the future." (pp. 27-8)"

Yep: bombing birds' nesting grounds is good for the birds, and for birdwatchers too! Who knew?

May William Haynes enjoy a pleasant retirement as far away from the law as it is possible to be. He has already done more than enough damage to it for several lifetimes.

The Great Untested John McCain

by publius

McCain’s general election campaign is not off to a smooth start. First, his opening salvo focused on Obama’s commitment to public financing promises -- whoops. Next, his campaign responded to the (grossly irresponsible) NYT article with an impulsive, overbroad “never helped any lobbyists ever” denial – thus opening himself to more unfavorable press.

These tactical misfires won’t sink his campaign by any means. They do, however, raise larger concerns. Simply put, McCain hasn’t proven himself to be a good campaigner yet. In fact, there are many reasons to think that he’ll actually campaign poorly.

I’m a big believer in the “primaries matter” theory. Elections are Darwinian environments – and candidates tend to win for a reason. Tactics matter, as does an ability to tap into the larger Zeitgeist (i.e., structural forces matter too, but good campaigners recognize and tap into those underlying currents). For this reason, candidates who look great on paper (Dole, Rudy, HRC) lose if they run wretched campaigns. Similarly, candidates who don’t look so hot on paper can compensate with superior campaigning skills. In short, people who win tend to run superior campaigns. Not always, but generally.

At first glance, you might think McCain’s primary victory is evidence of his own campaigning skills. But I don’t think so. His victory (for unique reasons) doesn’t necessarily show his Darwinian chops. Despite all his experience, McCain remains in many ways a roll of the dice.

Consider 2000. While he had some initial success due to fawning press coverage (which is probably his key “skill”), the ultimate result was a spectacular flameout in South Carolina and beyond. The South Carolina tactics were despicable, sure. But Republican primaries aren’t pretty. He knew the players involved and should have been better prepared. More to the point, you can’t win a Republican nomination when you ostentatiously demonize key coalition members, as he did. Personally, I applauded the criticism of Jerry Falwell, but I’d have been cringing if I were his campaign manager.

Moving on to 2008, the stars aligned perfectly for him. Ross Douthat has made the case more eloquently than I have, but McCain’s victory had a lot to do with luck. First, his rapid ascent helped him avoid embarrassing media moments. Remember that, for most of 2007, McCain was ignored. Thus, he wasn’t subject to the type of exacting scrutiny that Romney and Rudy (and, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson got). He had to keep things together for a month rather than a year – a much easier task.

Second, his victory was less than overwhelming. McCain won a relatively small plurality among a sharply divided field. His victory had less to do with his savvy campaigning, and more to do with (1) a conservative base split between Romney and Huckabee; (2) Rudy’s rapid collapse and strategic blunders; and (3) Thompson’s silly last stand in South Carolina. None of this establishes that McCain is a bad campaigner. The point is that his victories don’t necessarily establish that he’s a good one.

Permanent Ceasefire In Uganda

by hilzoy

Remember these kids?

They are the Night Commuters of northern Uganda:

"Each night before the sun sets, thousands of children march in grim procession along dusty roads that take them from their rural villages to larger towns. The children are afraid to sleep in their beds, terrified that they will be abducted by a madman who will force them into a marauding guerrilla army that hunts down their friends, families, and loved ones.
The fleeing children sleep in churches, empty schools, makeshift shelters, and alleyways. And every morning at sunrise, the children walk home, free for another day."

And they are among the reasons why this is such wonderful news:

"With whoops and backslaps, Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels signed a ceasefire on Saturday, a big step towards a final peace settlement to one of Africa's longest-running wars.

"It is the laying down of arms. It is the end of the war," U.N. envoy Joaquim Chissano said after the parties signed the "permanent ceasefire" agreement during their fast-progressing talks in southern Sudan's capital Juba.

With only a demobilization deal left to be agreed on, negotiators and mediators like Chissano are predicting a final accord will be reached next week to end one of the world's most macabre and least-understood conflicts.

After a tortuous process since talks began in mid-2006, the speed of progress in recent days has taken observers by surprise, particularly after the LRA delegation walked out at one point this week in a row over cabinet jobs and cash.

The LRA revolt against President Yoweri Museveni since 1986 has devastated north Uganda, killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted nearly 2 million, and become infamous for the brutal methods of the rebels including mutilating victims. (...)

The news from Juba will be music to the ears of the long-suffering Acholi population of north Uganda, who have borne the brunt of the conflict. They have suffered not only from rebel attacks and forced recruitment of children, but also from rape and other abuses by Uganda's military at refugee camps."

An estimated 66,000 children have been abducted by the LRA. Thousands more -- at times, tens of thousands -- walked for miles every night to avoid being kidnapped. This has been an unspeakable war (I wrote about it at greater length here), and if it is in fact over, we should all rejoice. There are very few bits of unequivocal good news in the world, but this is surely one of them.

Oh Noes! George W. Bush Is Teh Secret Vietnamese!

by hilzoy

I mean, what other conclusion can you possibly come to after seeing this:

I've been to several foreign countries. Not once did it ever occur to me to dress up like a foreigner. I mean, who does that?

Why else was he so eager to avoid serving in the Vietnam war? So he wouldn't have to kill his comrades! Why did he like what he saw when he looked into Putin's soul? Because, as this photo reveals for the first time, they are both Vietnamese! No matter how much the wingnuts try to scrub and whitewash, some stains just won't come clean.

The Viet Cong were patient. They took the long view. They weren't content to drive us out of their country: they needed to exact a terrible revenge on us, at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. George W. Bush is the instrument of their vengeance.

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

***

UPDATE: TPM tries to track down the source of the "Obama in Muslim garb" story. Here's what they found.