politics » Undiplomatic

15 April 2010 Charles J. Brown
10:52 pm

When Did Government Service Become Unpatriotic??

Pardon the rant, but as I’m sure you know, today is tax day.

Don’t look for me to bitch and moan. In fact, Molly and I owed money this year. And we paid it. On time. Because that’s part of being a good citizen — paying for the services our government renders. So you won’t find me at any tea party rally today — or any day, for that matter.

I wonder. Do tea partiers ever send letters? Use the phone? Access the intertubes? Get vaccinated? Go to National Parks? Drive on interstate highways? Who in God’s name do they think is responsible for them? It’s as if they live in a hermetically sealed little world in which government never enters their lives — except when they collect their social security checks and use medicare.

I am sick and tired of these folks pissing on the federal government. I ask you: when did government service become unpatriotic?

When I was at the State Department, I had the honor to work with some exceptional people, many of whom had traveled to dangerous locales around the world and risked their life in service to this nation. As E.J. Dionne noted today, that’s also true of many others in many lines of government service.

You might imagine that if a terrorist attack killed an American public servant and threatened the lives of 200 people, it would have been big news for weeks and an enduring symbol of the risks taken by those who serve their country.

Yet when an American named Joseph Stack flew a plane into an office building in Austin in February, killing Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran, the news reports were remarkably muted, and the story quickly disappeared.

Hunter worked for the Internal Revenue Service, which was housed in the Austin building, and according to Stack’s suicide note, the IRS was his target.

On or about April 15, the Web and the commentary pages overflow with assaults on the IRS that cast its employees as jackbooted thugs, to use an old phrase, and our tax system as a form of oppression comparable to the exertions of the worst Russian czars and the most fiendish modern totalitarian dictators.

We should call this propaganda what it is: a sweeping falsehood that libels the work of committed federal employees such as Hunter.

I’d take it a step further. Have we forgotten the lessons of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Have we forgotten that 168 people, including children, for God’s sake, lost their lives that day? Monday is the fifteenth anniversary of that terrible, terrible day.

Have we forgotten about the foreign service officers killed in the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania? Have we forgotten about the soldiers killed by the attack on the U.S.S. Cole? The post office workers killed in the anthrax attacks? The FBI, DEA, ATF, Border Patrol, and other agents killed in the line of duty? Are they socialists? Or fascists? Are all those lives meaningless because you have to pay a few more cents on the dollar in taxes?

Tea party patriots my ass. Their selfish rants dishonor all those who have died in service to this country.

Flag photo: Jcolman via Flickr using CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license

The Ultimate #BoehnerFAIL & Will.i.am Mash-Up

I hope that some very smart Democrat makes sure this bad boy goes viral, because nothing does a better job of summarizing the difference between the two parties.

All we need now is for someone to auto-tune him.

h/t Marbury

“It’s Not Easy to Become a Law, Is It?”

I don’t have much to add on the House passing both the Senate and reconciliation versions of the health care bill — I will leave that to those, like Ezra Klein, who have been so ably and brilliantly following this from the start.

That said, I would note that for all the talk of the compromises and deals that came and went throughout the process, what Schoolhouse Rock said 35 (ack) years ago is still true: “It’s not easy to become a law, is It?” That is true when the task is fairly straightforward and simple, but even more true when talking about as massive an undertaking as health care reform has turned out to be.

Many commentators are adopting their usual binary perspective — Democrats win, Republicans lose, Democrats benefit, Republicans hurt, Obama wins, Republicans lose, blah blah blah. The reality is that it’s not as simple as that: some Dems will lose their seats over this, but others will retain theirs. And I think Republicans, as David Frum has so brilliantly argued, don’t yet realize the damage they’ve done to their long-term prospects as a political party.

One last observation: I hope that the success of this legislation does not diminish the Democrats’ ardor for systemic reform, particularly in the Senate. The structural roadblocks that almost killed this legislation still exist, and it’s time to find a way to end the ability of a near super-minority (no one ever thinks about it that way, do they) to obstruct legislation for the sake of obstruction.

I would suggest that the place to begin is with confirmations of judges and executive appointees. “Advise and Consent” has degenerated into Hold and Pontificate ad infinitum. As someone who helped organize the anti-Bolton campaign, I used to loooooove the filibuster — it kept Bolton from ever getting confirmed. But I think the reality is that a President should have the right to name his/her people to office — even if those people have manifestly different world views.

R.I.P. Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton, one of the world’s great — and perhaps least known — pop songwriters died today, at age 59. I love almost all his songs — from when he was with the Boxtops, when he was leading Big Star, and when he was solo. But my favorite, well, that’s a no-brainer.

When my daughter Kate was born last September, this December boy sang “September Gurls” to her — well, not the whole song, but enough to make Molly smile. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet song that, as Paul Westerberg once sang, should have had “children by the million listen[ing] to Alex Chilton.” Why that never happened is one of the great mysteries of rock-n-roll.

Why the Coffee Party is a Dumb Idea

Just posted over at Care2 on my unhappiness with the effort to create a “Coffee Party” movement:

Progressives don’t need a Coffee Party. We just need more caffeine.

The challenge right now isn’t a lack of mobilization mechanisms — after all, other groups, including MoveOn, Organizing for America, and a little thing called the Democratic Party already exist. The real problem is that we progressives are apathetic, scared and demoralized. We look at the energy generated by the right and wonder what happened to our mojo. We see the Republican Party’s steadfast opposition to all Administration initiatives and moan about how dysfunctional our political system is.

Please. It’s time for progressives to get angry, not cute.

You can read the whole thing here.

Dillweed$ of the Day: Barron’s Magazine (and Its Readers)

So I’m reading an op-ed (on health care reform) from yesterday’s WSJ, and I notice a link to a story entitled “Ten Best Places for Second Homes.” Now we don’t own a first home, so it’s not like I’m in the market for a bungalow in Tahiti. But I was still curious — maybe there’s some little town in Florida where you can get a beachfront home for $200,000.

I should have known better. The story originally appeared in Barrons’s the arm of the Murdoch empire designed to make the Wall Street Journal look like a communist rag. It wasn’t a story about bargains; it was an hommage to status and excess. Permit me to share with you just what they think we are looking for in a second home:

There’s nothing like a stabilized economy and a huge rebound in stocks to send folks looking for the perfect manse. The return of hefty Wall Street bonuses hasn’t hurt, either. With all that in mind, and with summer just around the corner, Barron’s sized up the market for upscale second homes, one of the greatest luxuries of all. We scoped out dozens of deluxe enclaves across the country, speaking with brokers, homeowners and others.

Prices are way down–40% off the peak in some locations. Seemingly at or near bottom, they are starting to attract the first wave of bargain hunters–and not just families in need of R&R. . . .To help you in the hunt, Barron’s has selected the 10 best places in America for second homes. These alluring locales have it all: gorgeous houses, spectacular views, world-class golf, fishing and skiing, fine dining and great shopping. You’ll find the complete range of lifestyles, from peaceful and easy to vigorously social.

And these folks wonder why “average folks” hate them so much? What Dillweeds. Or perhaps I should say Dillweed$ instead.

Sorry Folks, But John Yoo Did Not Throw Liz Cheney under the Bus

A lot of folks in the Twittersphere are pointing to a New York Times story this morning and saying that John Yoo — John Yoo! — has thrown Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe under the bus.

I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s the original quote, along with the NYT’s framing of it (emphasis mine):

John C. Yoo, the former Justice official whose memorandums on torture and presidential power were used to justify some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, said he had not seen the material from Ms. Cheney’s group. But Professor Yoo, who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and is active in the Federalist Society, said the debate about lawyers who once represented detainees at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay serving in the Justice Department was overheated.

“What’s the big whoop?” he asked. “The Constitution makes the president the chief law enforcement officer. We had an election. President Obama has softer policies on terror than his predecessor.” He said, “He can and should put people into office who share his views.” Once the American people know who the policy makers are, he said, “they can decide whether they agree with him or not.”

Right now, everyone is focusing on the first half of Yoo’s comments. But it is, in fact, the last sentence that is most telling. Yoo is saying that DOJ should name names. And that’s the core message of Keep America First’s ad: why is DOJ refusing to name names?

One of the things that made McCarthyism so dangerous — and so corrosive — was the Senator’s constant brandishment of supposed lists and his demand that the government give him the names of the people already supposedly on the list. In essence, he was demanding that the government become complicit in the smear, either by naming names or by insisting that names were not on the list — either way giving McCarthy a win and destroying careers.

Yoo is suggesting that once DOJ names names, then “the American people know who the policy makers are, they can decide whether they agree with” the President.

But people shouldn’t be making up their minds over whether they agree with a policy based on who executes it. They should be making their decision based on the policy itself. The whole KAS argument — and Yoo’s implicit support for it — is predicated on the idea that “wrongheaded” people somehow can’t implement good policy. And since the Obama Administration can’t be hit for the actual policy, they’re going after the people responsible for making it work.

And that’s why the KAS ad is so outrageous What Cheney, Thiessen, Kristol — and yes, John Yoo — are arguing is that you should blame the messenger — and demand that she be fired because you didn’t like a message she delivered before she had her current job. It’s a straw man argument at its worst, because it is designed not only to damage the Administration by association, but to destroy the lives — and livelihoods — of good and decent public servants.

To its credit, the DOJ has refused to respond to the demands. From the same NYT piece:

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said accusations that the administration had been secretive or had dragged its feet in responding to the inquiry were untrue. But Mr. Miller said the department would not participate “in an attempt to drag people’s names through the mud for political purposes.”

In a letter sent to Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, the Justice Department said in February that the lawyers understood that they had to take different positions while working for the United States than they did as private lawyers, and that in any case they would recuse themselves from matters in which they had participated earlier.

That’s the real answer, and all we can do is hope that DOJ will not back down.

Jack Cade, White Courtesy Phone Please

Via Adam Serwer, it turns out that the Cheneyites remain convinced of the justice of their holy cause. This time it’s Hans von Spakovsky, who was one of the Bush-era DOJ officials responsible for hiring attorneys for non-political positions based on their political affiliations:

I certainly don’t think those same lawyers should be in the Justice Department directing policy and making decisions on prosecutions of those same terrorists. That would be like hiring Mob lawyers in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force or hiring someone who volunteered to defend the Klu Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Division. Those lawyers who all come from big firms have a wide choice of who to help on a pro bono basis and their choice of terrorists says a lot about them –- I would not hire them to represent my company either if I were still a corporate in-house counsel, because I would not want my company’s money subsidizing that kind of legal work.

Those lovely sentiments come via Dave Weigel over at the Washington Independent, who sought out von Spakovsky’s views. Von S. also has a lengthy piece in National Review arguing that the DOJ under Holder is radicalizing its civil rights division — and thus is racist. (I wish I was making this up, but I’m not It just goes to show that the current stewards of William F. Buckley’s legacy will not be satisfied until they eliminate all rational thought from this former bastion of thoughtful conservatism.)

I’ve already touched upon the mob lawyer canard in my comments on Marc Thiessen column in today’s WaPo. Now Steve over at Nomoremrniceblog dismantles the equally insipid (and offensive ) Klan lawyer argument:

I can’t find any Klan defenders in Holder’s Justice Department, but I can certainly find Klan defenders whose work I think Holder would approve of.

How about Eleanor Holmes Norton, currently D.C.’s non-voting member of the House of Representatives, who, as a young ACLU lawyer, defended the free-speech rights of Klansmen, George Wallace, and the National States Rights Party?

Or Anthony P. Griffin, who defended a Klan Grand Dragon in the early 1990s and won the 1993 William J. Brennan, Jr., Award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression?

Or David P. Baugh, who defended a Klan cross-burner in 1998 and subsequently received the Virginia State Bar’s Lewis F. Powell Jr. Pro Bono Award?

All three of these lawyers are African-American, by the way.

This is a disgraceful argument. Attempting to secure due process for terrorism defendants, or free speech rights for racist haters, is not the same as waging jihad or fomenting a race war. It’s about maintaining a society with the rule of law.

Methinks the Cheneyites are starting to sound like the mob in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2:

DICK THE BUTCHER: First thing we do, let’s smear all the lawyers. . . .in DOJ.

Okay, that’s not quite what he said, but it’s close enough. And lest we forget, here’s what happens a little later in the same scene — an event that few remember and no one likes to quote:

CADE: Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name? Or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

CLERK: Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

ALL: He hath confessed; away with him! He’s a villain and a traitor.

CADE: Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and ink horn about his neck.

Because that’s what happens after you kill smear all the lawyers: a long slow slide into summary justice and mob rule.

Marc Thiessen: Our Bizzaro World Torture Apologist

Ladies and gentleman, I present you the latest WaPo column by Marc Thiessen, who apparently has decided that his goal in life is to make Liz Cheney look like Mother Theresa:

Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would — and rightly so.

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information.

Get the insinuation? Mob lawyers, as everyone knows, are lawyers hired by the mob to defend their interests. Drug cartel lawyers, as everyone knows, are lawyers hired by drug cartels to defend their interests. So “al Qaeda lawyers” must be. . . .

I know! Paid by al Qaeda! Those bastards! Send them to Guantanamo!

Only one small problem here, Marc. The attorneys in question worked pro bono, frequently at the request of [Bush] Administration officials. And some of the people in question, as I’ve noted elsewhere, were brought in by the Bush Administration in the exact same way that you now object to under the Obama Administration.

One other thing: those lawyers you despise for allegedly selling out their country? They took their cases to the Supreme Court. And in a couple of instances, they won. If we were to use your twisted logic, we should now start calling members of the Supreme Court “al Qaeda justices.” And what about the JAG attorneys who defended terror suspects in front of the military tribunals? Are they now al Qaeda judge advocates?

Here’s another Thiessen counter-factual:

Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. . . .The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America’s terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Sigh.

First of all, the critics of Yoo et. al. demanded both transparency and heads. Second, this isn’t a tit for tat situation. You are alleging that the lawyers in question did something you didn’t like — but was perfectly legal — when they were in private practice. Those criticizing (and yes, demanding the resignation/censure of) Yoo and friends were saying that they engaged in illegal behavior. Those are not the same thing — and you know better. This is the worst kind of straw man argument — one that uses a straw man to mount an ad hominem attack.

Would someone please again tell me why the Washington Post hired this guy?

Does Liz Cheney Hate America? Or Does She Just Love Dillweeds?

Does Liz Cheney hate America? Of course not. But if I were to use the tactics that she and her friends over at Keeping American Scared Safe are using to attack the Obama Administration, that’s just the kind of thing I’d be saying right now. That, of course would be an ad hominem attack. And as Liz Cheney knows well, ad hominem attacks are out of bounds in American politics.

Heh. If you believe she believes that, I have a used prison in Cuba I’d like to sell you.

As it happens, the folks over at Care2 asked me for my thoughts on Liz Cheney’s campaign to subvert America accuse Obama Administration DOJ officials (who KAS likes to call the al Qaeda 7 or the Guantanamo 9) of being soft on terrorism because they have, at some point in their career, defending terrorist suspects. Here’s an excerpt:

The Bush Administration also hired individuals who defended alleged terror suspects. . . .And that little inconvenient truth gets to the crux of the matter: defending the accused is is not some sort of lefty plot destroy America. Oh no. It’s far worse: it is a fundamental tenet of the American legal system originally expressed by the Founders in a little something we like to call the Bill of Rights.

Al Qaeda 7? Guantanamo 9? I’d like to suggest a more accurate name: the Sixth Amendment 9. Or if you want to include the three individuals from the Bush Administration, let’s call them the Sixth Amendment 12. Or we could take it even further and include every lawyer who has ever defended someone unsavory. But then we’d have to call it the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association.

You can find the whole thing here.

While I’m at it, I hope that I won’t be accused of engaging in McCarthyism when I suggest that Liz Cheney and her friends at Keeping America Scared (and no I”m not going to link to them — go Google it yourself) are worthy of today’s Dillweed of the Day honors. Because frankly, I can’t actually prove that she is a dillweed. In fact, I have no evidence that she has ever eaten, grown, or in any way been associated with dillweed. But it is quite possible that in the past, she knew somebody who has eaten, grown, or hugged dillweed. So we can’t necessarily rule it out. And that, of course, means that we will continue to suspect her until we find out the troot, the whole troot, and nothing but the troot.

So I urge you. Call Liz Cheney today. Ask her why she won’t tell us whether she’s been associated in the past with dillweed. What does she have to hide?

The Mother of All Newspaper Corrections

I imagine that the New York Times definitely is going to regret this error. Take a look at the caption on the photo below, from a screenshot of the Times’ home page earlier today (h/t):

I’m not sure who those lovely young women are, but I’m pretty sure they’re not Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michelle Bachelet.

Screw the Banks and Grow a Pair

I don’t know much about the proposed U.S. Consumer Protection Agency (other than I’m in favor of it), but this is a laugh-out-loud funny argument in its favor:

Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

Care2palooza: Jacques Rogge and Ronald Reagan

I have a couple of new posts over at Care2, my other blog home, and I’ve been negligent in linking to them. The first looks at Jacques Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, and wonders whether they’ll ever actually let the Olympics celebrate the human spirit in a way that doesn’t involve the detention, death, or denegration of humans:

The reality is that Rogge and his colleagues have absolutely no incentive to change things. They are making ridiculous amounts of money. They get treated like kings and queens everywhere they go. And everytime an athlete does something spectacular, most people forget about the bad stuff. As Jenkins notes, the Olympics are virtually indestructible. That’s good news in terms of the amazing spectacle they offer viewers. But let’s stop pretending that they are some sort of celebration of the human spirit. . . . When it comes to the utter mendacity competition, you’ve got to give the gold medal to Rogge and his colleagues on the IOC.

The second looks at a bill introduced yesterday by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) proposing to replace Ulysses S. Grant on the fifty-dollar bill with Ronald Reagan. . .because he did better in a poll of Presidential historians.

Grant isn’t on the money because of his service as President. By all accounts he was a lousy President — although he’s no longer regarded as one of the worst. But he was kinda sorta maybe really responsible for leading the Union forces to victory in the Civil War. So using a poll of historians on who was the best President as the basis for excluding Grant pretty much misses the reason why he was honored in the first place.

You can read them both here, along with a more thorough takedown of Marc Thiessen, Dick Cheney’s favorite torture apologist.

Surprise: Washington Post Mangles Story on Religion and Foreign Policy

I’ve been meaning to get to a report in Wednesday’s Washington Post headlined “‘God gap’ impedes U.S. foreign policy, experts say.” The story, by Post reporter David Waters, well… let me just quote it rather than try to explain it:

American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and “uncompromising Western secularism” that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

When I read this, I was surprised — The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is a well-regarded and -respected organization, and its reports have made valuable contributions to the debate on the scope and direction of U.S. foreign policy. How in the world could they be associated with a report that suggest that religion should be a core tenet of our foreign policy?

Then I went to their website and read the report. The first thing I discovered was that the phrase “God gap” doesn’t appear anywhere in either the executive summary or the full report. The second thing I discovered is that “narrow” is used in the report, but not exactly in the way Waters suggests:

The United States should avoid actions that use or appear to use religion instrumentally, i.e., the United States should not try or be widely perceived as trying to manipulate religion in pursuit of narrowly drawn interests.

and…

The greater visibility of religion and religious actors in international politics has greatly complicated America’s approach to world affairs. A narrow view of religion in the context of terrorism and counterter- rorism strategy will no longer suffice. Instead, religion must be seen as a more profound and encompassing social reality—one that shapes and is shaped by other major transnational phenomena, including violent conflict and war, globalization, and democratization.

What about “ill-informed”? Nope. Nowhere to be found.

And “uncompromising Western secularism”? Yes, that does appear, but I think it’s not exactly what Waters infers:

The United States should build, cultivate, and rely upon networks and partnerships, which will vary in scope and size, with religious communities. . . . Such a strategy will enable the United States to avail itself of opportunities and facilitate the constructive role that religious organizations and leaders play in the world. It also recognizes that the United States cannot reduce the appeal of destructive religious forces by promoting an uncompromising Western secularism. Such a position can have the unintended effect of feeding extremism by further threatening traditional sources of personal, cultural, and religious identity. Instead, engaging religious communities can cre- ate an atmosphere that marginalizes extremists.

So if I understand the report correctly, promoting an “uncompromising Western secularism” could feed extremism. That, of course, may be true, but it’s also true that much of the world could regard past actions by the United States — particularly during the Bush Administration — as having promoted an uncompromising Christian world view. So Waters manages to state a key point — and yet mangle it at the same time.

Then there’s this graph from Waters’s story, which is even more alarming:

The council’s 32-member task force, which included former government officials and scholars representing all major faiths, delivered its report to the White House on Tuesday. The report warns of a serious “capabilities gap” and recommends that President Obama make religion “an integral part of our foreign policy.”

Here’s what the report actually says:

President Obama’s speech in Cairo in June 2009 set the stage for a new departure in U.S. foreign policy toward Muslim communities. This is a vital task and a laudable beginning. However, the scope must be much broader. Engaging Islam is only one very crucial component of a larger challenge—engaging the multitude of religious communities across the world as an integral part of our foreign policy.

Uh, okay. Call me crazy, but I think there is an enormous difference between making “religion” an “integral part of our foreign policy” and making “engaging the multitude of religious communities” an “integral part of foreign policy.” There is a kinda sorta pretty much completely obvious distinction there. But Waters doesn’t seem to notice it.

In seeking a response to the report Waters quotes Chris Seiple, the President of the Institute for Global Engagement:

“It’s a hot topic,” said Chris Seiple, president of the Institute for Global Engagement in Arlington County and a Council on Foreign Relations member. “It’s the elephant in the room. You’re taught not to talk about religion and politics, but the bummer is that it’s at the nexus of national security. The truth is the academy has been run by secular fundamentalists for a long time, people who believe religion is not a legitimate component of realpolitik.”

I don’t know Chris Seiple, so I won’t make any assumptions here. But I do know his dad, Robert Seiple, who was the first U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom in the Clinton Administration. It’s a little odd, don’t you think, that his son would think that religion isn’t part of U.S. foreign policy when his dad’s former job was to make sure that the U.S. addressed religious freedom issues as part of its foreign policy. Even more troubling is the fact that Waters doesn’t appear to have even thought about using the Googles to make the connection.

Maybe Waters read the report. But it sure doesn’t look like it. And as a result, a serious effort to address the question of how U.S. foreign policy should address the challenge of engaging religious communities becomes, in Waters’ story, an “ill-informed” screed calling for an end of separation of church and state in U.S. foreign policy.

To put it another way, the report attempts to put forward a nuanced argument in favor of broader U.S. engagement with religious groups around the world, and approvingly cites President Obama’s speech in Cairo as an important first step. And it’s not exactly news that engagement with religious communities is a component of U.S. foreign policy. Last I checked, we had diplomatic relations with the Vatican, the President regularly receives religious leaders — most recently the Dalai Lama — at the White House, and the State Department issues an annual report on religious freedom around the world.

Waters’ story, in contrast, adopts a sensationalistic tone that breathlessly implies that the report thinks Obama should to name God to be his next Secretary of State.

In fairness, Waters isn’t the only one who didn’t read the report. Bloggers from across the political spectrum seized on his story, using it to reinforce their own arguments. They might want to sit down and read the 100-page report, or at least the executive summary. As I’ve said, I don’t agree with many of the report’s conclusions. But I do think that it deserves a better fate than the Waters’ inept pastiche.

This is exactly the kind of shoddy journalism that the Washington Post used to abhor. Shame on them for allowing such a terrible piece of reporting to grace their pages.

Image: josephpetepickle via Flikr, using a CC BY 2.0 license

Dillweed of the Day: Mitch McConnell, Official Timekeeper

I’m following the health care reform summit on Twitter today, but I wanted to take a moment to dishonor Mitch McConnell for a level of immaturity that demonstrates just how impossible this discussion has become.

He just complained that Democrats had had more speaking time than Republicans. Like this was a football game and he’s worried about time of possession.

I kid you not.

If you go to McConnell’s website, he’s got a big headline saying “Americans want us to listen on health care.” Apparently they also want McConnell to be the official timepiece of the health care summit.

If McConnell had been at the Korean War Armistice talks, they never would have agreed on the size and shape of the table because they would have been too worried about how much time each side got to talk.

What a dillweed.

Don’t forget — if you have nominee for dillweed of the day, put it in the comments below or email me at cbrown at undiplomatic dot net.

Dillweeds of the Day: Insensitive Russian Ice Dancing Faux Aborigines

Meet Maxim Shabalin and Oksana Domnina, the Russian ice dancers who thought it would be cool to pretend they were aborigines or something.

Look! Body paint! Loin cloths! Leaves for crying out loud! What a huge heaping load of ignorant insensitive awesome sauce! I mean I can’t understand why Canada’s First Nations and Australia’s Aboriginal people could be so upset. I mean it’s only art, right?

Right?

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip called Sunday’s dance by Shabalin and Domnina “deeply offensive,” not just for its fake tribal drum music and costumes, but also the feigned violence toward female dancer Domnina.

Shabalin appears to grab Domnina by her ponytailed hair at one point in the dance.

“I’ve dedicated my entire life to speaking out against violence against women,” said Phillip, chair of the Okanagan Nation Alliance.

“This unfortunate dance (pair) has disrespectfully exploited indigenous culture in previous performances, but I’m absolutely disappointed they appear to have breached an agreement not to do so again.”

Sigh.

See, this isn’t the first time they’ve performed this dance. They also did it earlier this season at the European Championships. And believe it or not, the costumes and makeup were even worse.

I’m all for artistic expression, but this has gotta be somewhere south of that, perhaps in the realm of ugly and offensive. I don’t know which is worse — that they thought it would be okay to do this or that the Olympic judges gave them enough points to win the bronze medal.

They may have only won bronze in Vancouver, but I can assure you that the win today’s Gold Dillweed.

I Love the Working Class. It’s Workers I Can’t Stand

My newest post on Care2 is up — it’s all about the disconnect between progressives, who say they want the best for working people, and actual real honest-to-goodness working people.

The post was prompted by an earlier piece I did reporting on Keith’s Toyota experience. I observed in passing that the Toyota recalls were going to hurt the U.S. economy, as many of Toyota’s American plants have closed while the company sorts out its response. Although the plants will reopen soon, the reality is that thousands of Americans are suddenly without jobs.

The response I got was surprising. To paraphrase, many readers said “Well what do you expect? American workers are lazy good-for-nothings who produce lousy goods.” Here are some representative examples of their comments:

[T]oyota never had problems until they started making them IN THIS COUNTRY,funny thing about that huh?

Toyotas have never been cars that I cared for, as they appear to be poorly designed and built. But having them built by Americans? That cracks me up! The 2nd worst car designers having their cars built by the worst car builders in the world!

I love my country and all that, but I am often dismayed and chagrined at the lack of pride American workers have in their jobs. . . .I am willing to pay a bit more for American goods, but consider it unacceptable to have to pay more for inferior goods. Wherever we go, I see Americans who do not seem grateful for their jobs - lots of grousing, clock-watching, distraction, attitudes that detract from efficiency.

Boy, talk about condescension. No wonder progressives can’t understand why average Americans think progressives are out of touch. It reminds me of the old Peanuts cartoon where Linus says he wants to be a doctor:

Needless to say, I don’t share such sentiments. You can read my full response here.

Dillweed of the Day: Marc Thiessen

In case you don’t know who Marc Thiessen is, let me tell you the names of his three most recent bosses prior to 2009:

George W. Bush (speehwriter)

Donald Rumsfeld (speechwriter)

Jesse Helms (spokesman and speechwriter)

Not to play guilt by association here, but it takes a special kind of person to work for these three.

I’ve first met Thiessen since the 1998 World Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, when Helms sent him to Rome to try to sabotage the negotiations that later led to the ICC. We had more than a few beers together, but we also butted heads repeatedly, given that I was the delegation spokesperson. And it was clear that he enjoyed provoking a media storm more than sticking to the facts.

These days, Thiessen has emerged as the right’s apologist-in-chief on torture, becoming so vocal on the issue that he’s made Dick Cheney look like a dove. In fact, Cheney even wrote a blurb for Thiessen’s new book, Courting Disaster:

Marc Thiessen knows, in ways that few others do, just how effective, heroic, and morally justified were the interrogators who kept this nation safe after 9/11. If you want to know what really happened at the CIA interrogation site or Guantanamo Bay, you simply must read this book.

Now I want to confess that I have not urshed out to read Thiessen’s book. The thing is, that Thiessen has become so omnipresent in the media that I don’t really need to read a book-length exposition of the theses he’s peddling in print and on TV. Most recently, he’s gone after Obama for the use of drones to attack and kill members of al Qaeda and the Taliban:

Today, the Obama administration is no longer attempting to capture men like these alive; it is simply killing them. This may be satisfying, but it comes at a price. With every drone strike that vaporizes a senior al Qaeda leader, actionable intelligence is vaporized along with him. Dead terrorists can’t tell you their plans to strike America.

That’s true, but I would note that dead terrorists also can’t attack America. They are, after all, dead. As Matt Yglesias put it, Thiessen apparently believes that it is better to let four terrorists go free if that means you can torture the fifth.

But that’s not surprising coming from someone who is unwilling to acknowledge that the Bush Administration used torture techniques once used by the Khmer Rouge.

Ron Paul is Not a Dillweed…

at least for today.

I’m not a fan of Paul, but I love the fact that he walked into CPAC today and told the audience — the same folks who cheered Marco Rubio, Dick Cheney, and Ann Coulter (and the same folks who overwhelmingly supported him in the straw poll) — that they — and everyone who had preceded him — were completely wrong on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I didn’t agree with anything he said, and this theories on economics and foreign policy are flat out crazy. But going into red meat central and announcing you’re a vegan took some serious huevos.

If It’s Sunday, It Must Be…

…Keith Porter.

Our good friend and Undip contributor has started a new blog, “If It’s Sunday.” It’s all about NBC’s Meet the Press. Think of it as the Weather Channel for Sunday morning news show junkies.

Check it out here. I’ve added it to the blogroll to your right as well.

Dillweed of the Day: Marco Rubio Equates Waterboarding with a Kids’ Game

If you haven’t yet heard of Marco Rubio, you may soon. He’s a 38-year-old Cuban-American from Miami who is challenging former Florida Governor Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Rubio is a rising star in the conservative movement, and is widely regarded as having come from nowhere to offer a serious challenge to Crist. Hard right conservatives love him for his passion, his wit, and his hatred of all things reasonable moderate sane “socialist.”

Yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference here in Gomorrah Washington (a brief aside: if conservatives hate DC so much, why do they hold all their big meetings here?), Rubio, in the words of one journalist, “wowed” the crowd, acting as if he already had secured the nomination.

What caught my eye (h/t) were two excerpts from his speech (transcript here):

[Crowd chants "Marco! Marco! Marco!"]

RUBIO: That cheer — I don’t know what that one was, but that Marco cheer always worries me because I’m always afraid that someone is going to starting screaming, “polo,” and would ruin the speech.

[audience laughter]

RUBIO: . . .Now, Americans are also looking for clear alternatives on the issues of national defense. As I said earlier, there is no greater risk to this country than the risk posed by radical Islamic terrorists. Let me be clear about something. These terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

We will punish — we will punish their allies, like Iran — and we will stand with our allies, like Israel. We will target and we will destroy terrorist cells and the leaders of those cells. The ones that survive, we will capture them.

AUDIENCE: Waterboard them!

RUBIO: We will get important — remember the Marco Polo thing I told you? [audience laughter and cheers.] We will capture them, we will get useful information from them and then we will bring them to justice, in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo — as I said, in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo, not a civilian courtroom in Manhattan.

Ohhhh I get it Marco — it’s not waterboarding, it’s Marco Polo! A game! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Such a kidder, that Marco. Did uncle Dick give you a big bear hug for that one?

Such a kidder. Wonder how long before Rubio becomes the new Scott Brown? I mean he’s young, good looking, “outspoken,” and, oh yeah, new. Will we even have to wait until November before the Presidential whispers start? All he needs now is a pickup truck. Because he certainly has the whole ignoring the constitution thing down pat.

Dillweed of the Day: Scott Brown, Anti-Tax Patriot

Hey boys and girls, it’s time for the return of a popular feature here on Undip, the Dillweed of the Day, where we dishonor men and women for their utterly stupid, fatuous, or awful actions/behavior/comments.

Today, we begin with a doozy: Senator Scott Brown, who had this to say to Fox News’s Neil Cavuto in response to the guy who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas (h/t):

Brown: “It’s certainly tragic, and I feel for the families, obviously, that are being affected by it. And I don’t know if it’s related, but I can just sense, not only in my election but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated. They want transparency. They want their elected officials to be accountable and open and, you know, talk about the things that are affecting their daily lives. So, I’m not sure if there’s a connection. I certainly hope not. But we need to do things better.”

Cavuto: “Invariably, people are going to look at this type of incident, Senator, and say, well, that’s where some of this populist rage gets you. Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

Brown: “Yes, of course it’s extreme. You don’t know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues. Certainly, no one likes paying taxes, obviously. But the way we’re trying to deal with things, and have been in the past, at least until I got here, is there’s such a logjam in Washington, and people want us to do better. They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way.”

Because in Scott Brown’s world, this is the appropriate response to being unhappy about taxes:

And to think some folks want this guy to run for President.

Olympics: Jingoism We Can Believe In

Heh:

I haven’t been able to watch Colbert since he landed in Vancouver, but I gotta wonder whether he’s keeping an eye out for those evil, evil Canadian bears.

And while I’m on the subject of the Olympics, would people please stop whining about how the Canadians are not running a perfect games? I mean which would you want — a Zamboni Olympic ice resurfacer breaking down or the detention of anyone who dares to show up to a free speech zone? The difference between Vancouver and Beijing is that the Government of Canada allows its mistakes to be aired in public while the ChiComs do everything they can to hide them.

Call me a spoilsport, but I’d rather watch a faulty torch lighting ceremony than North Korean-style human puppet shows any day of the week.

President Palin?

My latest post, in which I talk about the reasons a Palin presidency is not completely implausible, is up at Care2. An excerpt:

Palin is an outsider’s outsider, far more so than any other Presidential candidate in recent memory. When folks in rural Indiana see that she’s a former beauty queen who went to five colleges and married a blue-collar snow machine racer, they see one of their own. It’s no coincidence that she was a guest of honor at last weekend’s Daytona 500:

The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor sped around Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, shaking hands and taking photos with drivers and fans alike before what she called the “all-Americana event.” . . . “This is awesome,” she said. “It’s all-Americana event. Good, patriotic, wonderful event that’s bringing a whole lot of people together. I think this is good for our country.” . . .

“Whether it’s racing cars, dogs, snow machines, it’s an event like this that brings all Americans together,” she said. . . .”We’ve got our snow-machine races up [in Alaska]. This is, of course, on a much greater scale,” she said. “Same type of sport, though, same type of risk-taking, speed-loving all-American event that we participate up north. We love it. You bet.”

Look at that story one more time. She mentions how American stock car racing is on three separate occasions. Think that NASCAR fans won’t read that code? Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” are merely the latest iteration of Nixon’s “silent majority.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Photo: geerlingguy via Flickr, using a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Be Afraid. Vewy Afraid.

I missed this when it came out last week. My friends over at Human Rights First respond to Liz Cheney’s “Keep America Safe” group’s love for fearmongering:

It continues to amaze me that a radical sect within the Republican party insists that we no longer can afford to live by our own laws. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Final SOTU thoughts

Obama never said “the state of our union is strong.” That took tremendous guts — because it’s the truth.

All in all a very strong speech. But the closing line — “I don’t quit” — was not the best reframing of his views.

What did you think?

SOTU IX

Obama calls for a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. About time. And Robert Gates stood and applauded. That gives me hope that maybe — just maybe — Senate Republicans won’t try to kill it.

Nah.

SOTU VII

National security/foreign policy time.

First focus is on combating terrorism, prohibiting torture, building alliances. Reiterates Afghanistan policy. Shot of Joint Chiefs not applauding. Most Americans won’t realize they, like SCOTUS, don’t applaud.

Pledges to get all combat troops out of Iraq “by the end of this office.” Does that mean 2008 or 2012? Have to say that his comments on Iraq are true, but it certainly is different from what Americans are seeing and reading about Iraq right now.

Tepid response to arms control measures.

His human rights language wasn’t anything new. Striking that some Republicans refused to stand and applaud Obama’s call to stand by human freedom and dignity. Are they able to be gracious about anything?

All in all, his foreign policy section was less rousing, less rhetorical, and thus less compelling. He really didn’t break any new ground.

SOTU VII

Loved the line about everyone in Washington thinks that “every day is election day” My wife just loved that. Hope that MSM grabs it, but I doubt it.

And now he’s calling out his own party for failing to solve problems. And calls out Republicans for relying on super-majority.

Both of those statements took pretty big huevos.

SOTU VI

I’m not really an expert on health care reform, so I’ll take a pass on talking about it. But it is striking that Obama has learned strategic communications/framing 101: don’t repeat your opponents’ arguments. Obama focused on what needs to be done, not what the arguments are against the current plan. Very smart. And very difficult for Republicans to counter.

He did it again in the section on the deficit.

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