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anonymous

Post-Tea-Party Nation - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...14FOB-idealab-t.html

politics

shared by anonymous on 15 Nov 10 - Cached
  • while the Bush administration took wise and bold steps to correct the disaster, the unpopularity of its Troubled Asset Relief Program bequeathed the Obama administration a political disaster alongside the economic disaster.
  • If Republicans are to act effectively and responsibly, we need to learn more positive and productive lessons from the crisis.
  • Lesson 1: The danger of closed information systems.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. They wrap themselves in closed information systems based upon pretend information. In this closed information system, banks can collapse without injuring the rest of the economy, tax cuts always pay for themselves and Congressional earmarks cause the federal budget deficit. Even the market collapse has not shaken some conservatives out of their closed information system. It enfolded them more closely within it. This is how to understand the Glenn Beck phenomenon.
  • Meanwhile, Republican officeholders who want to explain why they acted to prevent the collapse of the U.S. banking system can get no hearing from voters seized with certainty that a bank collapse would have done no harm to ordinary people.
  • Lesson 2: “The market” (the whole free-market system) must be distinguished from “the markets” (the trading markets for financial assets).
  • the intellectual right accords a deference to the wants and wishes of the financial industry that is seldom accorded to agriculture, manufacturing, transport or retailing.
  • But it’s not always true that what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for the economy, or vice versa. Nor is what “the markets” want the same as what free-market economics require.
  • Lesson 3: The economy is more important than the budget.
  • During the recession of 1981-82, Democratic politicians demanded that a Republican president set a balanced budget as his top priority. Ronald Reagan disregarded this advice. He held firm to his tax cuts: once the economy returned to prosperity, there would be time then to deal with the deficit. Today, the positions are reversed.
  • eading voices in the Republican Party have convinced themselves that the country is on the verge of hyperinflation — a Weimar moment, says Glenn Beck. But if fiscal stimulus leads to socialism, and quantitative easing leads to Nazism, what on earth are we supposed to do? Cut the budget? But we won’t do that either! On Sean Hannity’s radio show, the Republican House leader John Boehner announced just before the election that one of his first priorities would be the repeal of the Obama Medicare cuts.
  • Lesson 4: Even from a conservative point of view, the welfare state is not all bad.
  • Social Security, unemployment insurance and other benefits were designed as anti-Depression defenses, “automatic stabilizers” as economists called them.
  • Those who denounce unemployment insurance as an invitation to idleness in an economy where there are at least five job seekers for every available job are not just hardening their hearts against distress. They are rejecting the teachings of Milton Friedman, who emphasized the value of automatic stabilizers fully as much as John Maynard Keynes ever did.
  • Lesson 5: Listen to the people — but beware of populism.
  • Non-Tea Party Americans may marvel that any group can think of itself as egalitarian when its main political goals are to cut off government assistance to the poorest and reduce taxes for the richest.
  • But American populism has almost always concentrated its anger against the educated rather than the wealthy. So much so that you might describe contemporary American politics as a class struggle between those with more education than money against those with more money than education
  • The U.S. political system is not a parliamentary system. Power is usually divided. The system is sustained by habits of cooperation, accepted limits on the use of power, implicit restraints on the use of rhetoric.
  • anonymous on 15 Nov 10
     
    "Republicans lost the presidency in 2008 in large part because of the worst economic crisis since World War II. Republicans have now regained the House of Representatives for the same reason. In the interval, Republicans ferociously attacked the Obama administration's economic remedies, and there certainly was a lot to attack. But the impulse to attack, it must be recognized, was based on more than ideology; it also served important psychological imperatives." By David Frum at The New York Times Idea Lab on November 12, 2010.
anonymous

Ireland Refuses EU Bailout - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...116_ireland_refuses_eu_bailout

geopolitics europe ireland

shared by anonymous on 17 Nov 10 - Cached
  • where the Greeks begged for a bailout earlier this year and then railed (and continue to rail) against the budget cuts they are being forced to abide by to maintain the intravenous drip of euros, the Irish are already nearly two years into a self-imposed austerity, all without any serious protests or strikes. 

  • Few argue that Germany is the economic center weight of the union, with every significant member-state counting Germany as its single largest trading partner. But not Ireland. Ireland is dependent upon Germany for a smaller proportion of its economic well being than any other state in the union, trading about twice as much with the United States or the United Kingdom than it does with Germany.
  • Ireland has — twice — voted down EU treaties, and in the aftermath been immune to the political pressure emanating from Paris and Berlin.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Berlin’s goal is pretty clear, so clear that a key architect of the Greek bailout — Christian Democratic Union lawmaker Michael Meister — has emphatically noted that not only is an Irish bailout inevitable, but one condition for it will be the alteration of Ireland’s corporate tax structure to something more in line with European norms.
  • What STRATFOR finds the most interesting about this is that Ireland is no longer alone in resisting Germany’s rising strength: There are now glimmers of recognition across Europe that the Germans are attempting to use their dominant economic position to rewire the European Union more to their liking.
  • anonymous on 17 Nov 10
     
    "Financial markets roiled Tuesday on rumors - often reported as news - that the European Union (EU) was about to issue a second bailout, this time to Ireland. In a curious twist of events, the rumors of a bailout didn't start in Dublin, but in Berlin. And the denials of those rumors came from the Irish themselves. The Irish government went on to emphasize that Dublin had not only not asked for a bailout, but that Irish officials at Tuesday's meeting of EU finance ministers went with the explicit goal of convincing everyone that such a bailout was not needed. After several years of everyone from banks to airlines to construction firms to Greece asking for a bailout, it's a little odd to have a state refuse one so emphatically." At StratFor on November 17, 2010.
anonymous

Geopolitical Journey, Part 3: Romania - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...litical_journey_part_3_romania

geopolitics romania russia

shared by anonymous on 20 Nov 10 - Cached
  • In school, many of us learned the poem Invictus. It concludes with the line, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” This is a line that a Victorian gentleman might bequeath to an American businessman. It is not a line that resonates in Romania.
  • empires collide where Romania is.
  • the great powers are sorting themselves out again and therefore Romania is becoming more important to others.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The Carpathian Mountains define Romania, but in an odd way. Rather than serving as the border of the country, protecting it, the Carpathians are an arc that divides the country into three parts.
  • To the south of the mountains is the Wallachian Plain
  • To the northwest of the Carpathians is Transylvania, more rugged, hilly country.
  • In the east of the Carpathians is the Moldavian Plain.
  • Romania is one nation divided by its geography. None of the three parts is easy to defend.
  • About the only time before the late 19th century that Romania was united was when it was completely conquered.
  • Some of us experience geopolitics as an opportunity. Most of humanity experiences it as a catastrophe.
  • To understand Romania as an ally one must bear this in mind: When the Soviets began their great counterattack at Stalingrad, they launched it over Romanian (and Hungarian) troops. Romanians maneuvered themselves into the position of fighting and dying for the Germans, and then got their revenge on the Germans by being slaughtered by the Soviets.
  • The way the Romanians got the Soviets to tolerate this was by building a regime more rigid and oppressive than even that of the Soviet Union at the time.
  • Contemporary Romania cannot be understood without understanding Nicolae Ceausescu.
  • Stalin didn’t trust communists who stayed home and resisted. He preferred communists who had fled to Moscow in the 1930s and had proved themselves loyal to Stalin by their betrayal of others.
  • Ceausescu decided to pay off the national debt. His reason seemed to flow from his foreign policy — he didn’t want Romania to be trapped by any country because of its debt — and he repaid it by selling to other countries nearly everything that was produced in Romania.
  • One of her books, The Appointment, takes place in Romania under the communists.
  • When one reads this book, as I did in preparing for this trip, one understands the way in which the Securitate tore apart a citizen’s soul — and remembers that it was not a distant relic of the 1930s but was still in place and sustaining the Romanian regime in 1989.
  • Romania emerged from the previous 70 years of ongoing catastrophe by dreaming of simple things and having no illusions that these things were easy to come by or things Romanians could control.
  • Romanians yearned to become European simply because being Romanian was too dangerous.
  • For Romania, national sovereignty has always been experienced as the process of accommodating itself to more powerful nations and empires. So after 1991, Romania searched for the “someone else” to which it could subordinate itself. More to the point, Romania imbued these entities with extraordinary redemptive powers. Once in NATO and the European Union, all would be well.
  • Germany remains an exporting country exporting into Romania and leaving precious little room for Romania to develop its economy.
  • a good part of Romania’s exports to Germany are from German-owned firms operating in Romania.
  • During the period of relative prosperity in Europe from 1991 to 2008, the structural reality of the EU was hidden under a rising tide.
  • Romania is a developing country. Europe’s regulations are drawn with a focus on the highly developed countries. The laws on employment guarantees mean that Europeans don’t hire workers, they adopt them. That means that entrepreneurship is difficult. Being an entrepreneur, as I well know, means making mistakes and recovering from them fast. Given the guarantees that every worker has in Europe, an entrepreneur cannot quickly recover from his mistakes. In Romania, the agility needed for risk-taking is not readily available under EU rules drawn up for a mature economy.
  • There are regulations and there are relationships. The latter mitigate the former. In Germany this might be called corruption. In Romania it is survival.
  • First, there is no doubt that NATO and the European Union did not work in Romania’s favor at the moment. Second, there is no question of rethinking Romania’s commitment to either.
  • NATO and the European Union keep the anti-democratic demons of the Romanian soul at bay. Being part of Europe is not simply a matter of strategic or economic benefits. It represents a transitional point in Romanian history.
  • The Western Europeans are not about to be drawn into Eastern European paranoia fed by nostalgic American strategists wanting to relive the Cold War, as they think of it.
  • I raised two strategic alternatives with Romanian officials and the media.
  • One was the Intermarium — an alliance, perhaps in NATO, perhaps not — of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
  • Turkey is Romania’s fourth-largest export target, and one of the few major trading partners that imports more from Romania than it exports.
  • In this region, the fear of the past dominates and oppresses while the confident, American-style military planning and economic restructuring I suggested is alien and frightening.
  • I had thought that Romania’s problem was that it was part of Europe, a weak power surrounded by stronger ones. They seem to believe that their solution is to be part of Europe, a weak power surrounded by stronger ones.
  • anonymous on 20 Nov 10
     
    "This is the third installment in a series of special reports that Dr. Friedman will write over the next few weeks as he travels to Turkey, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. In this series, he will share his observations of the geopolitical imperatives in each country and conclude with reflections on his journey as a whole and options for the United States. " By George Friedman at StratFor on November 16, 2010.
anonymous

China: Crunch Time - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20100329_china_crunch_time

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • It is that, but it is much, much more.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 30 Mar 10
       
      This statement links to a great StratFor article from 2008 that looked at European efforts to reorient the structure of Bretton Woods.
  • For the Europeans, Bretton Woods provided the stability, financing and security backbone Europe used first to recover, and in time to thrive. For the Americans, it provided the ability to preserve much of the World War II alliance network into the next era in order to compete with the Soviet Union.
  • Militarily and economically, it became the bedrock of the anti-Soviet containment strategy.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Applying this little history lesson to the question at hand, Bretton Woods is the ultimate reason why the Chinese have succeeded economically for the last generation.
  • But this may be changing
  • the shift in tone in U.S. trade policy is itself enough to suggest big changes, beginning with the idea that the United States actually will compete with the rest of the world in exports.
  • If — and we must emphasize if — there will be force behind this policy shift, the Chinese are in serious trouble.
  • Japan’s economy, in 1990 and now, only depended upon international trade for approximately 15 percent of its GDP. For China, that figure is 36 percent, and that is after suffering the hit to exports from the global recession.
  • First, Chinese currency reserves exist because Beijing does not want to invest its income in China.
  • Second, those bond purchases largely fuel U.S. consumers’ ability to purchase Chinese goods.
  • Third, a cold stop in bond purchases would encourage the U.S. administration — and the American economy overall — to balance its budgets.
  • the United States has more disposable income than all of China’s other markets combined.
  • Beijing perceives the spat with Google and Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama as direct attacks by the United States
  • With the Democratic Party in the United States (historically the more protectionist of the two mainstream U.S. political parties) both in charge and worried about major electoral losses, the Chinese fear that midterm U.S. elections will be all about targeting Chinese trade issues.
  • If there has already been a decision in Washington to break with Bretton Woods, no number of token changes will make any difference. Such a shift in the U.S. trade posture will see the Americans going for China’s throat (no matter whether by design or unintentionally).
  • STRATFOR sees a race on, but it isn’t a race between the Chinese and the Americans or even China and the world. It’s a race to see what will smash China first, its own internal imbalances or the U.S. decision to take a more mercantilist approach to international trade.
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    A great StratFor article about the coming full-blown trade dispute with China. From March 30, 2010.
anonymous

The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A 'Big Tent' Can Be Too Big - 0 views

blog.okcupid.com

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    From OkTrends. A great article (referenced by Dave Gottlieb) and pointed to from within this Buzz entry: http://www.google.com/buzz/111803955882817854729/QB9Mdp8jY6j/Partisan-Bipartisan-Crooked-Timber
anonymous

Objectivism & Politics, Part 45 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...ectivism-politics-part-45.html

criticalthinking philosophy

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • They never can nor never will be instituted in reality, because there are too many rooted sentiments and vested interests that stand against them. In a “free” country where people are allowed to develop their own political opinions without fear persecution from the state, wide divergences of political ideology inevitably arise. A democratic nation is an unworkable committee, governed by competing elites of divergent views. The only way to get anything done is through compromise.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 10
       
      Readers of Ayn Rand should be familiar with her feelings on "compromise" or "pragmatism."
  • An organization, to wield any sort of political influence, must be large. Yet this requires having a “big tent,” i.e., accepting as many people as possible.
  • the greater the party, the more compromises that have to be made on ideological grounds to keep it together. The more people you try to appeal to, the more you have to dilute and widen your ideology.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Orthodox Objectivism is one of the most purest ideologies on the current scene. Yet this very purity condemns Objectivism to obscurity and political impotence.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 10
       
      This paragraph reminds me of an observation I made as my interest with Objectivism was on the wane: While there is a great difference in the ideology, the *approach* to Objectivist ideology has much in common with a Fundamentalist Christian.
  • Because of this ideological purity, Objectivists have no effective political will and therefore no sense of responsibility. They can advocate any measure, make any claim, without ever worrying about empirical refutation. Empirical testing, when possible, is always the best way to check the truth of any idea, political or otherwise. When such testing is not possible, the human fancy can reach any conclusion it pleases, without fear of contradiction or embarrassment. This is one reason why fringe political groups with no power often believe the strangest things: they never have to worry about reality refuting their whacky ideas, because those ideas will never be tested.
  • Being placed in a position of responsibility, where one must bear the full burden of failure, often sobers people up. Which leads to the question: would Objectivists be sobered up if they were suddenly thrust into a position of responsibility?
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 10
     
    The next in Greg Nyquist's interminable coverage of the unreality of Objectivism.
anonymous

Health care reform: A simple explanation, updated - 0 views

politifact.com/...orm-simple-explanation-updated

healthcare layscience scientificadmin partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The Senate bill does not require employers to offer insurance, but it does impose taxes on employers if they don't offer insurance and their employees qualify for new health insurance tax credits.
  • regulate the exchanges so that insurance companies couldn't discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, or charge wildly different amounts for similar coverage.
  • Insurers would have to cover preventive care, and they wouldn't be able to cut off coverage unfairly or set annual limits on benefits.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • expands eligibility for insurance programs like Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program. All poor people would qualify for Medicaid.
  • People who don't buy insurance would have to pay a penalty on their taxes. Under the Senate bill, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage is expected to rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent.
  • promote standardized electronic health records
  • A comparative effectiveness research center would conduct and publish scientific research to find which treatments are the most effective.
  • the new rules aim to pay doctors for good patient outcomes instead of paying them per procedure, also called "fee-for-service."
  • For the large group market, the CBO found that rates would either stay the same or decline slightly. For the small group market, rates would essentially stay the same as well. The individual market is a more complicated story
  • Covering millions of people who are now uninsured would cost billions more per year.
  • Critics say the Democratic plans would lead to health care rationing.
  • The public option is an insurance plan run by the government that individuals can choose over private insurance.
  • The more generous the benefits, the higher the costs.
  • The House measure put more restrictions on how insurers could offer coverage for abortion services.
  • the CBO warns that it's very difficult to put dollar figures on many of these things, because of the size of the health care industry and the inherent unpredictability of major policy changes over many years.
  • It's good to keep in mind that when it comes to health care reform, no one has a crystal ball.
  • anonymous on 16 Apr 10
     
    From Politifact. A basic explanation.
anonymous

Libertarian Electoral Fantasies - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...ibertarian-electoral-fantasies

generations

shared by anonymous on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Cato's Will Wilkinson predicts that a generation of younger, libertarian-leaning voters will takeover the Democratic Party and push it in a libertarian direction
  • Despite Wilkinson's description of younger voters as "libertarian-ish," the reality is that young voters are far more pro-government than any other generation. This can be seen in the Pew Survey report (PDF) on Millenials, entitled "A Pro-Government, Socially Liberal Generation.
  • if George W. Bush couldn't convince Americans to privatize the program in 2005, after a 25-year bull market when stocks were widely assumed to be lucrative and safe, I don't see how anybody who lived through the current crisis is going to come around.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • this has no bearing on the intellectual value of libertarianism, which obviously is unrelated to its popularity. But it's worth keeping in mind when we discuss the electorate, because such discussions often operate under the mistaken assumption that there's an enormous pool of libertarian or libertarian-leaning voters ignored by the two-party system.
  • anonymous on 09 Apr 10
     
    By Jonathan Chait at The New Republic on April 8, 2010. A look at the trend of Millennials being more tolerant of government expansion.
anonymous

Obama the Centrist - 0 views

delong.typepad.com/...obama-the-centrist.html

politics

shared by anonymous on 03 May 10 - Cached
  • My complaints about Obama are not that he is too bipartisan or too centrist. I am at bottom a weak-tea Dewey-Eisenhower-Rockefeller social democrat – that is, with a small “s” and a small “d.” My complaints are that he is not technocratic enough, that he is pursuing the chimera of “bipartisanship” too far, and that, as a result, many of his policies will not work well, or at all.
  • In all of these cases, Obama is ruling, or trying to rule, by taking positions that are at the technocratic good-government center, and then taking two steps to the right – sacrificing some important policy goals – in the hope of attracting Republican votes and thereby demonstrating his commitment to bipartisanship. On all of these policies – anti-recession, banking, fiscal, environmental, anti-discrimination, rule of law, healthcare – you could close your eyes and convince yourself that, at least as far as the substance is concerned, Obama is in fact a moderate Republican named George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Colin Powell.
  • anonymous on 03 May 10
     
    By Brad Delong at Grasping Reality with Both Hands on April 30, 2010. This is a sober look at the actual policies that Obama has been promoting. It's anything but Socialist and - if a Republican was doing the stuff he's doing - Fox wouldn't have a problem at all, imho.
anonymous

U.K.: Electoral Uncertainty Looms - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...uk_electoral_uncertainty_looms

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 06 May 10 - Cached
  • Britons go to the polls May 6 to cast their votes in what is expected to be one of the closest elections in decades. While polls indicate the conservatives are favored over the ruling Labour Party and the insurgent Liberal Democrats, it is possible that a hung parliament or a weak coalition government could take office, coming at a time when Britain desperately needs strong leadership out of its economic doldrums.
  • The close electoral race has plunged the United Kingdom into a national debate about the possibility that no party will have an absolute majority with which to form a government, a scenario referred to as a “hung parliament.”
  • The electoral system employed in the United Kingdom is referred to as “first-past-the-post” — essentially a winner-takes-all system in which electoral districts elect individual members of parliament.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The lack of experience governing with hung parliaments in the United Kingdom’s political culture — not to mention the non-existence of inter-party dialogue necessary for coalition-formation to take place — only heightens the sense of uncertainty around the outcome for the election.
  • anonymous on 06 May 10
     
    By Stratfor on May 6, 2010.
anonymous

Whoa There, Rising Powers! - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...whoa_there_rising_powers

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 26 May 10 - Cached
  • Some critics have alleged that the U.S. administration passed up a golden opportunity for peace in a fit of pique at diplomatic interlopers, or that Iran had made painful concessions to fellow emerging nations that it would not make to the West.
  • something important has shifted in the world order, and we will have to get over our flinch reflex. Brazil and Turkey are middle-sized powers -- eighth and 17th in the world, respectively, in GDP -- that live at peace with their neighbors and believe they have a calling to play a role on the global stage.
  • "rhythmic diplomacy," which sounds like jazzercise but in fact, as he put it, "implies active involvement in all international organizations and on all issues of global and international importance."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Brazils and Turkeys of the world are not likely to form a coherent new bloc, but they will be far less inclined than they were in the past to stay within the lines chalked in by the referees of the West.
  • Partisans of a "concert of democracies" have assumed that maturing democracies in the developing world would seek to advance the same, supposedly universal, values prized by their elders in the West, but it hasn't worked out that way.
  • There's no question that Brazil's interests, or Turkey's, overlap in many places with those of the U.S. and Europe; Turkey seeks nothing more ardently than full EU membership, for instance. But in many other places, interests diverge, and the middle powers are inclined to view the current world order as an instrument to advance Western designs, not theirs.
  • For Obama, the really important question is whether he should reconcile himself to an unavoidable clash of interests with rising powers, or try to win them over by offering a deeper and more substantive kind of engagement -- for example, by pushing for a greater democratization of the institutions from which those states now feel excluded. It may be that the only chance to get Brazil to act more like a global citizen is to treat it like one.
  • When I first read the news about the nuclear deal that Brazil and Turkey reached last week with Iran, I flinched. My reflex reaction was: Third-World troublemakers rally to the side of evil-doer in the face of Western pressure. That was, of course, the wrong reflex.
  • anonymous on 26 May 10
     
    "Brazil and Turkey's diplomatic forays may be annoying, but they also signal a huge shift in the way the world works. Is Obama paying attention?" By James Traub in Foreign Policy on May 25, 2010.
anonymous

U.S. Handling of the Egyptian Crisis - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...09-us-handling-egyptian-crisis

shared by anonymous on 10 Feb 11 - Cached
  • While behind the scenes, the United States was dealing closely with Egyptian military leaders who were appealing for restraint, in public, Washington was seen by many Arab leaders as dealing recklessly with the crisis.
  • On the one hand, it has a strategic need to keep Egypt’s military-dominated regime in place.
  • moreover it did not want to be caught on the wrong side of a brutal crackdown, and felt the need to maintain its image of supporting democratic popular demands.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Washington’s response, while confused at times, certainly has evolved.
  • Washington is becoming more critical of the regime’s failings, more supportive of the grievances of the protesters, and more vocal about the need for reforms in Egypt and even elsewhere in the region.
  • While behind the scenes, the United States was dealing closely with Egyptian military leaders who were appealing for restraint, in public, Washington was seen by many Arab leaders as dealing recklessly with the crisis.
  • On the one hand, it has a strategic need to keep Egypt’s military-dominated regime in place.
  • This U.S. administration in particular has put considerable effort into trying to reshape the U.S. image in the Islamic world.
  • Moreover, Washington was juggling among various relationships it had in Cairo in trying to shape a resolution to the crisis.
  • others with the military were split between the old guard elite and new guard, who spent much of their life training in the United States and had thus built strong relationships with Washington — hence the uncertainty and mixed signals from Washington
  • Washington appears to have caught its breath following the early days of the crisis and is seeking a more coherent policy — one that better balances the promotion of what it labels “universal values” with an understanding of strategic interests in the region.
  • No doubt the United States is fully aware of the danger of weakening the very allies that it is supposed to be buttressing in the contest with Iran, but it also sees that cracks are spreading across the facade of the old regimes, and a push toward a more pluralistic setup, to pacify the most frustrated elements in Arab societies, could be a lever that can ease pressure and avoid a catastrophic collapse.
  • The Arab states may view U.S. policy as detrimental to their interests, but the reality is that – aside from the significant amount of aid the United States provides to the Egyptian military — there are serious limits on the U.S. ability to shape the outcome of the current turmoil.
  • anonymous on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Wednesday saw a rising chorus of criticisms from Arab states over the United States' handling of the Egyptian crisis, specifically its perceived attempts to hasten President Hosni Mubarak's resignation. Reports indicate that Jordanian King Abdullah II, reshuffling his Cabinet amid fears of popular opposition inspired by Egyptian unrest, has called on the United States to promote a smooth transition in Egypt; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have meanwhile criticized the manner in which Washington has dealt with the situation in Egypt and the wider region. U.S. President Barack Obama spoke for a second time in as many weeks with Saudi King Abdullah, presumably about the direction of events and coordinating responses."
anonymous

Revolution and the Muslim World - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...21-revolution-and-muslim-world

stratfor geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 23 Feb 11 - Cached
  • There have been moments in history where revolution spread in a region or around the world as if it were a wildfire.
  • Each had a basic theme.
  • But in the end, the reasons behind them could reasonably be condensed into a sentence or two.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • The key is that in each country where they took place, there were significant differences in the details — but they shared core principles at a time when other countries were open to those principles, at least to some extent.
  • The Muslim countries of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula have been the prime focus of these risings, and in particular North Africa where Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya have had profound crises.
  • The key principle that appears to be driving the risings is a feeling that the regimes, or a group of individuals within the regimes, has deprived the public of political and, more important, economic rights — in short, that they enriched themselves beyond what good taste permitted.
  • Why has it come together now?
  • One reason is that there was a tremendous amount of regime change in the region from the 1950s through the early 1970s, as the Muslim countries created regimes to replace foreign imperial powers and were buffeted by the Cold War.
  • More than anything, if we want to define this wave of unrest, particularly in North Africa, it is a rising against regimes — and particularly individuals — who have been in place for extraordinarily long periods of time.
  • In this case, the question of greatest importance is not why these revolutions are taking place, but who will take advantage of them.
  • In this case, whatever the cause of the risings, there is no question that radical Islamists will attempt to take advantage and control of them. Why wouldn’t they? It is a rational and logical course for them.
  • Whether they will be able to do so is a more complex and important question, but that they would want to and are trying to do so is obvious.
  • But while there is no question that Islamists would like to take control of the revolution, that does not mean that they will, nor does it mean that these revolutions will be successful. Recall that 1848 and 1968 were failures and those who tried to take advantage of them had no vehicle to ride. Also recall that taking control of a revolution is no easy thing. But as we saw in Russia in 1917, it is not necessarily the more popular group that wins, but the best organized. And you frequently don’t find out who is best organized until afterwards.
  • Democratic revolutions have two phases.
  • The first is the establishment of democracy. The second is the election of governments.
  • So there are three crosscurrents here.
  • The first is the reaction against corrupt regimes. The second is the election itself. And the third? The United States needs to remember, as it applauds the rise of democracy, that the elected government may not be what one expected.
  • pictures of peaceful demonstrators are not nearly as significant as the media will have you believe, but pictures of demonstrators continuing to hold their ground after being fired on is very significant.
  • This leads to the key event in the revolution. The revolutionaries cannot defeat armed men. But if those armed men, in whole or part, come over to the revolutionary side, victory is possible. And this is the key event.
  • In Libya, the military has split wide open.
  • If the split in the military is roughly equal and deep, this could lead to civil war.
  • Far more common is for the military to split. If the split creates an overwhelming anti-regime force, this leads to the revolution’s success.
  • It is this act, the military and police coming over to the side of the demonstrators, that makes or breaks a revolution.
  • Therefore, looking at the students on TV tells you little. Watching the soldiers tells you much more.
  • The danger is not radical Islam, but chaos, followed either by civil war, the military taking control simply to stabilize the situation or the emergence of a radical Islamic party to take control — simply because they are the only ones in the crowd with a plan and an organization. That’s how minorities take control of revolutions.
  • Only in the case of Eastern Europe do we see broad revolutionary success, but that was against an empire in collapse, so few lessons can be drawn from that for the Muslim world.
  • democracy and pro-Western political culture do not mean the same thing.
  • There are three possibilities.
  • One is that this is like 1848, a broad rising that will fail for lack of organization and coherence, but that will resonate for decades.
  • The second is 1968, a revolution that overthrew no regime even temporarily and left some cultural remnants of minimal historical importance.
  • The third is 1989, a revolution that overthrew the political order in an entire region, and created a new order in its place.
  • anonymous on 23 Feb 11
     
    "The Muslim world, from North Africa to Iran, has experienced a wave of instability in the last few weeks. No regimes have been overthrown yet, although as of this writing, Libya was teetering on the brink."
anonymous

Unrest in the Middle East: A Special Report - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...est-middle-east-special-report

stratfor geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 17 Feb 11 - Cached
  • High youth unemployment, a lack of political representation, repressive police states, a lack of housing and rising commodity prices are among the more common complaints voiced by protesters across the region.
  • Regime responses to those complaints also have been relatively consistent, including subsidy handouts; changes to the government, in many cases cosmetic; promises of job growth, electoral reform, and a repeal of emergency rule
  • states also has unique circumstances
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the past several days Egypt has not witnessed a popular revolution but a carefully managed succession by the military.
  • It must be recognized that the succession crisis in Egypt was playing out between the country’s military elite and Mubarak well before protests began in Egypt on Jan. 25.
  • The demonstrators, encouraged by both internal and external pro-democracy groups, were in fact a critical tool the military used to maneuver Mubarak out while preserving the regime.
  • Though Tunisia had some domestic pro-democracy groups before unrest began in December 2010, Tunisia saw one of the region’s more organic uprisings.
  • The ouster of Ben Ali and his family and a reshuffling of the government for now have calmed most of the unrest. A sense of normalcy is gradually returning as Tunisians look ahead to as-yet unscheduled elections due sometime in 2011.
  • In all likelihood, Tunisia will end up with another government dominated by many of the former Ben Ali elites, albeit with a democratic face.
  • While the civil unrest will continue to capture the cameras’ attention, the real struggle in Algeria is not playing out in the streets. A power struggle has long been under way between the country’s increasingly embattled president, Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, and the head of the Military Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DRS), Gen. Mohamed “Toufik” Mediene.
  • Not by coincidence, one of the main organizers of the demonstrations, Saeed Saidi (a Berber) is known to be on excellent terms with Mediene, also a Berber. The call for Berber rights — Berbers make up roughly one-third of the Algerian population — has been one of the leading drivers of the demonstrations thus far.
  • Now, however, a recently-created Facebook group known as “Moroccans for Change” has called for a nationwide protest Feb. 20, something the government of King Mohammed VI has responded to by meeting with opposition parties and promising to speed up the pace of economic, social and political reforms.
  • In one of its main demands, the opposition has called for a new constitution that would strip power from the monarchy and from the network of state and business elites known as the Makhzen.
  • In sum, the planned demonstrations in Morocco are illustrations of opportunism as opposed to a serious potential popular uprising — much less regime change.
  • King Abdullah II acted quickly to pre-empt major civil unrest in the country by handing out millions of dollars in subsidies and by forming a new government.
  • Bahrain was the first among Persian Gulf countries to witness significant demonstrations, and protesters clashed with riot police early on. After two days of demonstrations led by Shiite opposition groups, a heavy crackdown was launched on Pearl Square in the heart of Manama late Feb. 16 on mostly Shiite protesters who were camping overnight.
  • The ruling Sunni family may be a minority in the Shiite-majority country, but some 54 percent of the population is made up of foreign guest workers, who are notably not taking part in the demonstrations.
  • Poor socio-economic conditions, high youth unemployment (around 26 percent) and disillusionment with the regime are all notable factors in the development of Iran’s opposition movement, but as STRATFOR stressed in 2009, the primarily youth-driven, middle- and upper-class opposition in Tehran is not representative of the wider population, a significant portion of which is supportive of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  • The civil unrest in Libya is unlikely to pose a meaningful threat to the regime, but it could impact the country’s ongoing power-struggle between Gadhafi’s two sons.
  • In attempt to take the steam out of the political opposition, Saleh has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2013, and that he would do away with pending amendments that would have abolished presidential term limits.
  • Soon after the unrest in Egypt broke out, Syrian opposition youth activists (most of whom are based outside the country) attempted to organize their own “Day of Rage” via social media to challenge the al Assad regime.
  • anonymous on 17 Feb 11
     
    "Footage of self-immolations in Algeria, clashes between police and protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, government reshufflings in Jordan and fledgling street demonstrations in Iran could lead to the impression of a domino effect under way in the Middle East in which aging autocrats are on the verge of being uprooted by Tunisia-inspired revolutionary fervor. A careful review of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa , however, exposes a very different picture. "
anonymous

Is crime a virus or a beast? How metaphors shape our thoughts and decisions - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...ape-our-thoughts-and-decisions

shared by anonymous on 24 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • As with all complex issues, crime is suffused with metaphors.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Feb 11
       
      This is oddly understandable, and not hard for me to mentally extrapolate further: that our politics is swayed by our characterization of events.
  • In a series of five experiments, Paul Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky from Stanford University have shown how influential metaphors can be.
  • First, Thibodeau and Boroditsky asked 1,482 students to read one of two reports about crime in the City of Addison.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The second report was exactly the same, except it described crime as a “virus infecting the city” and “plaguing” neighbourhoods.
  • After reading these words, 75% of the students put forward solutions that involved enforcement or punishment
  • After reading this version, only 56% opted for more enforcement, while 44% suggested social reforms.
  • But these words have no weight on their own; it’s their context that gives them power.
  • If the critical sentence came at the end of the report, it didn’t have any effect.
  • As you might expect, men and Republicans were more likely to emphasise enforcement, while women and Democrats leant towards social reforms. But these factors only created differences of around 8 to 9 percentage points. The metaphors, on the other hand, created shifts of between 18 to 22 percentage points!
  • I agree with Richard Dawkins that DNA is a recipe more than a blueprint
  • anonymous on 24 Feb 11
     
    In 1990, in a depressed area of Buffalo, New York, eleven schoolgirls were raped. According to George Kelling, a criminal justice scholar, eight of these incidents could have been prevented. After the third case, police knew that a serial rapist was on the loose but, even though they had a description and modus operandi, they issued no warning to local parents. They saw their job as catching the criminal rather than preventing more girls from being raped. Kelling argued that the cops hadn't wilfully neglected their duties. Their actions were swayed by their views of police-work, which were in turn affected by metaphors. They saw themselves as crime-fighters who trod the "thin blue line" protecting innocent civilians from criminal marauders. With this role entrenched in their minds, they saw their job as catching the rapist, even at the expense of preventing further crimes. As Kelling said, the eight Buffalo schoolgirls "were victims, though no one realized it at the time, not only of a rapist, but of a metaphor."
anonymous

5 Reasons Humanity Is Terrible at Democracy | Cracked.com - 0 views

www.cracked.com/-terrible-at-democracy_p2.html

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Polls consistently show that we think those who disagree with us politically are simply bad people, on a personal level.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Mar 11
       
      What's fascinating is how irrelevant our partisan political affiliations are, on a day to day basis, but oh how we imagine them to be the center of our being.
  • Now take a look at this study, which compared a person's average political knowledge with their primary source of news. The results were surprising: The most knowledgeable groups were viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hot on their heels? Fans of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
  • Never mind the fact that it's a pretty bad sign when the most politically educated people in the country are relying on either comedy shows or political pundits for their news. The key is that these outlets are primarily about ruthlessly mocking and dismissing the other side. Yet they attract more knowledgeable voters, not less.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In the world of psychology, they call this attitude polarization; the more times the average person spends thinking about a subject, the more extreme his position becomes -- even if he doesn't run across any new information.
  • once you get to the point where you're rooting so hard for one side of an issue that you're just short of painting your chest in team colors, then all that time spent reading up on the issues stops being about becoming an informed citizen and becomes more about accumulating ammunition for the next argument.
  • #1. We Hate Each Other Over Imaginary Differences
  • For example, a study asked Americans of various demographics and political stances about the ideal way they feel wealth should be distributed across the country. Young or old, male or female, Republican or Democrat, the answers they provided were almost identical.
  • Don't get us wrong; it's not that there are no disagreements, it's just that we vastly overestimate the degree to which we disagree, because the differences are all we focus on.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Mar 11
       
      For instance: During the Obama-McCain debates, their stated foreign policy stance was virtually identical. It was only on matters of how quickly a withdrawal would occur, not whether, if and how. This was almost completely glossed over by the left. In fact, the broad continuance of foreign policy is evidence of a geopolitical 'pull' that exists beyond partisanship and personalities.
  • We don't want the news to just give us information -- we want a story, and every story needs a villain, a battle between good and evil.
  • Knowing this, the news media decades ago started covering politics like a war, or a sport (in the biz, they call it "horse race coverage") where the reporting is entirely about which side is winning -- at the expense of figuring out the actual impact the resulting election or legislation will have on you as a human being. We tune in for "Us vs. Them," so that's what they give us.
anonymous

Forget Anonymous: Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Election - 1 views

www.benzinga.com/...gop-hacked-stole-2004-election

partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • "A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush," according to Bob Fitrakis, columnist at http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel in the litigation and investigation.
  • Ohio was the battleground state that provided George Bush with the electoral votes needed to win re-election. Had Senator John Kerry won Ohio's electoral votes, he would have been elected instead.
  • SmarTech, a private company, had the ability in the 2004 election to add or subtract votes without anyone knowing they did so.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The filing today shows how, detailing the computer network system's design structure, including a map of how the data moved from one unit to the next. Right smack in the middle of that structure? Inexplicably, it was SmarTech.
  • A "man in the middle" is not just an accidental happenstance of computing. It is a deliberate computer hacking setup, one where the hacker sits, literally, in the middle of the communication stream, intercepting and (when desired, as in this case) altering the data.
  • Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud.
  • SmarTech was part of three computer companies brought in to manage the elections process for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican. The other two were Triad and GovTech Solutions. All three companies have extensive ties to the Republican party and Republican causes.
  • Connell was outed as the one who stole the 2004 election by Spoonamore, who, despite being a conservative Republican himself, came forward to blow the whistle on the stolen election scandal. Connell gave a deposition on the matter, but stonewalled. After the deposition, and fearing perjury/obstruction charges for withholding information, Connell expressed an interest in testifying further as to the extent of the scandal.
  • Connell was so scared for his security that he asked for protection from the attorney general, then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Connell told close friends that he was expecting to get thrown under the bus by the Rove team, because Connell had evidence linking the GOP operative to the scandal and the stolen election, including knowledge of where Rove's missing emails disappeared to.
  • Before he could testify, Connell died in a plane crash.
  • "The 2004 election was stolen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. A 6.7% shift in exit polls does not happen by chance. And, you know, so finally, we have irrefutable confirmation that what we were saying was true and that every piece of the puzzle in the Ohio 2004 election was flawed," Wasserman said.
  • There were three phases of chicanery.
  • First, there was a pre-election period, during which the Secretary of State in Ohio, Ken Blackwell, was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, which is in itself mind-boggling, engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic and legal tricks to cut down on the number of people who could register
  • On Election Day, there was clearly a systematic undersupply of working voting machines in Democratic areas, primarily inner city and student towns, you know, college towns. And the Conyers people found that in some of the most undersupplied places, there were scores of perfectly good voting machines held back and kept in warehouses, you know, and there are many similar stories to this.
  • After Election Day, there is explicit evidence that a company called Triad, which manufactures all of the tabulators, the vote-counting tabulators that were used in Ohio in the last election, was systematically going around from county to county in Ohio and subverting the recount, which was court ordered and which never did take place.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 11
     
    "Three generations from now, when our great-grandchildren are sitting barefoot in their shanties and wondering how in the hell America turned from the high-point of civilization to a third-world banana republic, they will shake their fists and mutter one name: George Effin' Bush." If this is true, it's incredibly depressing...
anonymous

The Debt Ceiling Deal: The Case for Caving (Part 2) - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...or-caving-08032011_page_2.html

gametheory economics u.s. politics

shared by anonymous on 09 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Game theorists distinguish between “cooperative” and “noncooperative” games.
  • A cooperative game looks to divide a pie in a way that leaves both sides with trust in the process.
  • The object of the game, as each leader described it, was about how best to divide the pain of closing the deficit, in the same way a family sits down to a pile of bills on the kitchen table.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The two parties in Washington pretended to be playing a cooperative game this summer.
  • The President’s bipartisan commission on deficit reduction, set up late last year and chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, also played a cooperative game.
  • A noncooperative game lacks a higher authority to impose agreements on both sides.
  • In Washington, no politician is bound to reach a compromise to solve any long-term problem. Everyone, however, is playing a game called “election,” and the only possible goal in that game is to win the next one.
  • If you hear someone in Congress say, “Senator X is just playing politics,” a perfectly legitimate response is, “She has to. Those are the rules of the Constitution.”
  • Anyone who promises to fix or change Washington is merely attempting to impose a cooperative game on a town that, by design, can’t play one.
  • A game theorist would say that the President is trying to play a cooperative game in a town that can’t play along with him. The trouble for the White House is that the Republicans aren’t playing a game called “fix the budget deficit.” They’re necessarily playing one called “defeat Barack Obama.” A reasonable offer seldom works in a divorce; there’s no reason to expect it would in Congress.
  • Obama and the House Republicans, says Steven Brams, were playing chicken this summer, a noncooperative, non-zero-sum game in which both players can lose.
  • Brams argues that there’s no value in trying to determine whether anger is real or feigned; it has the same effect either way.
  • frustration can actually turn a noncooperative game cooperative
  • anonymous on 09 Aug 11
     
    Part two of the article, because there isn't a 'single page' option. Booo.
anonymous

The Gen-X Nostalgia Boom - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-gen-x-nostalgia-boom.html

generations nostalgia Gen-X

shared by anonymous on 04 Aug 11 - Cached
  • We bristled when we heard them wax self-congratulatory about ending segregation and war
  • We resented their monopoly on cultural space, realizing that “boom” also described what their collective voice would always be, compared with our demographically feeble squeak.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      I was a late bloomer in this regard. When I finally had a small degree of cultural awareness, I began to note things. Mainly that my music sucked, we sucked, and everything was better before I was around.
  • And when they did briefly notice us, in the Generation X media frenzy of the mid-1990s, it was only to reduce diverse people and experiences to catchwords like “slackers” and “grunge” and dismiss paralyzing economic and ecological anxiety as privileged extended-adolescent angst.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      I had that TIME Magazine. I used to read P.J. O'Rourke bitching about my generation. I bristled at being called a gen-x'er (I only ever tolerated grunge). As quickly as that media fascination came, it went. I guess maybe we were 'dealt with'.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • I would say we were marked by two traits: our dislike of nostalgia and our irritation whenever our barely formed narratives were appropriated and marketed back at us.
  • it brings on something of an identity crisis to see Gen X’s formative years become part of the cycle of retro revivalism
  • Meanwhile MTV is exhuming “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Pop-Up Video,” while Nickelodeon is offering a 1990s-themed block of late-night programming with old shows like “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” presumably to help herbally sautéed 20-somethings regress in giggly reminiscence.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      With our beer bongs and our hula hoops.
  • Most kids who entered college this year weren’t even born when grunge broke. If it’s too soon, you’re too old.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      Ouch.
  • But of course we are not just the unwilling victims of the 20-year cycle of resuscitation. We are its architects, as a few of us have been able to wrest culturally influential posts away from baby boomers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      S&H would (probably) argue that this is because Gen X is a reactive one (like Silents). 
  • One of The Onion’s most biting headlines this year: “Winona Ryder finally agrees to sleep with Generation X.”
  • This is the sting in the rising buzz of 1990s nostalgia: It feels like retroactively giving in to those reductive media representations.
  • At that time, the sharpest articulation of generational pique was found in The Baffler
  • Now we’ll get to see how The Baffler dissects the rise of Gen-X-Squared
  • age can prompt even the most cynical to realize not only nostalgia’s sickly-sweet temptation but also its usefulness.
  • What is nostalgia good for, then?
  • it runs search-and-rescue missions against the disposability of consumer capitalism
  • And it raises exception to the great leveling effect of the Internet
  • In intimate terms, nostalgia is a glue that reinforces bonds of solidarity and shared experience
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      And that's one reason why, as much as I railed against the Gen X label, I certainly was part of a peer group with shared experiences.
  • Today’s Birthers and Tea Partiers seem less apocalyptic if you remember that the last time a Democratic president battled Republicans over health care and federal budgets, he was being smeared as a conspiratorial murderer.
  • So how can an anti-nostalgic generation honor its past without becoming the thing it hated?
  • One answer is the old standby: Gen X’s endemic, possibly pathological, sarcasm.
  • Rather than the 1990s being, as the demoralizing claim went, the “end of history,” it turned out to be more like a mix-tape pause of history between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, a kind of break from big convulsions while humankind mainly figured out how to work the Internet.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      That's a great bit.
  • There’s a model here for nostalgia that doesn’t wish away the distance between past and present; doesn’t romanticize the past as tragic and heroic; and doesn’t simply trivialize it (as so much 1980s nostalgia did) as trite and silly.
  • anonymous on 04 Aug 11
     
    Long before we had much life to look back on, North Americans my age knew that nostalgia was a sickness. It's not that we were aware the term was coined to describe the crippling melancholia that overcame many 17th-century Swiss soldiers when war took them away from the bucolic mountain landscapes of home. It was that, being in our teens and 20s in the early 1990s, we had grown up in the penumbra of the great eclipsing nostalgia of the baby boomers
  • Erik Hanson on 17 Aug 11
     
    And here I could swear I've been toying with nostalgia my whole life. Mind you, it was always nostalgia for previous countercultural movements.
anonymous

Drew Westen's Nonsense - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...drew-westens-nonsense

politics u.s. geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 08 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Westen locates Obama's inexplicable failure to properly use his storytelling power in some deep-rooted aversion to conflict. He fails to explain why every president of the postwar era has compromised, reversed, or endured the total failure of his domestic agenda.
  • Yes, even George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan infuriated their supporters by routinely watering down their agenda or supporting legislation utterly betraying them, and making rhetorical concessions to the opposition.
  • First, Roosevelt did not take office "in similar circumstances." He took office three years into the Great Depression, after the economy had bottom out, and immediately presided over rapid economic growth (unemployment plunged from a high of 24.9% in 1933 to 14.3% in 1937.)
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • As you can see, Roosevelt generally enjoyed broad public support despite having no success at persuading Americans to share his Keynesian view.
  • Roosevelt's fortunes are a testament to the degree to which political conditions are shaped by the state of the economy.
  • Obama took office at the cusp of a massive worldwide financial crisis that was bound to inflict severe damage on himself and his party. That he faced such difficult circumstances does not absolve him of blame for any failures. It sets the bar lower, but the bar still exists. How should we judge Obama against it?
  • I would argue that both the legislative record of 2009-2010 and Obama's personal popularity level exceed the expectation level -- facing worse economic conditions than the last two Democratic presidents at a similar juncture, Obama is far more popular than Jimmy Carter and nearly as popular as Bill Clinton, and vastly more accomplished than both put together.
  • He blames Obama for the insufficiently large stimulus without even mentioning the role of Senate moderate Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass it, in weakening the stimulus.
  • A foreign reader unfamiliar with our political system would come away from Westen's op-ed believing Obama writes laws by fiat.
  • In fact, the budget agreement does not include any entitlement cuts. It consists of cuts to domestic discretionary (i.e., non-entitlement spending.)
  • Likewise, he implies that Obama supported the undermining of the coverage expansion in his health care reform by cutting Medicaid
  • This is also totally false. The budget agreement contains no cuts to Medicaid or to state budgets. The automatic cuts that would go in effect should Congress fail to agree on a second round of deficit reduction exempt Medicaid.
  • Westen is apparently unaware, to take one example, that Obama repeatedly and passionately argued for universal coverage.
  • If even a professional follower of political rhetoric like Westen never realized basic, repeated themes of Obama's speeches and remarks, how could presidential rhetoric -- sorry, "storytelling" -- be anywhere near as important as he claims? The clear reality is that Americans pay hardly any attention to what presidents say, and what little they take in, they forget almost immediately. Even Drew Westen.
  • anonymous on 08 Aug 11
     
    "Westen's op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president in the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science."
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