The Commentariat -- October 17

President Obama & the First Lady at a rally at Ohio State University today. The President & First Lady come on stage at about 8 min. in:

Nicholas Kristof travels to Afghanistan to talk with local people, & comes away with explanations of "why America's strategy in Afghanistan isn’t working." ...

... Carlotta Gall of the New York Times paints the same picture, with a broader brush. ...

... BUT Joshua Partlow in the Washington Post: "... top U.S. military and civilian officials in Afghanistan have begun to assert that they see concrete progress in the war against the Taliban, a sharp departure from earlier assessments that the insurgency had the momentum." ...

... Meanwhile, in Our Excellent Adventure in Iraq ... Timothy Williams & Duraid Adnan of the New York Times: "Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign to rejoin the Sunni insurgency.... Security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have returned to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency." ...

... More Casualties of War. Aaron Glantz in the New York Times: California statistics reveal "a surge in the number of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have died not just as a result of suicide, but also because of vehicle accidents, motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses or other causes after being discharged from the military.... The figures ... underscore how veterans ... engage in destructive, risky and sometimes lethal behaviors."

Sebastian Rotella of ProPublica in the Washington Post: "Three years before Pakistani terrorists struck Mumbai in 2008, federal agents in New York City investigated a tip that an American businessman was training in Pakistan with the group that later executed the attack. The previously undisclosed allegations against David Coleman Headley, who became a key figure in the plot that killed 166 people, came from his wife after a domestic dispute that resulted in his arrest in 2005."

Robert Reich: the Fed's plan to goose the economy by reducing long-term interest rates won't work because businesses know consumers can't afford to buy stuff. ...

     ... Here's the underlying story from the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, sent a clear signal on Friday that the central bank was poised to take additional steps to try to fight persistently low inflation and high unemployment." You can watch the speech here.

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times on the SEC's $67.5 million settlement on its fraud case against Angelo Mozilo, the former head of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial: the "gulf between Mr. Mozilo’s private views and his public proclamations went to the heart of the S.E.C.’s case against him." Here's the Times' story on the SEC settlement.

It Isn't What's Illegal that's Scandalous; It's What's Legal. Jill Abramson of the New York Times: the secret donors are back, mostly on the Republican side, but unlike the piles of money that figured into the Watergate scandal, this time the secret campaign donations are legal. ...

... Michael Luo & Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: the Republican Governors Association, "led by its chairman, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, out-raised its Democratic counterpart by more than three to one from July 1 to Sept. 30. With $31.5 million in the bank, the group had more than twice as much cash available for the final stretch of the midterm campaign." ...

... This Los Angeles Times article by James Oliphant suggests secret donors will be a or the primary factor in a Republican takover of Congress. ...

... CW: I don't do polls, BUT Nate Silver, who's never wrong, writes, "FiveThirtyEight’s projection for the U.S. House shows little change from last week. Republicans are given a 73 percent chance of taking over the House, up incrementally from 72 percent last week. During an average simulation run, Republicans finished with 227 seats, up from 226 last week; this would suggest a net gain of 48 seats from the 179 they hold currently. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast because of the unusually large number of House seats now in play."

Shades of the Tea Party & the Weimer Republic. BBC News: in a speech in Potsdam, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said multiculturalism was not working in Germany & more had to be done to integrate foreign-born workers -- many of whom are Turks & Arabs -- into Germany's mainstream. Especially since the economic downturn, anti-immigrant feelings have increased among the native-born population. With video.

Vox Populi. Frank Rich: "Don’t expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day — no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they’ll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow. The only development that can change this equation is a decisive rescue from our prolonged economic crisis. Not for the first time in history — and not just American history — fear itself is at the root of a rabid outbreak of populist rage against government, minorities and conspiratorial 'elites.'”

David Neiwert of Crooks & Liars examines the physical threats against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray & recounts instances of incendiary language by tea partiers & pundits which has inspired the mentally-ill to try to attack Murray & her supporters. It's a short, chilling piece.

Maureen Dowd has been doing a lot of traveling lately, & on this trip she stopped in to visit two "mean girls" who are running for elective office: the accidental governor Jan Brewer of Arizona & the accident-waiting-to-happen Sharron Angle of Nevada.

Holy Shit! Jack Conway Gets Down & Dirty:

Francis X. Clines of the New York Times: Newt Gingrich has been encouraging Republicans to run against food stamps, & some Democrats are doing so also. Clines points out that "Unlike the upper-income tax cuts Republicans furiously protect, food stamps, minimalist as they are, are antirecession sparks that generate $9 in economic activity for every $5 spent, according to federal statistics."

Catholicism is clearly superior. Don't believe me? Name one Protestant denomination that can afford a $660 million sexual abuse settlement. -- Stephen Colbert

Kimberly Winston in the Washington Post: Stephen Colbert may play Catholicism for laughs, "but his thoughtful Catholicism still shows through."

Tea with Adolf

Frank Rich: "Don’t expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day — no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they’ll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow. The only development that can change this equation is a decisive rescue from our prolonged economic crisis. Not for the first time in history — and not just American history — fear itself is at the root of a rabid outbreak of populist rage against government, minorities and conspiratorial 'elites.'”

Not surprisingly, the Times moderators would not publish this comment on Rich's column:

Since Frank began with Carl Paladino's embrace of a reference to Adolf Hitler, I was reminded of how much the current tea party "populism" resembles German populism between the world wars.

The socio-economic situations then and now were similar. Both the 'tween-wars Germany & today's U.S. were suffering through dire economic times. The European nations who defeated Germany made Germany pay reparations for the first world war. It appears we will be paying our own "reparations" to China because of our profligate borrowing.

Beginning in 1929, all of Europe & the U.S. began to suffer through a Great Depression; the situation is Germany was even worse. Unemployment doubled & the parties began bickering about the cost of unemployment benefits. We are now suffering through the Great Recession & the parties are bickering about unemployment benefits.

After the first world war, Germans lost faith in "establishment parties" & sought answers from outliers. The government could not hold things together. Similarly, tea partiers have formed their own loose "anti-establishment" groups & are fielding candidates who would not pass muster in the established Republican & Democratic parties. Paladino, of course, is the poster boy for the dismal tea party candidate parade. Meanwhile, popular approval of the American Congress is at an all-time low.

Germans accused the Weimer government of betraying their nation by signing the Treaty of Versailles. Today's tea partiers think our government is illegitimate; they think the President is not even an American, and they know he is not "one of them."

In Germany, radicals like Hitler promised the people they would return Germany to its pre-World War I glory. In this country, tea partiers & their candidates vow "to take our country back." Just as Hitler was militaristic, so are today's tea partiers, carrying guns to political rallies, forming militias in the Hinterlands, & looking for leaders like Sarah Palin & Sharron Angle who pepper their speeches with incendiary words & phrases like "lock-and-load" and "target" and "bulls-eye" and "revolution." The entire right wing is obsessed with the Second Amendment, as if that were the only amendment that mattered. At the same time, many right-wingers see the military as the best solution to every foreign problem. John McCain is hardly the only conservative singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." In both 1930s Germany & the modern U.S., many people view jingoism as sensible public policy.

Germany had a significant ethnic minority to scapegoat, & Hitler encouraged the centuries-old bigotry against Jews. Though he was not religious himself, he borrowed from Martin Luther's playbook (Luther became a horrible anti-Semite) & named a Lutheran anti-Semitic bishop to head the German church. We have quite a few minorities to choose from, and the right enjoys scapegoating them all. The other day a Fox "News" host said, "All terrorists are Muslims." As far as I know, he still has his job. While it's unacceptable to specifically scapegoat black Americans & Jews, the tea party is not immune from doing so. Much of the animus against President Obama is based on his race, and talk-show pundits like Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh make racist statements about him.

In Germany, big money interests secretly funded Hitler's Nazi party. (Many of those financial backers came from Europe & the U.S.) In this country, the Supreme Court has just made secret funding of politicians legal, and we're seeing the effects in this election.

Tea partiers like to paint Hitler mustaches on President Obama. But it seems much more apt to apply little brush mustaches to their own upper lips. Although the causes of the economic crises in Germany & in the U.S. were different, the early political responses appear to be much the same. Most important, the attitudes of the so-called populists of both eras are identical. We should worry.

Update: the news of Angela Merkel's speech on the failure of multiculturalism, linked here & below, suggests another layer of connections between then & now.

The Commentariat -- October 16

There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts. -- Joe Klein

CW: in today's news, I've linked to this story: Washington Post: "Facing Republican complaints about big government and federal salaries, President Obama said Friday that government agencies might leave some vacancies unfilled as his administration looks for ways to save money." ...

     ... Paul Krugman calls Obama's remark another symptom of "The Boehnerization of Barack Obama."

Ariana Eunjung Cha & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "With 2 million homes in foreclosure and another 2.3 million seriously delinquent on their mortgages - the biggest logjam of distressed properties the market has ever seen - companies involved in the foreclosure process were paid to move cases quickly through the pipeline." ...

... OCC -- Asleep at the Switch. Matthias Rieker of Dow Jones News: "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency... which regulates the nation's largest banks..., is examining big mortgage servicers' foreclosure practices. The regulator's action means banks could face regulatory reprimands for botched foreclosure documentation." These "examinations" are "to be conducted over the next several weeks to confirm compliance and that banks have remedied any identified issues," an OCC spokesman said.

Perpetual War Is the New Normal. Dalia Sussman & Megan Thee-Brenan of the New York Times: "Given the condition of the economy and the high unemployment rate, the fact that most Americans largely cite those problems as the nation’s top issues is not surprising. What is surprising is that hardly any Americans cite the war in Afghanistan at all."

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: Condoleezza Rice, "the former secretary of state and onetime national security adviser, met one-on-one with President Obama at the White House on Friday afternoon, after a week of television appearances promoting ... her memoir about her parents. The White House said Obama wanted to discuss a range of foreign policy issues with her. Later, at an evening appearance at the Aspen Institute..., Rice rolled her eyes at the notion that Obama is a closet Muslim, and she defended him from criticism - led by former vice president Richard B. Cheney - that Obama had weakened the country." Related story of Rice's visit to the White House here.

Elisabeth Bumiller & William Yardley of the New York Times: "Soldiers in an American Army platoon accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport say they took orders from a ringleader who collected body parts as war trophies, were threatened with death if they spoke up and smoked hashish on their base almost daily.... Interviews in recent days and hundreds of pages of documents in the case offer a portrait of an isolated, out-of-control unit that operated in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan with limited supervision and little oversight from senior commanders."

Especially in view of opposition by the right wing (that would include Democrat Joe Manchin) to any version of cap-and-trade legislation, Dana Milbank writes in support of government policies promoting geoengineering.

Man-Pants. Beth Marlowe of Who Runs Gov: "We live in truly weird times when  female political candidates are telling their male opponents to 'man up!' If you’re interested in seeing female candidates taken seriously, this is not a good thing.... At base, they’re reinforcing the idea that the qualities voters are looking for — especially toughness and courage – are manly qualities. This doesn’t do women any favors." CW: Marlowe doesn't blame the candidates. I do. I expect all candidates, female & male, to be feminists. Here's a clip of Sharron Angle telling Harry Reid to "man up":

Rand Paul wants to abolish the U.S. Department of Education so kids won't be exposed to "Susie has two mommies." Listen to the whole video; Jack Conway's response is excellent, although he doesn't address the Two Mommies issue:

     ... Stoking Fear of the Future. Paul is not only reprehensible; as usual, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Igor Volsky of the Wonk Room. "Currently, there is a legislative prohibition on the federal government getting involved with local curriculum, even though several states have led a movement to establish common standards and President Obama and Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan have expressed support for the effort."