Been A Long Time

Since I was told that I hate America. I have to admit I missed it.



Actually I thought this was a fairly strange "expose" of Netroots Nation, whereupon O'Reilly allowed smart, liberal Americans to actually express their views on his show without interruption, perhaps for the first time ever on his show. More exposes please!

My Foreign Investor, Right Or Wrong

As Digby noted yesterday, the auto industry recovery package looked to be on life support. Looks like Mitch McConnell pulled the plug:

The Kentucky Republican, with a large auto presence in his state, had been seen as a potential ally for the industry, and he provided crucial support for the Treasury Department's financial markets rescue fund this fall. But he has since endured a punishing reelection fight. And faced with strong resistance in his caucus, he said that the bill "isn't nearly tough enough" and that he could not ask taxpayers to "subsidize failure." [...]

While not entirely surprising, the Republican opposition stands in contrast to what have been significant concessions by Democrats to try to move the bill forward.

"Much of this bill is dictated by the president. It is a stunning vote of no confidence," [Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)] said of the Republican opposition.

I think the first mistake was making a "deal" with the loathed President Bush and expecting that to hold.

But let's be clear what's going on here. A bunch of Southern-state Republicans (including, amazingly, Diaper Dandy David Vitter), from right-to-work states, want to push GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy to bolster the foreign auto presence in their home states. Kentucky has a Ford factory but they also have a Toyota plant in Georgetown, so McConnell's on board.

Last week, Jane Hamsher explained the conflict of interest for Bob Corker in Tennessee:

He hasn't mentioned the subsidies his own state of Tennessee has given to foreign automakers, making it harder for the Big 2 1/2 to compete:

Tennessee offered its richest incentive package — and perhaps the most government assistance and tax breaks ever for an American automobile plant — to lure Volkswagen to Chattanooga.

But the state’s chief business recruiter said Wednesday that the benefits from VW’s $1 billion assembly plant far will exceed what could top $500 million in government assistance and tax breaks for the project.

“The Volkswagen investment in this community is going to have a tremendous economic gain for the entire region,” said Matt Kisber, Tennessee’s commissioner for economic and community development. “I’m confident we’re going to have a very reasonable incentive package when you look at the initial costs of what is being offered compared with a much bigger long-term return.”

Yes, that's the logic -- these incentives will bring more money to the region than they cost. But it doesn't always work out that way. As David Cay Johnston noted in Free Lunch, these kinds of subsidies frequently wind up costing communities much more than they ever make back:

Johnson writes: "The tribute Cabela's demanded from Hamburg [Pennsylvania] amounted to roughly $8,000 for each man, woman, and child in town." Johnson points out that between 2004 and 2006, Cabela's earned $223.4 million. During those years, it collected at least $293.7 million in subsidies, more than its reported profits. Meanwhile a family business selling fishing and hunting gear was driven out of business in Hamburg.

Funny nobody is mentioning this.

The GOP does a lot of chest-thumping about "Country First" and patriotism. It's fun to watch them destroy American manufacturing so they can keep Japanese and German corporate executives happy. OK, maybe not so fun.

Obama's "Have You No Decency" Moment In Richmond, VA

This is a powerful speech that evokes the best of the 2004 DNC convention speech and also just makes the McCain campaign look small.



We've been waiting for someone to say this.

At a defining moment like this, we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games, the same political tactics, that we've become accustomed to. This slash-and-burn politics that divides us from one another... which the challenges and crises we face right now, we can't afford to divide this country. By race, by class, by region, by who we are, by what policies we support. Let me tell you something, because I know you've been hearing a lot of stuff lately. There are no real parts of the country and fake parts of the country. There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country. We all love this country. No matter where we live. Or where we come from.

The sad part is that this should be elemental. As much as the netroots is seen as a place for partisan warfare, there's no categorical desire for this to be so. We bring the necessary firepower to the battle. And so has Senator Obama. But the dishonest, dishonorable campaign of John McCain's simply deserves to be called out in this fashion. McCain seemingly has no understanding of the seriousness of the moment. He doesn't get what we are facing right now. And so he has made, in Obama's words, a big campaign about small things. And he has attempted to distract and obfuscate and all the other de rigeur elements of Republican political warfare. And it has rung completely false when we are fighting two failed wars and dealing with a protracted economic meltdown.

Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city dwellers, farm dwellers, it doesn't matter, we're all together [...] The men and women from Virginia and all across this country who serve on our battlefields. Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are independents. But they fought together, and bled together, and some of them died together under the same flag. They didn't serve a blue America, or a red America, they served the United States of America. Nobody should forget that.

There's also a part in there saying that those who supported the war or those who supported Republican policies are patriots. That may dismay some people. This is the "unity shtick," says Obama, and Republicans are fundamentally not interested in unity, and debate is healthy in the political sphere. And I agree with that. What I believe Obama is doing is making the fringes of the debate, what the McCain-Palin campaign have defined themselves as entirely these last few weeks, UNACCEPTABLE. Broadly unacceptable. We can disagree about issues, we can have our own views about how to pay for services or manage foreign policy or promote economic growth. But the questioning of patriotism, the denigrating of opponents as un-American, this is what cannot stand. And an Obama victory would seek to render illegitimate those kinds of attacks for good. It won't totally work, of course, but each generation must have its own "Have you no decency" moment, a moment that makes the screamers and the demonizers and the haters look small. Microscopic. It is a moment that marginalizes this kind of hate. It's the old man sputtering about "that kind" in Twelve Angry Men as the other jurors in the room look on in horror and recognition. It's the families watching television as hoses are sprayed into the bodies of civil rights workers in Alabama. It's Joseph Welch, the Secretary of the Army, looking into the face of Joe McCarthy and telling him what kind of a man he was.

This was a cheering moment amidst the sewer that into which the right is trying to turn this election. It puts the stakes of the election into the proper context.

I'm asking you to believe. Believe in yourselves, believe in each other, believe in the future we can build together.

Like McCarthy, But Clumsy

If you put Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann together you still wouldn't add up to the stature of a Joe McCarthy, who was one of the lowest and most execrable figures ever to haunt the halls of Congress. Which tells you a lot about Palin and Bachmann.

Palin, who has now taken to using the Secret Service to cover up the hate rhetoric at her own rallies, went around today saying she was happy to visit the pro-American areas of the country (I don't think she was referring to my little patch of Santa Monica). In context, it looks worse. Apparently only small towns are pro-American. I guess that kind of spirit leads to pro-American behavior like assaulting journalists:

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.
As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

"Hey, hey, " I said. "I'm trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay? "

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

"Oh, you think that 's funny?! " the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that 's real funny…" he said.

And then he kicked the back of leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

By the way, Joe Biden was perfect talking about this today: "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country, and I hope it gets through. We all love this country."

On Hardball today, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) was asked about the "pro-American" quote and she essentially called for journalists to investigate all liberal members of Congress.



I associate myself with Katrina vanden Heuvel's remarks: "Chris, I fear for my country."



These people have touched off something very deep in a dark corner of the American psyche. They aren't just demonizing their fellow Americans, they are calling them into question. They are accusing them of treason. They are inciting. They are delegitimizing. They are summoning hatred and violence.

Palin will meet her fate in the Presidential election. But Bachmann and her neo-McCarthyism needs to be repudiated as well. Elwyn Tinklenberg isn't exactly my kind of Democrat (he's been endorsed by the Blue Dogs) but he isn't a vehicle for hatred and factionalism like Bachmann, a parrot for the basest elements of society. He's not that far behind in the polls, either. If you want to put an end to this, you can help out Tinklenberg here.

Sparring

Sometimes this Presidential campaign feels like an endless recitation of "x hit y, and now y hits back." But you go into an election with the media that you have, and the appearance of one side of a campaign on "offense" or "defense" is recognized by the chattering class as somehow the most important element there is. So it's significant that Obama is stepping up the attacks:

A day after Barack Obama and John McCain exchanged an embrace during a faith forum at a California megachurch, Obama called the U.S. economy a disaster thanks to "John McCain's president, George W. Bush," and chided his Republican rival's campaign team for trying to make him look unpatriotic and weak [...]

Sunday, after praising the Arizona senator as a "genuine American patriot," the Democratic presidential hopeful got back to business — methodically tearing into McCain's health care, tax and energy policies and criticizing his advisers.

"McCain says 'Here's my plan, I'm going to drill here, drill now which is something he only came up with two months ago when he started looking at polling," Obama said of McCain's energy policy [...]

The Illinois senator also criticized McCain's advisers as "the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team." He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties.

Obama added, "They say this other guy is unpatriotic, or this guy likes French people. That's what they said about Kerry," referring to the 2004 Democratic nominee who lost narrowly to Bush. "They try to make it out like Democrats aren't tough enough, aren't macho enough. It's the same strategy."

I've kind of had it with the obligatory "he's an American patriot" preamble, but the majority of this is pretty good. Predictably, McCain countered by essentially calling Obama a traitor for wanting to "legislate defeat" in Iraq. I'm not interested into getting into the weeds of Iraq policy, the relative success or failure of the surge, or any of that, except to reiterate what the Obama campaign actually said in response - John McCain does not want Iraq to be free:

"All his bluster, distortions and negative attacks notwithstanding, it is hard to understand how Senator McCain can at once proclaim his support for the sovereign government of Iraq, and then stubbornly defy their expressed support for a timeline to remove our combat brigades from their country. The difference in this race is that John McCain is intent on spending $10 billion a month on an open-ended war, while Barack Obama thinks we should bring this war to a responsible end and invest in our pressing needs here at home."

He does not support the prospect of free people making their own decisions in Iraq. That's short enough to make the news, and an excellent way to frame the debate. It's also true. I think Maliki is overreaching when he deems himself powerful enough to rule the country without compromise or integration of his rivals, but clearly he is in a strong enough position to join populist calls for a rejection of the occupying forces. And McCain has no respect for this overwhelming sentiment from the Iraqi population.

$100K Should Fix All That

I guess that in the new politics, Joe Lieberman thinks he can question the leader of the Democratic Party's patriotism as long as he writes $100,000 checks to their campaign committees.

And given the attitude of inside the Beltway Democrats, I'd say he's making a pretty good bet.

The Great Debate

John McCain's surrogates are having a very hard time figuring out whether or not Barack Obama is a patriot. It's a pity they can't settle on an answer. On one hand, Charlie Black was recently forced to concede that Obama's a patriot. But Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney say no, because he's popular in Europe. In that case, hang Jerry Lewis for treason! I think REM had a hit over there too, put them on the Terrorist Watch List!

This comes out of the great outrage of Obama suggesting that bilingual education might be a positive for American children. The scoundrel! He wants to educate youth! Doesn't he know what America's all about?

I'm going to outsource further commentary on this to Alex Knapp.

Frankly, all this seems to be is a pathetic attempt to feed the ‘Barack Obama is Unamerican’ narrative. A narrative that, I might add, has the result of making Americans sound like ignorant hillbillies. ‘He’s got a funny name!’ ‘He likes food that tastes good instead of crap that’s fried in lard!’ ‘He likes foreigners!’ ‘He wants to speak other languages!’ ‘He’s educated!’ ‘He played basketball instead of football!’ Embarrassing, really.

Your modern conservative movement: embarrassing. No wonder even some of its elected officials think it would be a good step to lose a lot of elections and "clean house."

Authoritarianism

Chris Satullo, a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, made the suggestion in his column the other day that, instead of Fourth of July celebrations this year, we should sit in quiet contemplation of the plain fact that our country over the past seven years has engaged in torture, indefinite detention without charges, rendition, and other unspeakable acts. It was a clear and provocative call to stand up for liberty in the face of fear, for honest criticism of our leaders as an act of patriotism.

We have betrayed the July 4 creed. We trample the vows we make, hand to heart.

Don't imagine that only the torturer's hand bears the guilt. The guilt reaches deep inside our Capitol, and beyond that - to us.

Our silence is complicit. In our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little.

We can't claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power.

But did we heed them? Hardly. Barely . . .

Today, Satullo wrote a follow-up column, explaining the authoritarian response to his initial offering. His initial words about the death of outrage have revealed that, all too often in America, the only outrage is about the outrage.

...Rush (Limbaugh) gave my piece a dramatic reading on his Tuesday show. His intent was not to praise my Swiftian panache. He urged his listeners to let me know what a rotten person I am.

My computer screen soon filled with missives with angry exclamation points in the subject line.

I will say this: Rush's listeners have a zest for insult and invective. Correct spelling, not so much. Also, I'm unclear what my sexual orientation (hetero, by the way) has to do with this topic. Wishing death on someone you've never met is unkind, to a degree. And telling someone to move to another country stopped being a witty riposte somewhere around 1967.

(The homophobic references are a staple of conservative criticism. Happens to be a plain fact.)

Satullo's main response to this is one of deep confusion:

Just seven years ago, who would have ever thought that being against torture could prove so controversial? When did the running of Turkish prisons become an integral part of the American Way?

Will we ever move beyond this dead-end view: If you criticize America on some point, you are unpatriotic, and can't possibly love or honor your country?

It's rather incredible, isn't it? But of course, we've been governed by leaders who have equated criticism with a lack of patriotism for seven years, and have been very skillful at it, besides. Sure, Bush is scraping bottom and even loathed by his own party now (they love his money-raising from his fellow authoritarians but that's about it), but that's because of how he damaged their standing, not the country. On the fundamentals, the Big Daddy belief that we should not question our great and glorious leaders, there is still a great consensus. As long as there are authoritarians willing to frighten the population with lurid tales about murderers on the loose, they will use that fear to bludgeon the country into accepting whatever powers they desire, and silencing dissent besides.

WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month's Supreme Court ruling about detainees' legal rights. Federal appeals courts, however, have indicated they have no intention of letting that happen [...]

"I'm sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods," White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida's former third in command.

Chris Satullo was making a fairly unremarkable statement about the need to consider our fundamental ideals as human beings, let alone as a nation that presumes to stand for concepts like freedom and justice and equality, and the knee-jerk reaction was unbridled anger and requests to shut his mouth. This will be repeated anytime anyone presumes to question whether the architects of these policies or torture and detention and rendition ought to sit in a jail cell for their crimes. The lack of a culture of accountability in Washington, of any connection between those founding ideals and the actions taken in their name, leads to the rot at the center of our collective souls.

...here we are in 2008. And I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any number of legal commitments to refrain from torture. Some people think these violations were good policy. Many of those who regard those violations as good policy, also maintain that higher constitutional principles grant the President the right to break the law. Which is precisely what you could say on behalf of Richard Nixon. And Bush, like Nixon, has become unpopular. But Bush won't be hounded out of office.

I'm not exactly sure what accounts for the difference. I wasn't alive in 1973-74. I have a vague sense that at that time America's elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn't just break the law. These days, a misleading deposition taken in the course of a frivolous lawsuit aimed at avoiding the revelation of an affair is a grave national crisis, but it's taken for granted that only a lunatic would believe that Bush or any of his henchmen should be held accountable in any way for repeated violations of the law. I don't really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can't see that something's gone wrong here, but I'm not happy about it.

As Brad DeLong notes, it was ever thus among those guardians of the status quo like David Broder, who looked at the impeachment of Nixon as some sort of political game to map out, not a vital act to preserve some semblance of coherence to the rule of law. But from where I'm sitting, it certainly seems different, not among the elites but the public. Every four years, particularly when there's a transition in the White House from one party to the next, we hear some encomium to the strength and vitality of the American system, that it can allow the peaceful transition of power, that election-year fights end on the day of voting and the country comes together in harmony to salute its new democratically elected leader. This comfort, this blissful faith in our democracy, is exactly what has made us so fat and happy that we practically cannot recognize a Constitution in crisis. We are so benighted that when a lonely voice, as if freed from the shackles of Plato's cave to see reality as it truly is, yells "what has gone wrong with us," he gets shouted down by those authoritarians who confuse patriotism with an blind loyalty for literally whatever declaration their leaders make (this all turns around when there's a Democrat in the White House, of course, and such conventions like the Presidency are given precisely no respect).

This unthinking loyalty to party has presented a debate on torture where there ought to be none, a notion of liberty that must be subservient to security, and the sentiment of fear guiding belief far more than reason. There was always this strain in human behavior, but the difference in 21st-century America is that the authoritarian mindset has had seven years to bully the nation. We may score a political victory in November, but the authoritarians will not be vanquished, they will continue to use the weapon of fear, and the lack of accountability for the age of Bush will still leave a gaping hole in the nation, a wound not allowed to properly heal. The ghosts - and the young authoritarians who learned at their masters' feet - won't go away. They'll return in a future Administration and seek more power, make the Presidency more like a monarchy, and thumb their nose at more dissenters who will be more marginalized. This will be the final outrage.

UPDATE: Andrew Bacevich kind of also said this a few days ago. The Bush legacy is absolutely horrible and must be vanquished.

The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.

By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration's entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.

The Swiftboat Backlash

I hope we're all clear about the strategy for John McCain evidenced by his sustained outrage fit over Wesley Clark's perfectly legitimate comments. I don't even understand what they're outraged about in that press release, and they probably don't either - it's outrage for the sake of outrage. I think Chris Bowers nails this one:

Another lesson worth noting from the frothing attacks Republicans are now delivering on Wesley Clark is that the McCain campaign really, really wants a prominent Democrat to demean his service record. This is a prospect they are drooling over, right along with their hopes that a prominent Democrat will attack McCain in age-based terms.

Just as the McCain campaign is aiming to create an age based backlash against Obama and Democrats among seniors, they are desperate to create a "that anti-American Obama and those hippie Democrats hate the troops" backlash, too.

Why not, they've been playing that card for this long, and it's seemed to work. Now they're hopping forward and, in the most paranoid fashion possible, accusing Obama of coordinating with Jim Webb and goading Webb into making off-the-cuff comments. Webb had to clarify his remarks today.

Senator Jim Webb's staff issued a clarification late Tuesday over comments made by the Virginia Democrat in which he urged John McCain to "calm down" with the discussion of military service in the presidential campaign.

"Senator Webb's comments were not targeted at McCain's military service," said spokeswoman Kimberly Hunter. "He has consistently called for politicians not to insert politics into military service. This is the exact same argument that he used against Lindsay Graham in their Meet the Press interview last year."

With both Webb and Clark not backing down from their statements, I think it's important to note Bowers' other point - that just because the media is outraged, and the conservative noise machine is outraged, doesn't mean the public gives a fig. See the Terri Schiavo situation for an example. There's a great deal of truth-stretching and near-delusional claims of nefarious Democratic cabals coming from the McCain camp, and furthermore their surrogates are demeaning Wes Clark's military service while supposedly defending McCain's service.

"General Clark probably wouldn't get that much praise from this group. I can't speak for them, but we all know that General Clark, as high-ranking as he is, his record in his last command I think was somewhat less than stellar."

Given that one of McCain's biggest defenders here is Swift Boat Veterans for Truth star Bud Day, who was McCain's DIVORCE LAWYER by the way, there's a lot to untangle and sort out, and I don't think the blind expression of outrage is really going to impact people one way or the other. I wish Obama backed him up more strongly (though today he explicitly denied any analogy connecting Clark's remarks to the Swift Boaters, and insisted that his comments in his patriotism speech had nothing to do with Clark and were written two months ago), but I think Clark's going to be just fine, and he'll be in a future Democratic administration in a major role. Furthermore, the way the Swift Boaters acted in 2004 just gives the sense that Republicans have no problem lying and demeaning the service of leading Democratic vets (which they do), and McCain using an associate of that effort damages the credibility of this manufactured outrage. I think most people shrug their shoulders at the whole thing, and the election will be far more likely to be decided on things like this graphic:



UPDATE: Paul Waldman is absolutely right. John McCain has leveraged his POW status forever, despite media myths that he's reluctant to talk about it. POW footage has appeared in half his campaign commercials this cycle.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with that. But what happened with Gen. Clark reveals the McCain Rules, as he and the press would have us understand them. Here's how things are supposed to work: It's fine for the McCain campaign to run ads touting his time as a POW, create web videos touting his time as a POW, have him mention his time as a POW in speeches, and have him bring it up in debates (remember "I was tied up at the time"?). In other words, it's fine to have John McCain's entire presidential run be presented through the filter of his POW experience. Should, however, someone even ask the question of whether the fact that McCain was a POW really qualifies him to be president, that would be a deeply offensive affront to all that is right and good, and must not be tolerated. Talk about having it both ways.

Also, this is completely politically incorrect, but true.

Everyone Put On The Brakes For A Minute

I know Barack Obama is a horrible, dastardly person and his move to the center has offended many of his greatest supporters. At times it's offended me; I'm a member of the social networking group inside his own website asking him to do the right thing on FISA. It has 7,500 members now, suggesting that many of his fervent supporters are more progressive than he is and will not be particularly interested in giving themselves over to the great glory of Obama and silencing their own criticisms.

I think this expectation of being "stabbed in the back" has gone into less critical territory now, however. On the faith-based initiatives front, I don't see the problem with partnering on anti-poverty programs, demanding accountability from them, and ensuring that their participation complies with all relevant Constitutional statutes. I understand the argument that there's a distinction without a difference, as the church would get money to use on secular anti-poverty programs and save their own money to discriminate in other areas. But that just warps history and suggests that no faith-based charity ever got money from the government prior to big bad George Bush. They did, and in fact it was ruled unconstitutional for them to be denied on the basis of religion.

Now, I hit Obama hard yesterday on rebuking Wesley Clark's perfectly legitimate comments, and I don't think it was some plausible deniability strategy. However, he said today that the remarks in his speech yesterday, which many thought alluded to Clark, had nothing to do with him and were written two months ago. What happened yesterday, I think, is that the Clark thing blew up and stepped on his daily message, and he wanted it to go away quickly to get back to the message of the day.

Now, like Glenn Greenwald I don't disagree that there's a bad pattern here:

That's quite a two weeks. One of the primary reasons that blogs emerged over the last seven years was as a reaction to, an attempt to battle against, exactly this narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced -- that it is the duty of every Democrat to repudiate and attack their own base; that the truly pernicious elements are on the "Far Left", whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation; that "Strength" in National Security is determined by agreement with GOP policies, which is where "the Center" is found; that Seriousness is demonstrated by contempt for the liberal masses; that every Democrat must apologize for any statement over which Republicans feign offense [...]

A presidential election is a unique time when Americans are engaged in a discussion over our collective political values (at least more engaged than any other time). Why would anyone watch the Obama campaign use this opportunity to perpetuate and reinforce this narrative, and watch Obama embrace polices that are the precise antithesis of the values he espoused in the past, and not criticize or object to that? Criticisms of that sort aren't unhealthy or counter-productive. They're the opposite. Of course one ought to object if a political candidate -- even Barack Obama -- is advocating policies that trample on one's core political values or promulgating toxic narratives. That's particularly true since his doing so isn't necessary to win; it's actually more likely to have the opposite effect.

There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important. But so, too, is the way that victory is achieved and what Obama advocates and espouses along the way. Feeding distortions against someone like Wesley Clark in order to please Joe Klein and his fact-free media friends, or legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and protecting joint Bush/telecom lawbreaking, or basing his campaign on demonizing MoveOn.org and 1960s anti-war hippies, is quite harmful in many long-lasting ways. Electing Barack Obama is a very important political priority but it isn't the only one there is, and his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.

Absolutely. But I think a lot of things are getting swept up in this "move to the center" narrative that ought not necessarily be in there. And I think we have to be careful that our narratives don't get as rigid and impervious to contrasting information as the traditional media.

I also agree with Markos and I didn't donate to Obama in June for this reason, too. But I think there's a happy medium here. Not EVERYTHING Obama is doing is designed to stab bloggers in the back.

UPDATE: I also agree with Arianna that moving to the center for the sake of pleasing elites is a loser's game, and the benefit is outweighed by the costs. You would think that a campaign that believes itself to be transformative wouldn't be so ashamed of the more transformative side of his own party. It does hurt his brand. But taking everything to the extreme and imputing the worst possible motives dilutes it even further, and what's more it's intellectually dishonest.

UPDATE II: I hate to keep going with this, but here's what Obama just said:

Obama Just Said Re: Clark That Gen Clark didn't have the intent of the SBVT and he rejects that analogy.

...also, Pastor Dan has more on the faith-based initiatives and worries that it'll become a patronage factory for the left, which is a legitimate concern. I think if they're serious about measuring effectiveness that I don't much care who benefits. In an email he notes that the "fungible" argument may be bogus because many of the largest orgs. like Catholic Charities have separate organizations for their charity efforts.

War Made Easy

In the least patriotic move of all time, private military contractors who get rich off of war and occupation set up offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. They get their entire windfall of an income from the government and refuse to give their fair share back.

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

Right now it's a loophole, but Senators Kerry and Obama have legislation to plug it, and as long as Max Baucus can be kept far away from the bill, they ought to be able to do it. But there's more. The House voted recently to deny government contracts to companies that don't pay their corporate taxes. This is a COMMON occurrence which over 25,000 defense contractors have taken advantage of.

And some people will go on about "runaway spending" and "earmark reform." Please. The budget could be balanced, and public health programs not raided as the President wants to do, simply by no longer funding tax evaders and thieves until they pay their fair share and stop wasting taxpayer money on useless weapons programs and endless overruns. This is one of those situations where practically everyone looks the other way and pretends the problem right in front of us doesn't exist. The military budget, and military contractors, are bankrupting the country. Bottom line.

Hopefully it got through that I'm questioning Halliburton's patriotism.

Rove On Arrogance

Karl Rove kicks off the opening salvo in the quadrennial "Question The Democrat's Patriotism" derby:

Are you surprised at how Obama exploded?
You know, I want to be careful—I think we need to be careful about not getting carried away with a narrative that doesn't truly exist. Like the story this morning in The New York Times about "the Obamacans"—the Republicans who support Obama.

You don't buy that?
No. Do I buy that there are Republicans who support Obama? Sure, I do. But take a look at the last four polls on which there are cross tabs available. There are twice as many Democrats defecting to McCain as there are Republicans defecting to Obama. In the Fox poll, Obama takes 74 percent of Democrats and loses 18 to McCain. And McCain keeps 80 percent of Republicans and loses 10 to Obama. And in every one of the polls, it's nearly twice as many Democrats defect to McCain as Republicans defect to Obama. And against Clinton, it's three times as many. Know why? Well, there are a lot of different reasons why. There are Democrats, particularly blue-collar Democrats, who defect to McCain because they see McCain as a patriotic figure and they see Obama as an elitist who's looking down his nose at 'em. Which he is. That comment where he said, you know, "After 9/11, I didn't wear a flag lapel pin because true patriotism consists of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin"? Well, to a lot of ordinary people, putting that flag lapel pin on is true patriotism. It's a statement of their patriotic love of the country. And for him to sit there and dismiss it as he did—

I think we all know what's coming next... all together now...

You're not wearing a flag pin, Karl.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But I respect those who consciously get up in the morning and put a flag lapel pin on.

I'd be thrilled if the Republicans decided to fight a War On People Who Don't Wear Lapel Pins fought by people who aren't wearing lapel pins themselves. Ionesco couldn't have come up with such an absurd scenario.

But let's look at this larger point, this depiction of Obama as an effete, out-of-touch elitist. Here's some more from Turdblossom's interview:

Do you see the elitist thing in other ways?
Obama is coolly detached and very arrogant. I think he's very smart and knows he's smart, but as a result doesn't do his homework.

Arrogant, ay? Well yes, if there's one thing that divides Democrats and Republicans, particularly Barack Obama and Karl Rove, it's arrogance.

Example #1:

After midterm election interviewer Robert Siegel stated that "many might consider you on the optimistic end of realism" regarding Republican hopes to retain both Houses in November, Rove suggested that the NPR host was biased.

"Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that," Rove said. "You're just making a comment."

"I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day," Seigel responded

"No you're not!" Rove exclaimed.

Rove said that he was reviewing 68 polls a week, and that "unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races," as opposed to public polls reported in the media.

"You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome," Rove said.

Rove claimed that the polls "add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House."

"You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math," Rove said. "I'm entitled to 'the' math."

Example #2:

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country [...]

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

Yes, it's OBAMA that's the arrogant one.

It's really like watching a Greek tragedy watching the Republicans. They ALWAYS project onto others the deficiencies in themselves. But the other thing they do is thrive on constant repetition. There is nothing different in this critique of Obama that we haven't heard in critiques of Al Gore and John Kerry. They reinforce back on themselves because they aren't critiques of individuals but Democrats generally. Rove is trying to get you to paint a picture of all Democrats as latte-sipping Volvo-drivers who aren't real Americans. In fact there isn't anyone less American than a political hack who views his President as a king who is unanswerable to his lowly subjects. Honestly I don't think these attacks on patriotism work anymore when the guy supposed to be the ultimate patriot has deceived us into an intractable war, ruined our international standing and emptied our Treasury.

But where this interview got fun is when Rove was asked about his role in the Siegelman railroading:

Let's talk about the last couple of scandals you've been involved in. Don Siegelman in Alabama [the Democratic governor whom Rove was recently accused of trying to sabotage by forcing U.S. attorneys to bring corruption charges against him prior to an election]. What happened?
[rolls his eyes] Will you do me a favor and go on Power Line (hilarious -ed.) and Google "Dana Jill Simpson" [the Republican lawyer who told 60 Minutes that Rove asked her to take a picture of Governor Siegelman cheating on his wife]? She's a complete lunatic. I've never met this woman. This woman was not involved in any campaign in which I was involved. I have yet to find anybody who knows her. And what the media has done on this… No one has read the 143-page deposition that she gave congressional investigators—143 pages. When she shows up to give her explanation of all this, do you know how many times my name appears? Zero times. Nobody checked!

Then how did this happen?
Because CBS is a shoddy operation. They said, "Hey, if we can say 'Karl Rove,' 'Siegelman,' that'll be good for ratings. Let's hype it. We'll put out a news release on Thursday and then promo the hell out of it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday." And Scott Pelley—the question is, Did [60 Minutes correspondent] Scott Pelley say to this woman, "You say you met with him. Where? And you say that he gave you other assignments earlier. When did he begin giving you assignments, and what campaigns did you work with him in? What evidence? I mean, this woman, she said she met with him: Okay, you met with him—where? Did you fly to Washington?" Now she says that she talked to me on the phone and she's got phone records. Of calls to Washington and Virginia. But what's Virginia? I don't live in Virginia. And it's 2001. What is in Virginia? It's not the Bush headquarters; that was in Austin, Texas. What is in Virginia? So—but look, she's a loon.

Touchy, touchy. As you would expect from someone whose fingerprints are smeared all over the case. By the way 60 Minutes initially caved to pressure to kill the story and then reluctantly aired it on the same night as the Oscars, so I'm not sure it was a ratings bonanza they were after.

Rove is trying a classic Chewbacca defense, going personal on Dana Jill Simpson to muddy the waters. It's what he does - personal attacks are the only ones that interest him. But in 2006 he should have recognized that his political moment was over. I'm hardly afraid of a guy who attacks Obama for not wearing a flag lapel pin when he isn't wearing one himself. If that's the best he's got he ought to go back to superior court judge campaigns in Alabama.

Richardson Endorses Obama

And he'll be on the campaign trail with him Friday in Portland. We've seen throughout the course of the campaign that these endorsements end up meaning little, but this one is interesting because Richardson appeared to have been swayed by Obama's race and politics speech. From his email to supporters:

Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama gave an historic speech. that addressed the issue of race with the eloquence, sincerity, and optimism we have come to expect of him. He inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility. He asked us to rise above our racially divided past, and to seize the opportunity to carry forward the work of many patriots of all races, who struggled and died to bring us together.

As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words. I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants--specifically Hispanics-- by too many in this country. Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences--and place blame on others not like them. We all know the real culprit -- the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration!

Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race. He understands clearly that only by bringing people together, only by bridging our differences can we all succeed together as Americans.

His words are those of a courageous, thoughtful and inspiring leader, who understands that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And, after nearly eight years of George W. Bush, we desperately need such a leader.

What's notable here is that, as a superdelegate, Richardson was moved enough to endorse, when it was really past the time when that endorsement could have an effect. The superdelegates can end this thing now if they wanted to, and that Richardson decided to endorse at this moment suggests that they might. At this point it looks like the superdelegate fight will be dead even by the convention, meaning that they won't be a factor. The nominee will be the winner of the pledged delegate battle, which mens it'll be Senator Obama.

That the speech itself had the power to move people is also very notable. I don't think a politician like Bill Richardson is a sample of the Democratic electorate per se, but clearly Obama changed the conversation and dominated the news for the entire week. And he did so by weaving the progressive message into that complex and difficult discussion about race. I think Drew Westen penned one of the best essays about the speech.

But from a political standpoint, at least as important as the primary message of his speech was a series of meta-messages he conveyed as much through his actions as his words. Obama's speech was in many respects a rejoinder to a number of questions raised about him over the last few weeks that contributed to defeats in Ohio and Texas.

...he did more than talk about race. He began to build a progressive narrative that Democrats, and the progressive movement more broadly, have had difficulty developing. He offered a progressive vision of patriotism, integrating a more traditional view -- referring to his grandfather's service under General Patton, and the military service of Reverend Wright -- with the notion that love of country is not blind love, that forming a more perfect union -- the essence of progressivism -- is part of what it means to love one's country.

Does he have the courage, capacity, and cojones to lead? Yesterday, he led us as a nation, and he showed a firm, steady, and unflinching hand. Not only did he utter words most Democratic politicians don't speak in polite company but should have spoken years ago, but he refused to take the low road -- to denounce and cast aside someone who clearly matters dearly to him simply because he had become a political liability -- displaying both courage and conviction.

I think that's what many found touching. The speech was a discourse on race but also a display of character. That's what Bill Richardson saw as surely as whites and African-Americans and Asians all over the country saw. It does feel like something new is in the air.

How's Obama Doing Against The Attack Machine?

Pretty darn good, says Glenn Greenwald:

Far more notable is Barack Obama's response to these depressingly familiar attacks. In response, he's not scurrying around slapping flags all over himself or belting out the National Anthem, nor is he apologizing for not wearing lapels, nor is he defensively trying to prove that -- just like his Republican accusers -- he, too, is a patriot, honestly. He's not on the defensive at all. Instead, he's swatting away these slurs with the dismissive contempt they deserve, and then eagerly and aggressively engaging the debate on offense because he's confident, rather than insecure, about his position:

About not wearing an American flag lapel pin, Obama said Republicans have no lock on patriotism.

"A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans' benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?

"That is a debate I am very happy to have. We'll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism."

Obama is not cowering in the face of these attacks on his patriotism. He's not remaining silent. He's welcoming the debate. Furthermore, he's not shrinking from the GOP slime machine, who tried to twist his anecdote about a soldier having inadequate resources in Afghanistan. You can see that it's a part of his counter-attack on those who claim to "support the troops." That anyone could credibly say that leaving Afghanistan to focus on Iraq wouldn't cause a reduction in resources is completely spurious. Of course Afghanistan is suffering.

As Sgt. Erick Gallardo put it: "We don't get supplies, assets. We scrounge for everything and live a lot more rugged. But we know the war is here. We got unfinished business."

John Warner is a total embarrassment for playing ignorant on this. What a sad end to a Senate career.

What's more, Obama is taking the fight to John McCain on the issue of lobbying.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday that the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, Sen. John McCain, has lobbyists as top aides and "many of them have been running their business on the campaign bus while they've been helping him."

The Democratic presidential hopeful also said McCain's health care plans reflect "the agenda of the drug and insurance lobbyists, who back his campaign and use money and influence to block real health care reform."

Excellent. He's seeing the gift of the McCain stories and is quick to put them to use.

The most interesting tussle thus far between McCain and Obama is over this idea, promoted by McCain, that we should not "bomb our ally" in Pakistan, and even if we do in order to attack leaders of Al Qaeda, we shouldn't say anything about it. McCain is coming off like the pacifist in this battle, and on the absolute wrong side of public opinion (it is well within the range of international law to attack those who murdered 3,000 Americans, and this dodge looks simply like an extension of taking our eyes off Afghanistan to stay in Iraq).

The first test of how Obama is doing in this tussle is in a special election in IL-14, Dennis Hastert's old seat, where Democrat and scientist Bill Foster is taking on Republican Jim Oberweis. McCain and Obama have lent their talents to this district. While I believe that Foster isn't exactly a flaming liberal, he is running on a change in policy on Iraq. Whether or not Obama's clicking on this counter-attack may be revealed in this March special election.

The Coming Attack On Obama Takes Shape

We're starting to see how the Republicans will handle an Obama candidacy in the fall. The first answer is, yes, with racism, although they're testing how far they can take that without a serious backlash. I don't think we'll see the Jesse Helms "Hands" ad, but beneath the surface there'll be some racial appeals. On top of that surface, it'll be the narrative of the uppity elitist who thinks he's better than you. This is actually how the right has demonized Hillary Clinton for years; she thinks she's better than you and smarter than you. Because, you know, the worst possible outcome would be to have a smart President.

But this elitism has to be connected to a greater outrage for it to work. And so the Republicans use patriotism. It's actually somewhat ingenious, as it attaches all of the threads we've already seen out there about Obama.

Kristol manages the neat trick of wrapping up not one, but two highly dubious anti-Obama smears into his first few grafs -- the bogus flag-pin patriotism story and Michelle Obama's claim that she's really proud of her country for the first time.

That's to be expected, of course. But what interests me is the overarching theme he uses to tie them together: They both show, he suggests, that haughty and elitist Obama thinks he's better than you and the average Joe. We saw these exact same attacks lobbed relentlessly at Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, of course.

Kristol reaches this "conclusion" by pointing to Obama's claim that he stopped wearing the flag pin because it "became a substitute" for "true patriotism." This, Kristol said, was tantamount to Obama saying that "he was too good" to wear the pin...

He's too good to be a real American, and so he's too good to wear the pin, and so he's not a real American because real Americans wear flag pins. Or something.

Sargent correctly notes that this "he's not a real American" smear is the same that we saw with regard to Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. And, of course, many conservatives do believe that liberals aren't real Americans, that they're some kind of coastal fifth column. The derision is ALWAYS over patriotism and "America-hating," from the time of Jeanne Kirkpatrick asking why liberals "blame America first" in 1984. It's an uncritical way of looking at the world, full of jingoism and completely outside of policy.

Where it departs, or builds upon, that theme, is in the fact that Obama is a black man, and in the eyes of various email forwards, a Muslim. This takes the "he's not a real American smear" to its extreme. He doesn't LOOK like a real American either, according to this tactic. I think this is why they feel they can get away with this more overt sneering, where CNN sees no problem running a poll asking if Obama shows the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be President.

How fucking dare you? Lack patriotism? What is this, the McCarthy era? AP is now willing to write any crap, so long as it's a Republican saying it about a Democrat? AP knows damn well that Obama doesn't hate America. This isn't a he-said-she-said. It's a case where AP is genuflecting to the Republicans and regurgitating their crap in a way Pickler and her fellow reporters wouldn't dare do if the victim were Republican. Has Pickler ever written a story about John McCain being insane? Being senile? Somehow I doubt it.

CNN should be ashamed of itself (and AP and the NYT are close behind). It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price.

So there it is. Anyone surprised? The personal attacks will feminize Obama as an effete intellectual egghead elitist who isn't a real American and is in fact some sort of Manchurian candidate for Al Qaeda, who lacks the experience to keep the country safe. It's an amalgam of all the attacks we've heard since the 1950s, and none of them have anything to do with policy. This is the battleground that the Republicans will fight the election on. If Obama were smart, he would fight on a completely different battleground, one of contrast, one that defends the 81% of Americans who don't think George Bush moved the country in the right direction. If the critique of him can be broadened out and surmised as a critique of that whole 81% ("they don't want your life to improve. They think you're not real Americans"), it loses all of its power through that dilution.

Treason Has Its Privileges

Look how anodyne this significant bit of information is presented in this AP report on Halliburton's third-quarter profits:

HOUSTON - Halliburton Co. continues to benefit from placing greater emphasis on its operations in the Eastern Hemisphere, where expanding business helped the company post a 19 percent rise in third-quarter earnings.

The Houston-based oilfield services company said Sunday its net income rose to $727 million, or 79 cents a share, in the July-September period from $611 million, or 58 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

The most-recent results included a favorable income tax benefit of $133 million, or 15 cents a share.

"Placing a greater emphasis" on Eastern Hemisphere operations is a bit of code. What they're trying to say is that Halliburton ditched the country that provided the bulk of its fortune over the past six years, instead moving its headquarters to Dubai. The "favorable income tax benefit" is nothing but TAX AVOIDANCE as a result of that offshoring.

If an individual tried to do this, they would be thrown in jail. It occurs to me at points like this just what a bunch of traitors these corporate CEOs are, particularly defense contractors. They make practically their entire living off the largesse of the federal government, and then when it's time for them to give back to a country that has given them so much, they skip town like they're walking out on lunch before the bill.

Let's call this what it is: treason. Real patriots love their country so much they think it's worth paying for. Paper patriots like these "defense" contractors want nothing more than to bleed America dry. Similarly, Blackwater is being questioned for saving tens of millions of tax dollars by classifying its personnel as "independent contractors. Whether or not this is an illegal action is an open question, actually. But there's no question that the purpose of the classification is to push the burden of taxation onto the individuals, and ultimately to save money. These corporations have absolutely no connection to this country anymore, which makes you wonder why they are still chartered to do business here.

We're Talking About Lapel Pins?

The firestorm of controversy over Barack Obama's lapel pin, or lack thereof, kind of proves Obama's entire point.

“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.

“Instead,” he said, “I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”

Good on him. This bumper-sticker patriotism is worse than annoying. It's debilitating. The idea is that you can advocate the most un-American policies imaginable, including secret detentions, torture, pre-emptive war, anything, but if you're wearing a flag on your suit, you're a patriot. You can support policies that deny troops the benefits they deserve, deny them the armor on the battlefield they need, but if you put a "support the troops" magnet on your car, you support the troops.

Life doesn't work that way. Patriotism takes work. It's not a slogan. It means pushing for your country to do the right thing. It means actually working to promote your values and ensuring that they are displayed on the national stage. It means accepting negative speech, it means fighting against unreasonable searches and seizures, it means defending the Constitutional rights of even the most downtrodden. Barack Obama is basically saying to the country, "Grow up. Democracy isn't as easy as wearing a sticker. Do something." Thank you.

Of course, it also goes without saying that the people most concerned with Barack Obama's lapel pin are rank hypocrites.

UPDATE: Paul Waldman:

This is a pretty clear conservative/progressive split. Conservatives are huge fans of symbolic patriotism -- flag lapel pins, flags on cars, full-throated singing of "God Bless the U.S.A." (aka "Proud to Be an American"), and so on -- public displays, in which one demonstrates to other people that one loves America.

Progressives, on the other hand, tend to favor substantive patriotism, which involves doing things to make one's country better. After all, if progressives really hated America, why would they even want to change it in ways that would make it conform more with their values? That would mean, from their perspective, making it better, something you wouldn't do if you just hated the country. I hate the Yankees, so if I figured out the perfect combination of trades that would lead to them winning the next five World Series, I'd be sure not to tell them.

This is the difference between thinking that patriotism means talking about how super-awesome America is, and that patriotism means doing things to make America great. There's nothing wrong with the former, if that's what moves you (and of course, there's nothing wrong with doing both simultaneously). But in practice, symbolic patriotism is all too often offered as a substitute for action. To take just one example, the conservative avers that we have "the best health care system in the world," even though that's plainly not true, and therefore we don't need to change it, while the progressive attempts to improve the health care system until it actually is the best in the world.

Comedy Central: The Most Trusted Name In News

I agree that Jon Stewart gave a pretty amazing performance with John McCain last night, rebuffing his lies about Iraq with truth and honesty. But I want to highlight one thing that happened as they went to commercial. Stewart said something or other perceptive that drew cheers from the audience, and as usual he mock-sheepishly apologized to McCain for it. McCain said dismissively, "I think I know who's side they're on"

And Stewart snapped back, "They're on America's side, because they're patriots."

This was a spectacular moment. McCain, like any Baby Party Republican, dismisses legitimate criticism as being necessarily partisan, as if no disagreement can come from principle, as if they could never possibly be wrong. The idea that your rhetorical opponent is on the "other side" and wants the country to fail is the worst thing we've received from this Bush Administration. I expect them to argue with be about what's best for the country; it's offensive that they think they're the only ones who know what's best. It's "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" writ large. It's simplistic bullshit, and Stewart was right to call him out for it.

Here's the video if you want to see and savor.