Japanese Model Beats U.S. Rube Goldberg Mock-up

Paul Krugman: "Japan’s performance has been disappointing but not disastrous. And given the policy agenda of America’s right, that’s a performance we may wish we’d managed to match."

What the Japanese didn't have was John Boehner, Mitch McConnell & Jim DeMint. They've never had to look forward to Sen. Rand Paul or possibly even Sen. Sharron Angle.

Surely the main reason our own government did too little in early 2008 was the fault of Republicans. We all remember those closed-door sessions in which, presumably, President Obama tried to explain prudent fiscal policy to Sens. Collins & Snowe. We all remember the Party of No, with the exception of the somewhat confused Ladies of Maine (& then-Republican Sen. Specter), standing firm against sensible economic policy.

Ezra Klein wrote a good post the other day on how much better the stimulus package (& the healthcare bill) would have been if not for the filibuster. He used the apt term "legislating to the lowest common denominator," & there he referred to the Democratic leadership's having to kowtow to ConservaDems' every whim.

As for the handful of House Republicans who voted for the stimulus package, their party's membership rewarded them with threats of primary defeats in 2010.*

I'm surely happy to see that somebody in the Obama Administration figured out Democrats shouldn't be running against Bush, but against Boehner, McConnell, Ryan, Cantor, & the rest of the current crop of economic knuckleheads. Let's hope the Democrats can act like an organized political party for the next two months (okay, fat chance!) & show disengaged American voters the horrors and hardship they will bring down upon themselves if they reward the Party of No -- who brought on, then exascerbated the economic crisis -- with their votes.

* CW: Oops! Exactly zero Republican House members voted for the stimulus bill. It was the eight Republican House votes for a climate bill that engendered the backlash & threats:

Burn This Book

Gail Collins writes about a minister in Gainesville, Florida, whom she refuses to name so as not to give him more publicity, who is following "the theory that the best way to honor Americans who died at the hands of religious extremists is to do something that is both religious and extreme." Collins notes that "the candidates running in this year’s elections seem to be superquiet."

The Constant Weader finds some politicians & Gainesville residents with guts:

If you read the Gainesville Sun, you'll find out that many people in Gainesville are rising to the occasion & condemning the crazy Koran burners. Wednesday, 300 people opposing the Koran-burning showed up for an interfaith prayer service at the local Episcopal church. Christian, Muslim, Jewish & Greek Orthodox clerics spoke in solidarity against Terry Jones' planned "protest." Video from the Sun:

Clergy gather at Gainesville's City Hall to speak out against the Koran burning. Gainesville Sun video:

The paper's letters to the editor are pretty much exclusively from Gainesville citizens who are appalled by the Koran-burning plans.

And some Florida politicians are speaking out. The mayor of Gainesville has expressed his opposition from the beginning. Mayor Craig Lowe has also been a victim of Terry Jones' theology of hate: Jones protested Lowe's election because Lowe is gay. The catchy protest slogan: "no homo mayo."

Gov. Charlie Crist, running for Senate as an independent, calls the Koran-burning "offensive" and says he "strongly agrees" with Gen. Petraeus that the Koran-burners are putting American soldiers at risk. Not a peep from Crist's opponents, as far as I can tell.

Some national politicians have spoken out. Ron Paul, who of course is up for re-election to Congress, has blasted Jones. And, oh dear, Sarah Palin calls Jones' plans "insensitive ...  much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." That's a direct quote from Palin's Facebook media outlet. (Oh, and sorry, no link.)

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the Taliban are reading the Gainesville paper & Palin's Facebook page. As long as the media push the story of one Florida nut case & his band of 50 dopey disciples, Jones remains a good sales tool for radical Muslims -- exactly the folks Jones claims he is protesting. Like most crazy people, Jones is evidently incapable of appreciating irony.

Also, see a couple of very good comments from Karen Garcia of New Paltz (#1) & Gemli of Boston (#3).

President Obama talks to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News about the planned Koran-burning:

     ... Washington Post story here.

Reuters, related: "India led calls on Thursday for the United States to intervene to halt a small church's plan to burn copies of the Koran in commemoration of the September 11 attacks and urged a media blackout to calm tensions." ...

... AP, related: "Religious and political leaders across the Muslim world ... have called on the church to call off the plan, warning it would lead to violence against Americans."

... Gainesville Sun Update: "The city of Gainesville's top administrator said Wednesday that he will send Terry Jones, the senior pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center, a bill for the estimated tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to police the area if the church goes through with its plan to burn the Quran on Saturday." ...

** Huh? AP Update: "Pastor Terry Jones said Thursday that he decided to cancel his [koran-burning] protest because the leader of a planned Islamic Center near ground zero has agreed to move its controversial location. The agreement couldn't be immediately confirmed." ...

     ... NBC News Update: "But sources close to the imam behind the New York mosque denied any deal had been struck." ...

     ... New York Times story here. ...

     ... Change of Heart (not to suggest he has one). AP: "An anti-Islamic preacher backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, angrily accusing a Muslim leader of lying to him Thursday with a promise to move an Islamic center and mosque away from New York's ground zero. The imam planning the center denied there was ever such a deal."

... Gainesville Sun: "A Dove World Outreach Center sign on Southwest 13th Street announcing its 'International Burn a Koran Day' was painted over Wednesday evening by Alachua County sheriff's deputies. The sign was put up on a billboard on property adjacent to the Hoda Center Academy, a mosque and Islamic center, under an agreement between the property owner and church officials."

On Background. Wall Street Journal: Gen. David Petraeus, "the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.... [He] said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes...."

AP: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called a Florida church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks a 'disrespectful, disgraceful act.' Others in the Obama administration weighed in against the proposed burning, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who called it idiotic and dangerous. A State Department spokesman branded the planned protest 'un-American' while other officials warned that it could threaten U.S. troops, diplomats and travelers overseas."

New York Times: "Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held an extraordinary 'emergency summit' meeting in the capital on Tuesday to denounce what they called 'the derision, misinformation and outright bigotry' aimed at American Muslims during the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero.... Some of the same religious leaders later met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to urge him to prosecute religious hate crimes aggressively."

Addendum

"The housekeeper noticed a foul smell coming from the chimney." My friend Lulu Moretti has remarked on media coverage of the Case of the Right Rev. Cap'n Kangaroo. Her observations, in part: "... our media love a good story (though I don't think they spent enough time on the doctor who tried to enter her ex-lover's house via the chimney)." Ah, the Constant Weader pleads guilty as charged. Tardy though it may be, here's a link to a Time article on a summertime Santa story gone awfully wrong.

The Commentariat -- September 9

Glenn Greenwald comments on President Obama's "State Secrets" Victory. (You knew he would.) ...

     .... The New York Times report: "A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that former prisoners of the C.I.A. could not sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons because such a lawsuit might expose secret government information. The sharply divided ruling was a major victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy powers." ...

... The Times' Editorial Board on the decision: "All too often in the past ... secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known." ...

... Andrew Sullivan: "The case yesterday is particularly egregious because it forbade a day in court for torture victims even if only non-classified evidence was used. Think of that for a minute. It shreds any argument that national security is in any way at stake here."

I'm less concerned about the radicals in American than I am concerned about the radicals in the Muslim world.... If we do move, it will strengthen the radicals' ability to recruit and their increasing aggression & violence against our country. 
-- Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf speaks to CNN's Soledad O'Brien on "Larry King Live":

     ... Related CNN story here.

... Greg Sargent: "... there's a direct link between public anti-Islam sentiment and public opposition to the construction of Cordoba House.... The evidence can be found in the internals of the new Washington Post poll.... The numbers directly contradict the claim by opponents that public opposition to the project is not linked to broader anti-Islam sentiment, and is only rooted in a desire to be sensitive to 9/11 families or to respect Ground Zero as hallowed ground."

Hey, Hot Dog Guy!

Afghanistan -- Worse than We Thought. Mark Thompson of Time: "a high-powered band of foreign-policy thinkers" concludes that the NATO Afghanistan strategy is not working & is creating more enemies than friends. The report, geared for readers like us rather than for the inside-the-Beltway crowd, offers insights & suggestions on more effective ways to deal with the problems Afghanistan presents. Here's the report index; you can take it from there.

"Legislating to the Lowest Common Denominator." Ezra Klein of the Washington Post on why the filibuster matters. Were it not for the filibuster, the stimulus would have been larger, we would have had a public option to purchase healthcare insurance, & we might even have a climate bill. For starters. Many things don't get done at all because there's not enough appetite for a fight.

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "A new government study says President Obama’s health care law will have negligible effects on total national health spending in the next 10 years, neither slowing nor fueling the explosive growth of medical costs."

John Cassidy of The New Yorker on the President's speech in Cleveland: "Despite being billed as an economic address, his speech was ultimately as much about political strategy as economics." ...

... Here's President Obama speaking to George Stephanopoulos about the economy:

     ... Here's the transcript of the full interview.

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "... those who know [Rahm] Emanuel well ... believe he is seriously weighing leaving the White House in the wake of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s abrupt announcement on Tuesday that he intends to step down next year." ...

     ... President Obama: Rahm Emanuel "would be an excellent mayor."