A Lesson In What Not To Do

George Steph on how to properly punch hippies:

Here are the five key sets of questions they have to confront, both in the Roosevelt Room and in their consultations with Congress:

1. What is "death with dignity" for the public option? Is it better for the president to sacrifice it himself? Or convince Democratic leaders behind closed doors to come to him? Some will argue for taking the public option issue to the floor, passing it through the House and sacrificing it in conference -- but once you've gone that far, it may be impossible for House Democrats to back down. So, giving it up on the front end in some fashion is likely the preferred option.

2. How do you get the price tag down, likely to about $700 billion? At that cost the most unpopular tax increases will not be necessary. And moderates in both the House and Senate have already signaled that they can live with it at that level. Which leads to question 3:

3. Can you still make a convincing case that the country is on a path to universal coverage? What mix of phase-ins and triggers are necessary to make that case?

I can't take it. (If you're interested, 4 asks if any Republican votes other than Olympia Snowe can be gathered - even the White House knows that answer is no - and 5 queries how to do the speech, possibly with a joint session to Congress.)

Stephanopoulos is very plugged in, and so this could very well be the discussion at the White House. Who apparently have yet to figure out that forcing millions of Americans into buying crappy insurance that can only come from private industry will be so massively unpopular that, if Republicans don't repeal it, Democrats will be forced to themselves. That would be the quickest and easiest way to squander the majority possible, which at times I think is the Washington Democratic establishment's metier.

Number two is arguably scarier. Practically all of the money spent in this health care bill goes to two things - expanding Medicaid and subsidies for individuals to buy insurance. That's it. Reducing the cost of the bill either keeps more people off Medicaid or reduces the subsidies, making forced insurance under an individual mandate unaffordable. There's this notion that bloggers and progressive groups don't care about the poor, but we're not writing the bill, and kowtowing to the lunatic moderates who put a price tag above morality except when talking about war. I have understood that the coverage expansion elements of the bill were crucially important, and the same thinking that artificially lowered the stimulus cost to the detriment of state budgets and public investment would doom the coverage expansion elements.

And after all that, after assuring us that the wise course would be to ditch a public insurance option that would only exist to cut costs, and reducing the coverage expansion funds and subsequently putting the burden of universal coverage on the backs of poor people, Stephanopoulos asks, basically, "How can we lie about this to the public?"

I find it hard to believe that the White House would be so stupid as to think that making the least popular choices to the majority of Americans making under $50,000/year would be just the ticket to increase the President's popularity. Actually, just kidding, I don't find it so hard.

Well Then, This Time, Anticipate

Joe Biden went on ABC's "This Week" today and said that his Administration, along with the consensus economic community, misread the severity of the recession:

STEPHANOPOULOS: While we've been here, some pretty grim job numbers back at home -- 9.5 percent unemployment in June, the worst numbers in 26 years.

How do you explain that? Because when the president and you all were selling the stimulus package, you predicted at the beginning that, to get this package in place, unemployment will peak at about 8 percent. So, either you misread the economy, or the stimulus package is too slow and to small.

BIDEN: The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there.

Everyone thought at that stage -- everyone -- the bulk of...

STEPHANOPOULOS: CBO would say a little bit higher.

BIDEN: A little bit, but they're all in the same range. No one was talking about that we would be moving towards -- we're worried about 10.5 percent, it will be 9.5 percent at this point.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But we're looking at 10 now, aren't we?

BIDEN: No. Well, look, we're much too high. We're at 9 -- what, 9.5 right now?

STEPHANOPOULOS: 9.5.

BIDEN: And so the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited. Now, that doesn't -- I'm not -- it's now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstances we're in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstances we're in.

We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package. The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, but a lot of people were saying that you needed to do something bigger and bolder then, including the economist Paul Krugman. He's saying -- right now he's saying the same thing again -- don't wait. You need a second stimulus, you need it now.

BIDEN: Look, what we have to do now is we have to properly, adequately, transparently and effectively spend out the $787 billion.

First of all, Stephanopoulos was the first to say "misread the economy." So it was kind of a leading question, and a Hobson's choice for Biden between two bad options - a bad read or a failed stimulus. Next, Biden and many of his White House colleagues have been pushing this idea that nobody could have anticipated the depths of the economy for several weeks now. But the truth is quite different. Plenty of people dating back to late last year were saying that unemployment was headed for double digits, and that the stimulus package conceived by the Obama Administration, especially with its 40% tax cuts, would be insufficient. The Administration's white papers and boasts about recovery didn't check out, the same way that their "adverse scenario" for the stress tests didn't check out. The worst thing about Biden's statement is that it's flat wrong.

But beyond that, the White House's touting of the stimulus as a world-historical fix to a broken economy presupposed this backtracking. They knew at the time that it would take months to get the stimulus funds out to people and businesses, and that the economy, which was already reeling, with four straight months of job loss over 400,000 at the end of 2008, would only continue to bleed. And yet the timing of passage, at the beginning of the first term, necessitated touting it as something of a panacea. But we all saw the gruesome legislative sausage-making that went into passage, with Presidents Nelson and Collins pulling this program and that out of the package just to reach some arbitrary number above which we could not spend.

The stimulus package is not bad, and much of it will hit the economy in Q3 and Q4 of this year, so its impact has yet to have been felt. But it was clearly not sufficient to meet the demand shortfall at the time, and the recent job numbers just prove it.

The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by later this summer, around August or September, and will be closer to 10.5 percent if not 11 percent by year-end. I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11 percent at some point in 2010, well above historical standards for even severe recessions.

It’s clear that even if the recession were to be over anytime soon – and it’s not going to be over before the end of the year – job losses are going to continue for at least another year and a half. Historically, during the last two recessions, job losses continued for at least a year and a half after the recession was over. During the 2001 recession, the recession was over in November 2001, and job losses continued through August 2003 for a cumulative loss of jobs of over 5 million; this time we are already seeing more than 6 million job losses and the recession is not over [...]

These job losses are going to have a significant effect on consumer confidence and consumption in the months ahead. We’ve also seen extreme weakness in consumption. There was a boost in retail sales and real personal consumption-spending in January and February, sparked by sales following the holiday season, but the numbers from April, May, and now June are extremely weak in real terms. In April and May you saw a significant increase in real personal income only because of tax rebates and unemployment benefits. In April, there was a sharp fall in real personal spending, and in May the increase was only marginal in real terms [...]

The other important aspect of the labor market is that if the unemployment rate is going to peak around 11 percent next year, the expected losses for banks on their loans and securities are going to be much higher than the ones estimated in the recent stress tests. You plug an unemployment rate of 11 percent in any model of loan losses and recovery rates and you get very ugly losses for subprime, near-prime, prime, home equity loan lines, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, leverage loans, and commercial loans – much bigger numbers than what the stress tests projected.

We're just in terrible trouble right now, and the 50 little Hoovers wreaking havoc on state budgets aren't exactly helping, either. At this point, a Japan-style decade of zero growth might be welcome, with a double-dip recession possible.

I think the Administration did a decent enough job reacting to the chaos of a potential depression. But now they need to look at the reality of the situation and recognize that we will need another stimulus, which I would like to see focused on fiscal stabilization for the states. For the second week in a row, a major Administration figure dodged the question when asked, but did not dismiss it out of hand. They need to at least draw up some plans. If nobody could have anticipated the state of the economy prior to the first stimulus, the least the White House can do is anticipate the second round.

...The Shrill One says it better.

Geithner Meets The Press

President Obama sat down with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation today, but I was actually more interested in Timothy Geithner's back-to-back appearances on Meet The Press and This Week With George Stephanopoulos. These were his first two appearances on the Sunday shows, coming out of a week where he announced major initiatives to engage in a public-private partnership to buy up toxic assets, and to re-regulate the financial sector. Both interviews had some interesting moments.

On both shows, Geithner was asked about the potential flaw in the plan for toxic assets, that the banks simply won't sell at the prices set by private investors, because taking losses would reveal the banks to be insolvent. Geithner didn't have the best answer for this other than to urge the banks to "take risk again." Indeed, there is no mechanism to force the banks to sell. In addition, on the issue of counter-party payments from AIG, Geithner demurred at any potential efforts to recover money from Goldman Sachs and other banks who were paid out whole on their credit default swaps instead of being forced to negotiate, pivoting instead to the need for more tools to step in and take over a firm like AIG:

GEITHNER: George, we came into this crisis as a country without the tools necessary to contain the damage of a financial crisis like this. In a case of a large, complex institution like AIG, the government has no ability, had no meaningful ability to come in early to help contain the fire, contain the damage, prevent the spread of that fire. Restructure the firm, change contracts where necessary, and helped make sure that the financial system gets through this...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it would have been the right thing to do, right?

GEITHNER: If we had the legal authority, that's what we would have done. But without that legal authority, we had no good choices. We were caught between these terrible choices of letting Lehman fail -- and you saw the catastrophic damage that caused to the financial system -- or coming in and putting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars at risk, like we did at AIG, to keep the thing going, unwind it slowly at less damage to the ultimate economy and taxpayer.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So how about now, Goldman Sachs is taking other government money. They got this $13 billion whole from AIG. Congressman Brad Sherman and others have said, they should give that $13 billion back.

GEITHNER: George, the important thing is, we have no legal ability now. That's why I went to Congress last week, to propose a broad change in resolution authority so that we have the capacity to do what we do with banks now.

I suspect that will be a less-than-satisfying answer to most people. Basically Geithner is trying to keep the past in the past, particularly with respect to AIG.

On some other fronts, however, Geithner displayed a definite concern to reel in the massive financial sector and build a broad-based economy that can better manage systemic risk. Here is an answer from Meet the Press on his regulatory proposals:

SEC'Y GEITHNER: Core thing is to make sure that the institutions at the center of our financial system are subject to much more conservative, much tougher requirements on capital and leverage that are applied more evenly and more effectively, frankly. We need to make sure that hedge funds and derivatives come within a framework of oversight so we protect the system from the risks they may present. And we need to make sure the government has the authority it needs to come in more quickly, to help contain the damage, restructure the system, so we can have a stronger system going forward [...] We need a better model. What we're proposing to do is use a model that exists for small banks that was designed by the Congress in the wake of the S&L crisis, build on that model and give the government a capacity to act more quickly, more effectively to contain the damage at least risk to the taxpayer and the economy as a whole.

Certainly, over-leveraging caused a good deal of this crisis; other countries where the banks are leveraged more conservatively are in better shape. Obviously, the devil is in the details - there are currently no capital requirements for hedge funds in the Geithner proposal, for example, and the real issue is whether the regulation will be strictly enforced. Our experience with bank regulators who are too cozy with the subjects they regulate recently suggest that the real problem is a lack of will.

But I thought Geithner's willingness to talk about the need to restructure the American economy, at the macro and the micro level, was interesting.

MR. GREGORY: Time magazine this week has its cover, and it's very interesting. I want to put it up on the screen for our viewers to see. "The End of Excess: Why the crisis is good for America." And there's a big red "reset" button. And everybody talks about reset. Obviously this is not a good crisis for America right now. But take a longer view. In the long run, is this crisis necessary for this economy?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: I think the adjustment to a period of excess is necessary. You never, you never want to have a crisis to remind people of the importance of living within your means, not borrowing too much or why regulation of the...(unintelligible)...is important. You never want to have a crisis that's damaging to make that point. But we're going to emerge stronger than this. When we get through this people are going to care less about what they make, more about what they do, what they achieve with what they make, and that will help make this country stronger.

MR. GREGORY: Will the economy be fundamentally different? Will people own fewer homes? I mean, home ownership, will that go down? Will consumption change? Will our lives change in a meaningful way?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: I think people will be living within their means more, which is helpful. We want to have, you know, a stronger, more sustainable recovery. Not a recovery based on a artificial boom that's not going to be sustained. We need to end this, this, this pattern of having booms and busts at the kind of frequency we've seen. That has to change. And that'll make the, that'll make this a better place to live and a more productive economy going forward.

Further, Geithner understands the importance of active engagement with the crisis, not to ease up on the pedal because of a few positive indicators. And he talks about the need for a broader segment of society to share in the benefits of recovery than the wide gap between the rich and poor we've seen explode in the past decade.

GEITHNER: Now, the important thing, though, is that we keep at it. You know, the big mistake governments make in recessions is they put the brakes on too early.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that what happened during the depression? Is that what Franklin Roosevelt did?

GEITHNER: That's one thing that happened in the depression. It's happened in Japan, too. It's happened in a lot of countries in the world. They see that first glimmer of light, and the impetus to policy fades and people are putting on the brakes, and we're not going to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So income inequality goes down?

GEITHNER: It should go down. Again, you know, if you look at the record of performance in the '90s, you know, we had very strong productivity growth during a period of fiscal discipline, fiscal responsibility, strong private investment, and the gains were shared much more broadly.

We can do that as a country, but it requires getting this government to do a better job of doing things only governments can do. That's why I assume important we get better outcomes. That's why fixing our health care system and get costs growing more slowly is so important. That's why we need a better energy policy. And that's why infrastructure needs to be improved.

This mirrors what the President has been saying about sustainable growth rather than feeding into the same boom-and-bust cycles and propping up the same elites who took these tremendous gambles. Or in the words of Joe Biden - "We need to save markets from free marketeers."

Obviously, words are less important than actions. But this perspective can hopefully guide the Administration through this crisis, and provide the kind of investments needed to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to share in the recovery. I'm not convinced that Geithner is the best advocate for reducing inequality and stopping the casino on Wall Street, so from the outside the work continues to keep pushing for a newer, safer, more durable economy.

Chipping Away At Maverick's Armor

We're actually starting to get some traction on John McSame, not only in the usual arenas but also in the traditional media. I think judging Presidential candidates based on their tax returns is of a fairly low priority; I really don't care how much you make compared to what you'll actually do for the country. But it's notable that McCain is not, for the most part, getting away with the gambit of releasing his tax returns, which make him look only modestly rich, without releasing the companion returns of his kajillionaire beer distributorship heiress wife (the one he picked up while still married to his first wife, who was disfigured in an accident. He's a claasy guy).

John McCain, who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, reported $405,409 in income last year and paid $118,660 in federal taxes, according to tax returns made public today. He gave $105,467 to charity, the records show.

His campaign didn't release tax returns for his wife, Cindy, who is chairman of the Phoenix-based Hensley & Co., one of the largest beer distributors in the U.S.

"My wife and I, we have separate incomes, we have a prenuptial agreement, and her business is her business,'' McCain said in an interview. "I have never been involved in it since before I ran for the Congress of the United States, so I just feel that she has a right to a separate tax return.''

Come off it. McCain has used his wife's bankroll to get ahead in politics for 25 years. It's obnoxious to suggest that they're somehow separate incomes. Especially after Republicans went after Teresa Heinz Kerry for the same exact circumstance (Kerry eventually disclosed her tax return). And, Cindy McCain claimed she wasn't disclosing her taxes because of her children's privacy, which is kind of hilariously brazen.

But the traditional media actually managed to cover this one in a manner consistent with how they'd cover a Democrat trying to play this game. Again, I'd like to see them be as aggressive on McCain's actual statements, like his revisionist history on advocating for overthrowing foreign governments, which he called "rogue-state rollback"; the very funny flap over which earmarks he'd target for elimination, which got him in a lot of trouble this week once he realized that he was advocating cutting off aid to Israel and shuttering military housing for families; his statement that there has been great progress economically since George Bush took office, and his general flip-flopping on dozens of issues (Steve Benen is the keeper of that long list).

Still, at this point I'm happy to see any coverage of McCain that's not covered in hazy gauze. If the traditional media wants to feed their fetish and look into character issues they can pick up The Real McCain", which the McCain camp is trying furiously to suppress. I'd prefer it to be a legitimate look at his extremist record and promises of less jobs and more wars.

One thing I know is that we're not going to see anything like this tomorrow morning from our buddy Boy George.

The 11th Day Of September Happened On 9-11!

I think the most despicable moment in last night's debate was Boy George Stephanopoulos' Hannity-fed question about William Ayers, and particularly the "look what he wrote in the New York Times on 9-11" remark. Please. I know you can't read, Boy George, but the thing is that newspapers come out early in the morning, meaning that Ayers wrote what he wrote on 9-10, and the correlation is nothing more than incidental.

That Clinton parroted this, referencing 9-11 with an alacrity that would rival Rudy 9iu11iani, is quite disgusting. She's really crossed over into a full Republican campaign mode. Her TV ads are almost totally negative, and her justification is that "The Republicans will bring it up in the fall," apparently allowing her to... campaign like a Republican. This has an impact. I had a discussion with my Hillary-supporting dad last night and I might as well have been talking to Bill O'Reilly.

It's I guess comforting to know that if Hillary is behind in the fall she'll fight dirty, but of course this campaign in ensuring that if Hillary does pull out the nomination by a miracle, she'll be well behind in the fall.

UPDATE: I don't want to leave Charlie Gibson off the hook, his believe that $200,000 is a middle-class salary and that the most important challenge facing the nation is THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX just portrays how out of touch these stufed shirt media types are.

UPDATE II: This is pretty damn funny.

The Gibson Effect

I agree that last night was an historic moment, where the national press truly jumped the shark and crossed over from a series of newsgathering organizations to the reincarnation of Rona Barrett. Because they are so contemptuous of Americans (they always justify their substance-free remarks by saying "This is what people are talking about") they seek not to inform but demonize, not to set out the major issues but to tear down the major candidates.

And lest one think that the first half of the debate featured the tabloid questions and the second half the "substance," uh, no.

It is certainly true that a case could be made that the moderators explicitly set out to frame even the supposedly "substantive" questions according to GOP designs. The implicit presumption of success in Iraq when, nearly an hour into the debate, the moderators finally deigned to mention the defining current event of this campaign. Gibson, as moderator, lied outright about the supposed effects of capital gains tax cuts, and dogged the candidates over it to a greater extent than any other economic issue: does he really believe that of all the economic challenges facing this nation, the most pressing of them is supplication towards a decade-long Republican bugaboo? Gun control? Affirmative action? These are the issues that are most compellingly on the minds of Democratic primary voters, in 2008? Or were the questions taken from a 1992 time capsule, insightful probes gathering dust for a decade and a half until they could find network moderators desperate enough to dig them up again?

It wasn't just embarrassing in part, but in the whole; a total capitulation of all responsibility as the fourth estate and a salient example of why we may need to actually strike out the "freedom of the press" part of the First Amendment.*

The thing is that, outside of Bobo Brooks, who's just as contemptuous of the American people as Gibson and Stephanopoulos are, most people noticed. They noticed because this is not an isolated event. In fact this campaign season has witnessed a gradually decreasing pattern leading to the irrelevance you saw on display last night. As issues and challenges faded away, the entire campaign - all of it - is predicated on gaffes and misstatements and Russert-like gotcha questions. Not as portion of it, not the last five minutes of the broadcast but all of it. The third paragraph of Tom Shales' jeremiad is technically correct but besides the point.

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

CNN and MSNBC are no better; the ABC debate was a prime-time version of their substance-free midday programming, replete with everything but a live shot of a burning house somewhere.

The real question is whether this will spark a backlash, the way the media's sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton provoked a backlash in the New Hampshire primary.

Will the Keystone State's Democratic voters -- remember, these are Democrats, not general-election voters -- rebel against the negativity, the "gotcha"-ism, the endless drumbeat of cynical word-twisting and opportunistic gaffe-pouncing, that has become the central operating principle of the Clinton campaign, and vote instead for the man whose message of "hope" and "change" and a "new kind of politics" so inspired voters in the early stages of this nomination contest? If there's ever a moment for that message to gain new traction, it would be now [...]

One of the night's most popular answers, according to WPVI's undecided voter reaction tracker thingy, was this response by Obama to a question about his relationship to former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers:

George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George. ...

[T]his kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow -- somehow their ideas could be attributed to me -- I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't.

Hillary's response? "Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position." The undecided-voter meter plummeted.

Perhaps I'm being a pollyanna-ish member of the Cult of Obama here, but I think there is a real chance the voters of Pennsylvania will rise up and, once and for all, reject the endless, party-destroying "gotcha" tactics of Hillary Clinton, and choose the candidate of "change." It would be the backlash to end all backlashes. I'm not predicting it. But I think it could happen.

I think it's vital that it does happen, to discredit these tactics. If the blinders would come off of Clinton supporters and Obama supporters, Democrats would agree that this debate represents a failure of democracy. Corporate media will only get the message if their stock plummets, so I urge everyone to sell Disney stock and send it crashing. But they also made a lot of money last night off their ignorance and sensationalism. The way to send a message is really to reject that. The "b-but the Republicans will come after us in November" canard is ridiculous. That doesn't mean it has to be legitimized. Republican-style attack politics was actually rejected by voters in 2006. Now it's time to reject the media.

* - That's not what I advocate, of course, but let's recognize that national broadcasters use public airwaves and make a commitment to use them in the public interest, which clearly they have failed in doing, so there's a compelling argument to be made to the FCC for a breach in licensing agreements.

Shame

I'm deeply saddened by the state of this country, and tonight's debate is only an extension, a symptom, of that sadness. We are a better people, a stronger people, a smarter people, than is reflected to the nation and the world by our media.

I was the one who started a little campaign to get Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos to address the astonishing revelation that the President approved and authorized secret sessions inside the White House where principals from the Vice President on down directed specific torture techniques on specific detainees. Digby and myself and many others in the progressive blogosphere were outraged that this absolutely shocking statement, an almost dismissive one from the President, was met with almost complete radio silence from the traditional media.

So I figured that, since ABC actually broke the story, they might be interested in moving the story along by pushing it into the Presidential arena. And I asked good informed people who love their country to contact ABC so that we can discredit the idea of America torturing other human beings, in violation of domestic and international law, in ways that have been prosecuted by American courts in the past, which scar our nation, provide a recruiting tool for terrorists and yield bad intelligence.

You know, I thought it might have been something to get to.

But it wasn't. As you have seen. The bread and circuses that has characterized the media for over a decade continues apace. Instead of reporting out its story, we heard about lapel pins, and sniper fire, and members of the Weather Underground from 40 years ago. And this is why we have 47 million Americans without health care, and an occupation in Iraq for which these media shills are partially responsible, and finally, a country stained with the sin of torture.

And the only response I have is one of shame. That we have to listen to a Presidential candidate forced to say "I revere the American flag" or answer for the patriotism of random people is actually deeply offensive to me as a sentient being. That the right has so hijacked the discourse that all we hear from moderators in a public forum is a collection of oppo research is even more offensive.

And the worst part is that ABC News obviously has the capacity for good journalism. They considered it worthy enough to follow a story about torture discussions inside the White House, tracked down all the principals, got most everyone on the record about it, and yielded an admission from the President of the United States that he authorized waterboarding. They deemed it important enough to put it on their nightly news program, alone among the entire media. So if this is the output we can expect from them in a high-profile debate, there really is no hope. How can we expect accountability on torture - freakin' torture - if the well-informed citizenry has no knowledge to draw from.

I would gladly trade this media for any other media from any other country in the world. They can even broadcast in their native language without translation and it would have more value than this swill.

I know that traditional media is essentially a relic and that the information explosion of the blogosphere is revolutionizing media. But I have little but depression and sadness in my heart tonight. Corporations are not likely to dissolve in my lifetime. Corporate media is not likely to lose its prominence. We're big and getting bigger, and we're tuning out this narrowness of our politics in record numbers; Barack Obama was essentially standing in for all of us tonight. But that someone can be honored enough to address the next leader of the United States, can take on the responsibility of informing the public, and end up with this?

Shame.



...I think the best course of action is something my fellow Pennsylvanians are prone to using: shunning. Surely we have Kossacks who live and work in Washington DC. These clowns have descended on Pennsylvania, to be sure. They should be shunned. If they approach you on the street, walk away. If you're anywhere near them, turn your back.

One good place to do this would be at the Newseum in Washington, this Sunday, when George Stephanopoulos tapes his first episode of This Week at their new home. I'm just spitballin'.

The Worst Kind of Louts

So I've been running around all day, and haven't had much time to check in, but apparently tonight's debate was a train wreck (I wouldn't know because it's tape delayed for the West Coast), as Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent the first hour asking about important issues like flag pins and William Ayers (a question which was fed to him by Sean Hannity and lesser lights of the right-wing noise machine) instead of minor things like the torture of human beings planned inside the White House or an endless war in Iraq.

Outside of being infuriating, isn't this just stupid of ABC? Barack Obama is more likely than not of becoming the next President, is it really worth it to relentlessly insult him? I mean, I can't imagine Obama ever going on that network again.

Here's a list of things that didn't get discussed.

Let's tote up the colossal, the major, and also the very, very big issues that ABC's Gibson and Stephanopoulos have not deigned to bring up: Health care; the recession; Afghanistan; the mortgage crisis; deregulation; veterans' care; torture; restoring America's image abroad; the surveillance state; the environment.

When their FCC license is finally taken away for intentionally acting outside the public interest, will anyone care?

You can ask them yourself at 212-456-7777. Ask for News, then press 2 then 199 and you can leave a message for "Other News".

I actively hate this media. Star Magazine would have pulled off a better debate.

...There are almost 5,000 comments on ABC's website right now, almost all of them lambasting this horrific debate.

...Howard Wolfson is somehow DEFENDING this atrocity. All class, Wolfson. Because the most egregious shots were all taken at Obama, Clinton's team has no problem with what amounts to a Hannity-style attack job. And enough with this "it's a fair question because the Republicans would bring it up." It's easier for them to do so when the Democratic opponent brings it up first. And by the way, Republicans LIE. They'll bring up anything and everything without any kind of respect for the truth. So you might as well ask how many Americans each of these candidates have raped, because some nutjob winger is bound to bring that up in the fall, too.

I think I'm going to throw my television out the window.

Cleaning Up The Text

So here's a little article about Stephen Hadley's appearance on This Week, and their discussion of the Administration's position on boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

It would be a "cop-out" for countries to skip the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics as a way of protesting China's crackdown in Tibet, President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday.

The kind of "quiet diplomacy" that the U.S. is practicing is a better way to send a message to China's leaders rather than "frontal confrontation," Stephen Hadley said [...]

"We haven't worked out the details of his schedule at this point in time, but from his vantage point, if you listen to what he said, he has no reason not to go," Hadley said in broadcast interviews Sunday. "Because what he has said is we need to be using diplomacy."

Calling a boycott "a bit of a red herring," Hadley added: "I think unfortunately a lot of countries say, 'Well, if we say that we are not going to the opening ceremonies, we've check the box on Tibet.' That's a cop-out.

"If other countries are concerned about Tibet, they ought to do what we are doing through quiet diplomacy, send the message clearly to the Chinese that this is an opportunity with the whole world watching, to show that they take into account and are determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect. They would put pressure on the Chinese authorities quietly to meet with representatives of the Dalai Lama and use this as an opportunity to help resolve that situation," he said.

Critics of China say that were Bush to avoid the opening ceremony, it would send a powerful signal of international anger over China's violent response to demonstrating Buddhist monks in Tibet.

"The whole issue of opening ceremonies is a nonissue," Hadley said. "I think it is a way of dodging what really needs to happen if you're concerned about" Tibet.

Nowhere in this story is the fact that Hadley confused Tibet with Nepal at least five times over the course of the discussion. You know, when the national security advisor to the President repeatedly gets the name wrong of a global trouble spot, you tend to get the impression that he doesn't give a shit about it. But fortunately for him, the AP cleaned up the comments. In fact, look at that last sentence:

"The whole issue of opening ceremonies is a nonissue," Hadley said. "I think it is a way of dodging what really needs to happen if you're concerned about" Tibet.

Tibet can't be inside the quote marks because Hadley actually said "Nepal." A peaceful kingdom. Not Tibet. Because he's willfully uninformed.

This isn't just a buried lede, it's a lede six feet under.

...also, you gotta love George Stephanopoulos not correcting him, even after the fifth time he screws it up. Believe me, a Democrat who made that mistake once would get rebuked.