(Amen! – promoted by JulieWaters)

Since the Republicans largely boycotted a scheduled event at Morehouse College, there has been some discussion floating around about how the “Party of Lincoln” has “turned its back” on black voters. Schwarzenegger gave a speech to that effect to Republicans in California a week or so ago.

I am here to tell you – it ain't so. The Republicans have leaned heavily on blacks and other minorities because they have based their agenda on the votes of the white backlash ever since the days of the civil rights movement to create the party that they are today. It was the evil genius of George Wallace that took the southern racist reaction to civil rights campaigns and draped it in the white sheets of states' rights, “drown-it-in-the-bathtub” small government, anti-gun control, white evangelical christianism, using racism as the subtext. Wallace's approach was adopted by Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention. Black delegates were systematically harassed and expelled. Jackie Robinson, a lifelong Republican, said that at that convention, he could understand what it must have been like in Nazi Germany.

You can connect the underlying racist dots from there to Nixon's southern strategy in 1968, Reagan “democrats”, the war on drugs (crack gets more punishment than coke), welfare reform (“welfare Cadillac”), and the Willie Horton ad, and the transformation of the word “liberal” into an epithet (Wallace did that.) With changes in generations and demographics, the approach is now being extended to cover the new “others of color” – (Arab) Muslims and (Latino) immigrants.

Republicans have put racists into high judicial position to reinforce these views, including Chief Justice Rehnquist, who was a Goldwater protégé and supporter of his 1964 campaign, and wrote numerous opinions arguing against racial justice, school integration, voting rights, and later worked for Attorney General John Mitchell of Watergate fame.

Chief Justice Roberts was Rehnquist's law clerk. While less overtly racist than his predecessor, Roberts has continued to interpret laws that buttress the white sheet that covers so many Republican policies, generally limiting the reach of Federal power, except when that reach undermines civil liberties that can protect the rights of individuals. It is easy to forget that before the Civil Rights Act and Voting Act, state law was flagrantly used to attack and suppress the civil rights movement. In today's environment, Martin Luther King would probably be in Guantanamo instead of Parchman, and the Constitutional rights that eventually led to Federal intervention to integrate the nation would have been waved aside under charges of terrorism and insurrection. Bull Connor and the southern sheriffs would have supported KKK policies even more freely in Selma, Birmingham, and Oxford, protected by a Supreme Court and Justice Department that defends state's rights against human rights.

So let's not pretend that the Republicans are the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt; those days have been gone since 1964. But they do embrace the objects of their enmity, because they need them to scare the white folks. Without black and brown folks, most of their agenda is empty.

I have been in a discussion with an educated and articuLte  friend who does not believe that global warming exists.  He gave me some stuff to read, and this ofrced me to think the issue through.  Most of these thoughts would have applied before I read the material, by the way.  Since I am not a climate scientist or even an earth scientist, you can read my thoughts as coming from a reasonably informed layman, and certainly not a specialist.

• I totally agree that climate models are highly unreliable and primitive. I understand the GIGO principle, and I have a lot of faith in the ability of combinations of technical innovations and economic incentives to alter predicted outcomes, as evidenced all the way from Malthus to the Club of Rome.
• The evidence against climate change is equally weak however, and the advocates like Richard Lindzen (MIT) of that position strike me as more than somewhat panglossian.  I see two general approaches from the deniers:  One is to measure actual climate change, and finding no relationship or an inverse relationship based on a simple regression between average temperature and time, conclude that there is nothing to global warming. This “modeling” approach is even weaker than the climate models that are being criticized.  I put them in the same category as arguments that there is no scientific proof that smoking is linked to cancer.   The second approach is to conclude that since global average temperatures are within historical extremes, that any warming trend that may exist is normal and we should just get over it.

My big problem with all this is that I do not believe that diagnostics that simply rely on looking at average temperatures is revealing.  The earth’s climate is the result of highly complex interactions of multiple forces ranging from sunlight reflected from ice on the poles, to the actions of ocean currents, forest coverage, passing events like volcanic ash, and yes, human action including the atmospheric impacts of industrialization.  The climate models have probably not captured the first order effects of all these factors, much less the second or third order ones.  But I have studied system dynamics enough to understand that any dynamic inter-related system that is subject to hysteresis and variable time lags is vulnerable to wild gyrations when the system is disturbed, although those gyrations may come slowly  and build from apparently small causes.

As an economist, I generally look for changes in systems at their margins, not at their average, just as a pool of water dries up from the surface and retreats from its banks, not from its depths.  I also am a fan of catastrophe theory (see Rene Thom), which suggests that systems can exhibit smooth predictable change until a threshold is passed, and then exhibit a sudden and non-linear change of structure.  I also am enough of a statistician to understand the difference between Type I and Type II errors and enough of an economist to attribute costs to each, especially when the costs of reversing an error are very high.

So put all that together, and I see evidence at the margins that something is happening to the climate – at the margins, some cities and coastlines are being drowned, storms of surprising strength seem to be showing an increase, ice is certainly melting at the poles and glaciers are shrinking, polar bears are drowning and weather patterns are appearing outside the norms.  Add to that Chinese pollution, the loss of Amazon rain forests, and disturbances in the cycle of rainy and dry seasons in Africa, and the causes for concern start to rise.

Is all that evidence of global warming?  Not conclusively, but then I start thinking about Type I and Type II error – if there is no global warming but we act to prevent it, there may be some detriment to economic growth, although I suspect that the net effect of that impact would actually be positive as carbon trading will probably create innovation, jobs and growth in response to the price incentives that are the justification for such trading systems.  (And just because Enron wanted to make a business of emissions trading doesn’t make it a bad thing.  Their problems were not due to that.  There is an active market in emissions trading in Los Angeles and also in the EU.)  But if there is global warming and we do nothing, the result will be quite unpredictable, although those impacts will fall more on our children and grand children. I certainly do not want my descendants cursing their forebears for doing nothing when they still had the chance.

And to argue that global warming is unambiguously beneficial because it will increase farming yields strikes me as the worst sort of chicanery.  To look at simple averages does not reveal the full potential for local dislocations that are impossible to model, but are likely to be very significant – storms, flooding, droughts, forest fires, desertification, population movements and associated wars for resources – these things have happened in the past, and they were often a result of local climate changes.  It is the apparently anomalous local changes at the margin that eventually reveal themselves in changes of averages.  It took decades for the computer revolution to start showing up in US productivity numbers.  But that doesn’t mean that the computer revolution wasn’t happening.

So now we have massive infrastructure failure at both ends of the Mississippi River.  I guess this is the moment when the conservative goal of dragging off the government and drowning it has been most successful.  The trouble is that both this tragedy and Hurricane Katrina demonstrate that government is not “them”- it is “us.”  And we are the ones being literally drowned.  And before we are all overwhelmed by red herring press discussions of gussets versus welded construction on bridges, let's remember this -road and bridge maintenance is about funding, and we all know where the funds are going.

Bush stood up in a news conference and spoke relaxedly about the sub-prime mortgage disaster rippling through world markets.  He said that the market would correct naturally and that we should all be happy that the economy is in such good shape, and that tax-and-spend Democrats would raise our taxes, undermine the entrepreneurial spirit and alter the spending habits of Americans who know better how to spend their money than does the government.

But infrastructure is not created by entrepreneurs and private investors.  Infrastructure is more than simply a large capital investment like a telephone company or an electrical generator.  Infrastructure generates social benefits that are beyond the financial returns to an investor.  And infrastructure has what economists call “positive network effects.”  In other words, the more of it there is, the more valuable it becomes.  An entrepreneur can build a toll road between two or three points, but unless it connects to all the other roads, it is of minimal value (“Bridge to Nowhere”).  No entrepreneur would build the interstate highway system.  And none would maintain it.

Government is the institution that societies create to handle things that we must do in common, and that will not be done well or at all by individuals acting in their own self-interest, no matter how enlightened.  And there are a lot of those.

Got this history from David Bromwich post at Huffington Post

“The federal judiciary is thickly planted now with judges who can be relied on for opinions that cooperate with the claims of arbitrary power. A staff lawyer for Kenneth Starr from 1995 through mid-1997, John D. Bates was appointed to the U.S. District Court by President G.W. Bush in December 2001. In December 2002, he dismissed the GAO lawsuit in Walker v. Cheney, which had sought information about the vice president's secret dealings on energy policy. The warrant for dismissal, in that case, turned on a failure to demonstrate “injury.” Of course, oversight agencies perform their work in order to discover injuries; they can hardly name in advance and with perfect precision the injuries they seek to discover. But such are the arguments by which a political judge may give his decisions an appearance of standing above politics. In February 2006, after the resignation from the FISA court of James Robertson — an unusual act of protest against the circumvention of FISA by unauthorized government wiretaps — Judge Bates was picked by the new Chief Justice, John Roberts, to sit as the newest judge on the FISA court.”

In a sense, all the votes that have recently been taken in the Senate on the Iraq war have been test votes about impeachment of Bush.  The most important fact to remember is that while the House can impeach, it is the Senate that convicts, and it takes a 2/3 majority vote to do so.  The votes on cloture of debate on Iraq funding, requiriing 60 votes to pass, were not even close.  IMHO, the main reason the Republicans are still supporting Bush despite his obvious destructive impact on their election prospects, is to not send a signal to the Dems that impeachment might succeed.

So what is to be done?  We have to elect a hell of a lot more Dems to the Senate in 2008, not to impeach Bush-Cheney, because that will be too late, but to allow for impeachment of some of those nut-case judges that he has appointed.  The long shadow of the Bush regime will linger in the federal judiciary, and  they need to be cleaned out if the country is to be saved from the kind of fate that the decisions of idealogical judges played in the Weimar Republic.

So the military judges in Guantanamo have thrown out the charges against two of hte detainees (one of whom was taken into custody when he was 15) on the grounds that the Military Tribunal Act only gives the court jurisdiction over “unlawful enemy combatants” and the military findings that led to these cases had found that the two were “enemy combatants”.

So if they are not unlawful enemy combatants, what are they? Either they are lawful enemy combatants, i.e. prisoners of war, entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Convention, or they are criminals and entitled to due process in a civilian court.

But in the Kafkaesque world of the Bushies, they will instead be returned to their never-neverland of Gitmo, and it looks like the military will repeat the earlier process, this time getting the right answer.

Be afraid for your own rights!

I was a draftee during the Vietnam era and a strong supporter of VVAW and the Winter Soldier Organization when I came back (from Korea, as luck would have it) and I never thought I would get to this position, but I am starting to think we should reinstate the draft.  I HATED the time I served, and used to say that the only reason I might re-enlist was to keep my hatred of the US Army from becoming stale.

Here’s why: 
1. A standing professional army is a temptation to use it.  Advancement in peacetime is slow and hard; you need a war every now and then to get promoted.
2. Professional soldiers want to try out all those toys, and I suspect you could track the incidence of war against the depreciation rates of weapons systems and find a close correlation.
3. The defense companies need a periodic war to use up old stuff and manufacture new  stuff, so there is a ready made industrial policy constituency that favors war.  Plus, a lot of retired colonels and generals work for those companies.
4.  As Michael Moore showed us in Fahrenheit 9/11, the recruiters lie to and mislead the poor kids who enlist, and they wind up as cannon fodder.Professional armies breed dishonest recruitment.
5.  Professional armies breed an “us” and “them” mentality that was well-ilustrated by Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men.”  A professional military becomes an exclusive group with its own culture, separated from the general population.

So I would cut back to a small core professional military, capable of maintaining readiness, quick response and training of recruits when called upon.  Saves a lot of money, too.

Now the case for the draft.

1.  A citizen army is a powerful check on the eagerness of government to initiate wars. I doubt that Iraq would have happened if GWB had to call on average American families to sacrifice their sons and daughters for a lie.
2.  A citizen army pretty much ensures that a war must be supported by the people.  The Vietnam War was ended by the people turning against it, and resistance began as an anti-draft movement.
3.  A citizen army is democratic.  In the barracks I mingled with people from all over the country, all races, creeds and religions,and all economic classes. We were all equal before the base barber and I learned a lot about diversity, tolerance and understanding.
4.  Student deferments kept a lot of kids in school, and even though there were class and racial discrimination involved in that process, the overall impact on America was probably positive.

So there you are…

Karen Hughes is Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. According to the Washington Post, ” In plain English, her job is to fight anti-Americanism, promote American culture…”

So how’s that going for you, Karen? According to today’s Washington Post…

“LONDON, Jan. 23 — Global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years, according to a BBC poll released on the eve of President Bush’s annual State of the Union address.

Nearly three-quarters of those polled in 25 countries disapprove of U.S. policies toward Iraq, and more than two-thirds said the U.S. military presence in the Middle East does more harm than good. Nearly half of those polled in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East said the United States is now playing a mainly negative role in the world.”

It’s hard to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But if that’s your job and you fail, it’s time to resign or get fired.

In an earlier scenario before the Novemeber election, I suggested that Cheney might resign in 2007 and allow Bush to appoint a new VP, perhaps Bill Frist, who would then become the Republican heir-apparent in 2008.  Impeachment was not a factor in that discussion.

Since I posted that, Nancy Pelosi has become Speaker and third in line for the Presidency. This changes the scenario and influences the impeachment discussion dramatically.

Before, if Bush had been removed from office, it would have resulted in Cheney becoming President, or in his absence a Republican Speaker of the House.
But with Pelosi in office, the potential scenario where Bush could be impeached effectively freezes Cheney into place for the duration of Bush’s term. On the other hand, if the Democrats want to REALLY do a number, you remove Cheney first, then impeach Bush – result: President Pelosi!
Which brings us to a Republican strategy built around Plamegate: by dragging out the Plame legal case, you forestall action by Congress to impeach Cheney, since an ongoing judicial investigation is under way. And by securing Cheney, you secure Bush.
So…a rapid conclusion to the judicial proceedings around Plame is not in the interests of the Republicans and the White House, but if the Democrats could start investigations in the House that could lead to pressure on Cheney to resign or be impeached, that would create fantastic congressional Democratic leverage.  And actually succeeding would put a Democratic woman in the White House!

So – watch the Plame case closely and especially the way the role of Cheney in that process!

( – promoted by odum)

I’ve never had much respect for the abilities of Condoleeza Rice.  She has the reputation of being acadmically smart, based on her job as provost of Stanford and her PhD in international relations.  However, the Provost job is basically administrative.  According to Wikipedia..
”  The Provost [at Harvard] has special responsibility for fostering intellectual interactions across the University, including the five Interfaculty Initiatives (environment, ethics and the professions, schooling and children, mind/brain/behavior, and health policy). The Provost also acts to help improve the quality and efficiency of central services organized at Harvard under the aegis of the Vice Presidents. “

In other words, conflict resolution to contain academic jealousy and intercollege competition for budgets.  Maybe a reasonable job description for a National Security Advisor, who is supposed to coordinate the activities of the various agencies,  but not for Secretary of State, who has to actually create value rather than referee among those who do.  As Nora Ephron over at Huffington Post points out:
” Condoleezza Rice was once a Provost, and if there’s ever been a job description that doesn’t require humor, it’s Provost. She was an expert on the Soviet Union. I mean, what would that be like? You spend your academic life becoming an expert on something that one day just ceases to exist. Everything you once knew turns out to be outdated, irrelevant and wrong. That alone could cause you to lose your gift for humor, if you ever had one.

But what Condi is really good at is making nice, … I’ve always believed that women of my generation (and hers) were literally trained to make nice. It wasn’t really important for us to have opinions of our own; instead, we were supposed to preside over dinner parties, and when two men at the table disagreed violently with one another, we were supposed to step in and point out the remarkable similarities between their opposing positions. “

As for that PhD, she got it at the University of Denver, an institution that is well down the ranks, in a program which I can assure you is not now nor ever been world class.  It’s OK, mind you, but not the Kennedy School by a long shot.  And relevance?… See Nora about the USSR above…

Piling on,  here comes today’s Financial Times :

  Rice lying low at the Middle East crossroads
  By Guy Dinmore and Edward Luce in Washington and William Wallis in Cairo

  Published: December 14 2006
  While US policy in the Middle East has stalled at multiple crossroads in the search for a “new way forward” in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, has been notable only for her low visibility….

A new low was plumbed in the US’s international standing when, on the 10th day of Lebanon’s summer war, with civilian casualties mounting from Israeli attacks, Ms Rice declared the world was witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.

Since then, the pro-western Lebanese government has been seriously weakened, the conflict in Iraq has intensified, and the Palestinian territories are close to civil war. Meanwhile, Washington’s adversaries – Iran,Syria and Sudan [not to mention North Korea:  bw]- have been emboldened…..
  “The smart thing to do would be to be working quietly behind the scenes with the Saudis [who have just had their ambassador to the US suddenly and without explanation resign: bw] 
and the Israelis to try to get the peace process on the road again,” says Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon official….

When Ms Rice has met her Middle Eastern counterparts in recent months, Arab  officials tried to press the urgent need for momentum on the Arab-Israeli conflict to counter more radical agendas sweeping through the region.

“Our problem with people like Condoleezza Rice is they  take too long to understand the reality on the ground, which is a different reality than the one explained to them.” [said an Arab diplomat]

“They [Arab regimes] don’t believe she can change the dynamics because they see her as part of the problem,” says a well-connected Saudi commentator. “She is gung-ho on Iran and she doesn’t believe there are two sides to the Palestinian problem.” …
“The lesson for many Arabs is that the US  will always side with Israel no matter what, and that being America’s ally  does not necessarily bring substantive political benefits when most needed,”

  “America emerged as unreliable in Lebanon and incompetent in Iraq. The consequences of this for America’s image in the region are serious.”