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November 2010 Archives

Non-Wikileaks Revelations on Libya

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 29 2010, 9:43AM

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For those of you who can never get enough leaked U.S. government documents but are tired of Wikileaks, The Atlantic's Max Fisher had a must-read scoop from this weekend about a once-secret deal to remove highly enriched uranium that very nearly went sour. He details the never-before-released news that the U.S. government had negotiated a highly sensitive deal with Libya last November to remove the uranium to Russia, but that Libya stopped the deal at the last moment, leaving several casks of the materials under light guard for a month while American and Russian negotiators frantically worked to get the shipment back on track while securing the uranium. While the story itself is illustrative not only of the risks of transporting these materials but also of dealing with autocratic, closed regimes, the most interesting part of the article is the role played by Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, in the negotiations, as detailed by U.S. State Department cables:

In November of last year, when officials without notice halted the dismantling process, the Libyans were down to their last 5.2 kilograms--still enough to make a bomb. A few days later, the U.S. embassy was contacted by Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi. The son of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Saif is widely seen as Libya's great hope for reform should he win out against his more conservative brother, Mutassim, and succeed their father. But on that day, Saif told the U.S. ambassador to Libya that he was "fed up" with the U.S. He warned, "Slowly, slowly, we are moving backward rather than forward."

Saif, according to the State Department cables reviewed by The Atlantic, told U.S. representatives that he could "fix" the nuclear crisis--if the U.S. met his demands. His list included military equipment, assistance in building a nuclear medical facility, relaxation of trade embargoes against Libya, and a sum of money that he implied would be in the tens of millions of dollars. But Saif made clear that what he sought most was respect. He suggested that the United States and Libya end their decades of enmity with a grand gesture of détente, even recommending that the senior Qaddafi and President Obama hold a joint summit. The incongruity of demanding friendship from the U.S. while simultaneously blackmailing it with the risk of loose nuclear materials does not appear to have bothered Saif. He concluded with a bit of American vernacular, telling the ambassador, "The ball is in your court."

The U.S. ambassador warned Saif that the Libyans had "chosen a very dangerous issue on which to express its apparent pique about perceived problems in the bilateral relationship," as an embassy official later put it in summarizing the meeting. According to that official, whose cable to Washington was among the 115 pages reviewed by The Atlantic, the ambassador added, "By its actions, Libya was jeopardizing its relationship with the whole international community."

As Saif laid out his demands to the United States, Libya's uranium sat outside Tajoura inviting more and more risk each day. The casks holding the uranium were designed for easy transportation but only short-term storage, a dangerous combination that made them susceptible to theft and cracking. Though International Atomic Energy Agency seals had been placed on the casks, the seals were only meant to indicate whether tampering had occurred and could be easily broken.

Western media have for the past several years lauded Saif as a new face in Libyan politics, a reformer often portrayed as being at odds with the establishment, and sometimes even his father, in pushing for economic and political reform in the country. However, these documents seem to show a different side to Saif, one actively working with the regime to leverage (to put it kindly) American fears of nuclear proliferation for serious material gains, when the removal of the uranium had already been negotiated.

This is not to say that Saif does not favor reform; his public statements testify to such a desire, and his two-year negotiations over the ideological "revisions" of then-imprisoned Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leaders may provide an important tool against the radicalization of insurgent and terrorist groups across the Muslim world. Rather, the exposure of Saif's role in this particular affair provide nuance to Saif's public image, demonstrating that no matter what change he may or may not want to bring to Libya, he will do it as a regime insider, with the possible benefits and constraints that such status entails.

-- Andrew Lebovich


Posted by replice vertu , Dec 08, 3:08AM Re Jewish Supremacist denigration of Arabs--"It's a particular instance of the all too prevalent tendency of people to distance an... read more
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The FP 100 is Out

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Sunday, Nov 28 2010, 11:19AM

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Foreign Policy just released its roster of the Top 100 Global Thinkers (and Doers):

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates * Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick * Barack Obama * Zhou Xiaochuan * Ben Bernanke * Celso Amorim * Ahmet Davutoglu * David Petraeus * Robert Gates * Angela Merkel * Michael Bloomberg and Feisal Abdul Rauf * Nouriel Roubini * Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton * Steven Chu * George Soros * Liu Xiaobo * Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs * Shivshankar Menon * Ron Paul * Mohamed Elbaradei * Sergey Brin and Larry Page * Christine Lagarde * Salam Fayyad * Elizabeth Warren * Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz * Paul Krugman and Raghuram Rajan * Fareed Zakaria * Shai Agassi * Paul Collier * Joseph Stiglitz * David Cameron * Cécile Duflot, Monica Frassoni, Renate Künast, Marina Silva * Thomas Friedman * John Kerry and Richard Lugar * Paul Farmer * Michelle Bachelet * Martin Wolf * Esther Duflo * Mohamed Nasheed * Abdolkarim Sorush * Mehdi Karroubi * Agnes Klingshirn and Peter Scott * Nandan Nilekani * Zheng Bijian * Mohamed El-Erian * Kwame Anthony Appiah * Jacques Attali * Robert Shiller * Vaclav Smil * Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart * Ahmed Rashid * Mo Ibrahim * Miles Morland and Rosa Whitaker * Paul Romer * Christopher Hitchens * John Bolton * Nathan Myhrvold * Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Thaler * Ory Okolloh * Fan Gang * Ayaan Hirsi Ali * Tariq Ramadan * Vinod Khosla * Mario Vargas Llosa * Bjorn Lomborg * Sabina Alkire * Clay Shirky * Malcolm Gladwell * Steven Pinker * John Arquilla * Louise Arbour * Atul Gawande * Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff * Michèle Flournoy and Anne-Marie Slaughter * Aung San Suu Kyi * Richard Clarke * Helene Gayle * Lester Brown * George Papandreou * Niall Ferguson * Ethan Zuckerman * Hu Shuli * Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler * Kamal Kar * Ellen Johnson Sirleaf * Han Han * Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned * Daron Acemoglu * David Grossman * Martha Nussbaum * Edwidge Danticat * Kishore Mahbubani * Malalai Joya * Madeleine Albright * Carl Bildt * Bruce Ackerman * Unity Dow * Michael Mandelbaum * Tarja Halonen * Ian Buruma

The feature piece also has interviews with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim (No. 6 on the list) and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice cell phone, Dec 08, 3:14AM nadine, not transferring the paperwork? Umm, sorry, no. Not crediting payments when they're made? Umm, sorry, no. Bad corporate p... read more
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Thanksgiving Weekend Pups

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, Nov 27 2010, 12:57AM

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Oakley Annie and Buddy CC.JPG

The pups send their best for the weekend. No more cats for a while. Promise.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu , Dec 08, 3:22AM Oakley and Annie I know, but who's the third one? Did I miss a new puppy announcement?... read more
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If Harry Potter Didn't Do it For you . . (Do Not Watch This If Easily Rattled)

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 26 2010, 9:20PM

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One friend of mine told me that this was the best film he had seen all year.

I think it's kind of on the edge of what anyone should be spending time watching -- but I couldn't help thinking that this was some kind of allegory about the Dems, the Republicans, and those pesky Tea Party crows.

And how did they get these critters to do all of this in sync with the music?

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by designer handbag replicas, Dec 06, 8:53PM The http://www.webbestchoice.com/ Louis Vuitton Monogram Miroir collection isn’t any ... read more
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Thanksgiving Sorrow from Afghanistan

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 26 2010, 8:34PM

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MarineCorpsLogo.jpgThis morning I received this Department of Defense announcement about a young man, William J. Donnelly IV, killed on active duty on Thanksgiving Day in Helmand Province.

Politics and views on this war aside, condolences to his family and friends.

DOD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

1st Lt. William J. Donnelly IV, 27, of Picayune, Miss., died Nov. 25 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu , Dec 08, 3:25AM he Louis Vuitton Monogram Miroir collection isn’t any exception. Highly known celebs such as Paris Hilton and Scarlett Johansson c... read more
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Obama Mash-up: Don't Touch My Junk

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 26 2010, 4:52PM

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On a more serious front, read Dana Milbank's logic knock on the heads of a few leading allegedly fiscally conservative Republicans who have been pining for the level of security that Israel applies at its airports. Milbank stings them with the hard dollar reality that what they want would cost more than $40 billion a year:

"What the Israelis do - and I've flown on El Al about a dozen times to Israel - what they do is the way it ought to be done," says likely Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

"I traveled to Israel, and I tell you what," says Tea Party darling Allen West, congressman-elect from Florida. "They have very good procedures and you don't have to go through all of these very draconian practices."

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), making the rounds of cable TV, says the federal government "flubbed the dub" because "they didn't take the Israeli model." Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Tea Party godfather, praised the "Israeli model" during a Senate hearing, and Fox News's Sean Hannity proclaimed: "We have a paradigm, a model that is enormously successful, and that's Israel."

The Israeli model for airport screening has, without a doubt, been successful. But do these guys have any idea what they are proposing? Replicating the Israeli model in the United States would easily cost $40 billion a year - and possibly many times that. That would wind up being more expensive than supposed big-government boondoggles such as the Troubled Assets Relief Program and the auto bailout, and it would wipe out Republican promises to cut spending.

Milbank also cites Foreign Policy's Annie Lowrey who calculated that "if each passenger flying through a U.S. airport were subjected to 10 minutes of questioning by a guard, we would need 3 million full-time guards, at a cost of more than $150 billion a year."

And as Harvard scholar and Foreign Policy blogger Stephen Walt wrote to me this morning:

Am I the only person who sees the irony in the recommendation that the US adopt the Israeli approach to airline security? The proper question to ask is: why do we suddenly need greater airport security?

Could it be because we've gradually adopted Israel's approach to the Middle East too?

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu , Dec 08, 3:28AM "Fact is, I am not a security expert such that I can say if Milbank's numbers are in the ballpark or not. " (questions) And you t... read more
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Everyone Pushing New Boundaries on Obama

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 26 2010, 3:57PM

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Since the Republican red tide swept across America on November 2nd, President Obama has been threatened by Republicans who want to roll back key provisions of his health care reform, are threatening to derail the START Treaty, and want to pull the plug on as much Obama-crafted policy as possible.

On the international front, the Germans, Chinese and Japanese are resisting America's proposals on economic rebalancing -- i.e., they buy more and we spend less; the South Koreans play hard ball and resist provisions of a free trade agreement that they used to want; the North Koreans commit the worst act of military aggression since the 1953 armistice; and Israel continues to defy White House pressure to act responsibly in the peace talks process.

Obama just isn't having an easy time -- and now as CNN's Ed Henry reports, one of his own friends gives President Obama an elbow in the mouth -- requiring 12 stitches.

The President needs to take a time out and come out with a new team and new plan to take on, well, just about everybody -- friend and foe alike.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu, Dec 08, 3:33AM But crime prevention isn't the FBI's thing, agency and budget promotion is. So they work the kid for a year or so, get him to do a... read more
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Mt. Fuji: Picture of the Day

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 25 2010, 9:13PM

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mt fuji from hakone steve clemons.jpg

Had a great time in Hakone, Japan where I took this amazing shot of Mt. Fuji.

Years ago, I climbed all night to get the top of this volcano and saw the sun rise. High on the memorable list.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu, Dec 08, 3:36AM You'll be back in Japan, then, since seeing Mt. Fuji means you'll return. Being Steve Clemons, that's a no-brainer!... read more
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Israeli Prime Ministers Love Sport of Controlling US Presidents

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 25 2010, 8:39PM

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A bit of a historical reminder above, and thanks to Andrew Sullivan for surfacing this.

Israeli political leaders too often want to brag that they control the US President -- and that what they demand, they get.

In this case, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert bragged on video that he shamed then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and forced her via an uninformed President George W. Bush to abstain on her own UN Security Council resolution.

The trend continues with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling various close friends that he has the US Congress in his pocket and can largely ignore the White House. Netanyahu, according to sources, believe he can just bide his time.

Netanyahu wants to bring down President Obama, when it is Obama who should be destabilizing the far right coalition of the Netanyahu government.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by replice vertu , Dec 08, 3:39AM "Emily Henochowicz was not shot intentionally, and that's that" Of course. Thats why the investigators declined to question the w... read more
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George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 25 2010, 8:28PM

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-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Coach Outlet, Nov 30, 10:34PM I really liked your blog article.Looking forward for more such stuff.... read more
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This Thanksgiving, Looking Back at George Washington

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 25 2010, 2:47AM

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GW1782.jpgThis Thanksgiving essay was originally written for the Huffington Post.

I know it sounds really corny, but this Thanksgiving, I'm grateful that George Washington was our first President -- and that Barack Obama who like GW can be austere and seemingly distant from common folks but yet is smart and chameleon-like in his ability to forge compromises can still get a great deal right in his presidency.

Reading Ron Chernow's excellent Washington: A Life, I realize how different our world would have been had someone like Tom DeLay or Aaron Burr been America's first president. We might have ended up with someone who never wanted to leave the position as Washington did.

Or among the early founding fathers, if John Adams had come first, or Jefferson - the consolidation of a single political faction's control over the machinery of government at such a fragile stage might have meant civil war far earlier than the one America eventually got.

Continue reading this article

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by sanitychecker, Nov 25, 7:11PM Never in my lifetime has the duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable been more pressing. There is a season for c... read more
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Japan: The View from My Window

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 24 2010, 8:13PM

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japan miyako hotel view steve clemons.jpg

In Tokyo for a couple of days, and this was a pretty nice way to get acclimated when I arrived. Beautiful gardens here outside my window.

North Korea's leaders need to spend some time in gardens like these -- and cool out a bit. Seems to me that North Korea's attack, despite the violence uptick, is a typical call for attention and an extortionist demand for more resources.

Information has reached me that some USAF personnel have been put on 24 hour deployment alert with regard to North Korea. I don't know how regular or irregular that is -- but know that despite a lot of tension in the country since 9/11, my sources have not been put on such alert before. The USAF has denied that it has changed its alert status in comments to other journalist friends of mine -- but the actual personnel beg to differ.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Don Bacon, Nov 26, 6:35PM Territorial waters, according to accepted maritime boundary understandings, extend 12nm (1nm = 6076ft) from the coast. The 1953 ... read more
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Ileana Chides Netanyahu Over Cuba

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Nov 23 2010, 5:45PM

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This is a guest post by Anya Landau French, who directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

Politico's Ben Smith reports that incoming House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen worked to shut down a potential warming of Cuban-Israeli relations after Fidel Castro made a surprise defense of the Jewish people earlier this year. (Castro questioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his failure to recognize the holocaust, and said that "no one has been more slandered than the Jews.")

According to Smith, Israeli officials saw Castro's uncharacteristic remarks as an opportunity.

Israeli leaders reacted warmly to an unexpected defense of Jews and Israel, and criticism of Iran, from Cuban leader Fidel Castro in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Castro's "deep understanding" and President Shimon Peres wrote in a warm letter to Castro that the comments were "a surprising bridge between the hard reality and a new horizon." Israeli officials, I'm told, saw the moment as an opportunity to widen a fissure in the hostility of the global left for Israel.

Alan Berger, at the Boston Globe, would probably agree (h/t to the Atlantic's Goldberg). After Goldberg publicized Castro's comments, Berger argued that Castro himself sought to moderate some of his allies with his comments.

"Whatever his personal feelings about the matter, Castro was drawing a bright line between himself and Ahmadinejad. At the same time, he was giving a lesson to his foremost student, Chávez, in the putative difference between progressive and reactionary values. Chávez has tolerated and even promoted virulent anti-Semitism in Venezuela. But a day after Castro's condemnation of Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitism, Chávez said he would meet with Jewish community leaders and declared: "We respect and love the Jewish people.''"

This is the same sort of logic that many more centrist and conservative Latin Americanists, particularly those worried about the polarizing influence of Hugo Chavez in the hemisphere, have espoused as one more excellent reason for President Obama to engage Cuba. A 2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report prepared by Carl Meacham of Ranking Member Richard Lugar's staff put it this way:

"Certain Latin American leaders, whose political appeal depends on the propagation of an array of anti-Washington grievances, would lose momentum as a centerpiece [U.S. restrictions on Cuba] of these grievances is removed."

In other words, constructive engagement with Cuba could well serve a more conservative ideology, one which Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (who will become Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this January) might be expected to embrace. Except she didn't. Ben Smith explains:

A Cuban exile and fierce Castro foe, she made her displeasure known to the Israelis -- and even received an apologetic call from Netanyahu, which appears effectively to have squelched the unlikely dialogue with Cuba.

"I just said look, this guy has been an enemy of Israel, just because he said something that a normal person would say--after 50 years of anti-Israel incitement it's one phrase from an old guy who doesn't even know where he's standing," Ros-Lehtinen told me of the exchange.

-- Anya Landau French


Posted by Valeria, Dec 14, 2:11AM Sara Palin and Ileana Ros-Lethinen - what more can the world wish for ?... read more
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Keeping an Eye on Ireland

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Nov 23 2010, 2:55PM

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This is a guest post by Sean Kay. He is professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University and an associate at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Celtic Revival: The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

Just three years ago, Ireland was hailed as a model of economic progress in the "Celtic Tiger". In 2005, Tom Friedman of the New York Times lauded Ireland - saying that: "I do get a little lump in my throat when I see countries like China, India, or Ireland adopting a pro-globalization strategy, adapting it to their own political, social, and economic conditions, and reaping the benefits. Mr. Friedman saw Ireland as: "One of the best examples of a country that has made a huge leap forward by choosing development and reform retail of its governance, infrastructure, and education." In the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain laid out Ireland as a model for America to emulate.

So confident in their way of doing things were Irish leaders that when some Irish economists began warning of the Irish housing and construction bubble in 2007, the former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said to an applauding audience that he did not understand why people who were talking down the economy - "cribbing and moaning" - he said - "I don't know why people who engage in that don't commit suicide."

Continue reading this article

-- Andrew Lebovich


Posted by DonS, Nov 24, 6:50PM . . . but no tampering with the sacred corporate income tax rate. As in the US it seems, genuflecting at the corporate altar is ... read more
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Chalmers Johnson on America's Strategic Decline

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 22 2010, 4:46PM

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It's good to go back every once in a while and get a refresher course on high octane Chalmers Johnson.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by DonS, Nov 24, 8:27PM "Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom FY01/02.$20.8bn FY03.....14.7 FY04.....14.5 FY05.....20.0 FY06.....19.0 FY07.....39.2 FY08... read more
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The Impact Today and Tomorrow of Chalmers Johnson

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Sunday, Nov 21 2010, 12:30PM

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chal johnson.jpgNext week, Foreign Policy magazine and its editor-in-chief Susan Glasser will be releasing its 2nd annual roster of the world's greatest thinkers and doers in foreign policy. I have seen the list -- and it's impressively creative and eclectic.

There is one name that is not on the FP100 who should be -- and that is Chalmers Johnson, who from my perspective rivals Henry Kissinger as the most significant intellectual force who has shaped and defined the fundamental boundaries and goal posts of US foreign policy in the modern era.

Johnson, who passed away Saturday afternoon at 79 years, invented and was the acknowledged godfather of the conceptualization of the "developmental state". For the uninitiated, this means that Chalmers Johnson led the way in understanding the dynamics of how states manipulated their policy conditions and environments to speed up economic growth. In the neoliberal hive at the University of Chicago, Chalmers Johnson was an apostate and heretic in the field of political economy. Johnson challenged conventional wisdom with he and his many star students -- including E.B. Keehn, David Arase, Marie Anchordoguy, Mark Tilton and others -- writing the significant treatises documenting the growing prevalence of state-led industrial and trade and finance policy abroad, particularly in Asia.

Today, the notion of "State Capitalism" has become practically commonplace in discussing the newest and most significant features of the global economy. Chalmers Johnson invented this field and planted the intellectual roots of understanding that other nation states were not trying to converge with and follow the so-called American model.

Johnson for his seminal work on Japanese political economy, MITI and the Japanese Miracle was dubbed by Newsweek's Robert Neff as "godfather of the revisionists" on Japan. Neff also tagged Clyde Prestowitz, James Fallows, Karel van Wolferen and others like R. Taggart Murphy and Pat Choate as the leaders of a new movement that argued that Japan was organizing its political economy in different ways than the U.S. This was a huge deal in its day -- and these writers and thinkers led by the implacable Johnson were attacked from all corners of American academia and among the crowd of American Japan-hands who wanted to deflect rather than focus a spotlight on the fact that Japan's economic mandarins were really the national security elite of the Pacific powerhouse nation.

In the 1980s when Johnson was arguing that Japan's state directed capitalism was succeeding at not only propelling Japan's wealth upwards but was creating "power" for Japan in the eyes of the rest of the world, Kissinger and the geostrategic crowd could not see beyond the global currency and power realities of nuclear warheads and throw-weight. The revisionists were responsible for injecting the economic dynamics of power and national interest in the equation of a nation's global status.

To understand China's rise today, the fact that China has become the Google of nations and America the General Motors of countries -- the US being seen by others as a very well branded, large, underperforming country -- one must go back to Chalmers Johnson's work on the developmental state.

Scratch beneath these Johnson breakthroughs though and go back another decade and a half and one finds that Chalmers Johnson, a one time hard-right national security hawk, deconstructed the Chinese Communist revolution and showed that the dynamic that drive the revolutionary furor had less to do with class warfare and the appeal of communism but rather high octane "nationalism." Johnson saw earlier than most that the same dynamic was true in Vietnam. His work which was published as Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power while a UC Berkeley doctoral student launched him as a formidable force in Asia-focused intellectual circles in the U.S.

Johnson's ability to launch an instant, debilitating broadside against the intellectual vacuousness of friends or foes made him controversial. He chafed under the UC Berkeley Asia Program leadership of Robert Scalapino whom Johnson viewed as one of the primary dynastic chiefs of what became known as the "Chrysanthemum Club", those whose Japan-hugging meant overlooking and/or ignoring the characteristics of Japan's state-led form of capitalism. Johnson was provocatively challenged graduate students in the field to choose sides -- to work either on the side where they acquiesced to a corrupt culture of US-Japan apologists who wanted the quaint big brother-little brother frame for the relationship to remain the dominant portal through which Japan was viewed or alternatively on the side of those who saw Japan and America's forfeiture of its own economic interests as empirical facts.

When Robert Scalapino refused to budge despite Johnson's agitation, Johnson who then headed UC Berkeley's important China Studies program abandoned the university and became the star intellectual of UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. There is no doubt that Johnson but UCSD's IRPS on the map and gave it an instant, global boost.

But as usual, Johnson -- incorruptible and passionate about policy, theory, and their practice -- eventually went to war with the bureaucrats running that institution. Those who had come in to head it were devotees of "rational choice theory" -- which was spreading through the fields of political science and other social sciences as the so-called softer sciences were trying to absorb and apply the harder-edged econometrics-driven models of behavior that the neoliberal trends in economics were using.

Johnson and one of his proteges, E.B. "Barry" Keehn, wrote a powerful indictment of rational choice theory that helped trigger a long-running and still important intellectual divide that showed that rational choice theory was one of the great ideological delusions of the era. I too joined this battle and wrote extensively about the limits of rational choice theory which I myself saw dislodging university language programs, cultural studies, and more importantly -- the institutional/structural approaches to understanding other political systems.

Johnson once told me when I was visiting him and his long-term, constant intellectual partner and wife, Sheila Johnson, that the UCSD School of International Relations and Pacific Studies no longer either really taught international relations or pacific studies -- and that a student's entire first year was focused on acultural skill set development in economics and statistics. To Johnson, this tendency to elevate econometric formulas over the actual study of a nation's language, history, culture and political system was part of America's growing cultural imperialism. Studying "them" is really about "us" -- as "they" will converge to be like "us" or will fall to the way side and be insignificant.

It was that night that Chalmers Johnson, Sheila Johnson and I agreed to form an idea on had been developing called the Japan Policy Research Institute. Chalmers became President and I the Director. We maintained this working relationship at the helm of JPRI together for more than 12 years and spoke nearly every week if not every other day as we tried to acquire and publish the leading thinking on Japan, US-Japan relations and Asia more broadly. We became conveners, published works on Asia that the official journals of record of US-Asia policy viewed as too risky, and emerged as key players in the media on all matters of America's economic, political, and military engagement in the Pacific. Today, JPRI is headed by Chiho Sawada and is based at the University of San Francisco.

However, this base of JPRI gave Chalmers Johnson the launch pad that led to the largest contribution of his career to America's national discourse. From his granular understanding of political economy of competing nations, his understanding of the national security infrastructure of both sides of the Cold War, he saw better than most that the US had organized its global assets -- particularly its vassals Japan and Germany -- in a manner similar to the Soviet Union. Both sides looked like the other. Both were empires. The Soviets collapsed, Chalmers told me and wrote. The U.S. did not -- yet.

The rape of a 12 year-old girl by three American servicemen in Okinawa, Japan in September 1995 and the statement by a US military commander that they should have just picked up a prostitute became the pivot moving Johnson who had once been a supporter of the Vietnam War and railed against UC Berkeley's anti-Vietnam protesters into a powerful critic of US foreign policy and US empire.

Johnson argued that there was no logic that existed any longer for the US to maintain a global network of bases and to continue the occupation of other countries like Japan. Johnson noted that there were over 39 US military installations on Okinawa alone. The military industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned against had become a fixed reality in Johnson's mind and essays after the Cold War ended.

In four powerful books, all written not in the corridors of power in New York or Washington -- but in his small home office at Cardiff-by-the-Sea in California, Johnson became one of the most successful chroniclers and critics of America's foreign policy designs around the world.

Before 9/11, Johnson wrote the book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. After the terrorist attacks in 2001 in New York and Washington, Blowback became the hottest book in the market. The publishers could not keep up with demand and it became the most difficult to get, most wanted book among those in national security topics.

He then wrote Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, and most recently Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope. Johnson, who used to be a net assessments adviser to the CIA's Allen Dulles, had become such a critic of Washington and the national security establishment that this hard-right conservative had become adopted as one of the political left's greatest icons.

Johnson measured himself to some degree against the likes of Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal -- but in my mind, Johnson was the more serious, the most empirical, the most informed about the nooks and crannies of every political position as he had journeyed the length of the spectrum.

Chalmers Johnson served on my board when I worked at the Japan America Society of Southern California. He and I, along with Sheila Johnson -- along with Tom Engelhardt one of the world's great editors -- created the Japan Policy Research Institute. Johnson served on the Advisory Board of the Nixon Center when I served as the Center's founding executive director. We had a long, constructive, feisty relationship. He helped propel my career and thinking. In recent years, we were more distant -- mostly because I was not ready, as he was, to completely disown Washington.

Many of Johnson's followers and Chal himself think that American democracy is lost, that the republic has been destroyed by an embrace of empire and that the American public is unaware and unconscious of the fix. He may be right -- but I took a course trying to use blogs, new media, and a DC based think tank called the New America Foundation to challenge conventional foreign policy trends in other ways. Ultimately, I think Chalmers was content with what I was doing but probably knew that in the end, I'd catch up with him in his profound frustration with what America was doing in the world.

Chalmers and Sheila Johnson saw me lead the battle against John Bolton's confirmation vote in the Senate as US Ambassador to the United Nations -- but given the scale of his ambitions to dislodge America's embrace of empire, Bolton was too small a target in his eyes. He was probably right.

Saying Chalmers Johnson is dead sounds like a lie. I can't fathom him being gone -- and with all of the amazing times I've had with him as well as the bouts of political debate and even yelling as we were pounding out JPRI materials on deadline, I just can't imagine that this blustery, irreverent, completely brilliant force won't be there to challenge Washington and academia.

Few intellectuals attain what might have been called many centuries ago the rank of "wizard" -- an almost other worldly force who defied society's and life's rules and commanded an enormous following of acolytes and enemies.

Wizards don't die -- and I hope that those who read this, who knew him, or go on reading his works in the decades ahead provoke, inspire, jab, rebuke, applaud, and condemn in the way he did.

In one of my fondest memories of Chalmers and Sheila Johnson at their home with their then Russian blue cats, MITI and MOF, named after the two engines of Japan's political economy -- Chal railed against the journal, Foreign Affairs, which he saw as a clap trap of statist conventionalism. He decided he had had enough of the journal and of the organization that published it, the Council on Foreign Relations. So, Chalmers called the CFR and told the young lady on the phone to cancel his membership.

The lady said, "Professor Johnson, I'm sorry sir. No one cancels their membership in the Council in Foreign Relations. Membership is for life. People are canceled when they die."

Chalmers Johnson, not missing a beat, said "Consider me dead."

I never will. He is and was the intellectual giant of our times. Chalmers Johnson centuries from now will be seen, I think, as the intellectual titan of this past era, surpassing Kissinger in the breadth of seminal works that define what America was and could have been.

My sincere condolences to Sheila, to others in his extended family -- particularly among all of his students and colleagues who were part of the Johnson dynasty -- and to his friends in San Diego who were a vital part of the texture of the Johnson household.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by ED Hardy, Dec 22, 2:30AM Thanks for the blog loaded with so many information. Stopping by your blog helped me to get what I was looking for. I found you... read more
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Political Malpractice in the First Degree

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, Nov 20 2010, 10:53AM

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This is a guest note by Leo Hindery, Jr. Hindery is Chairman of the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently an investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), Liberty Media and their successor AT&T; Broadband. He also serves on the Board of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.

"Guilty of political malpractice in the first degree." That's what Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said the other day about President Obama allowing himself to be negotiated in early 2009 into an economic stimulus package that was "far too small."

The proof of this conclusion is found all over the November 2, 2010 election results. Of the 41% of voters who say their financial situation is worse, Democrats won just 35% of them and the GOP won 65%. Just two years ago, Democrats won this group 75% to 25%.

I will always believe that the administration's decision to turn over the economy to an economic team led Larry Summers and Tim Geithner preordained the 2010 election debacle more than any other action. When Karl Rove indicts, as he did just before the election, President Obama's "incoherent closing argument" for completely missing the fact that "the economy and jobs [were] the No. 1 issue in every poll" and then lauds the Republicans for "drawing attention to lackluster job growth and the failed stimulus", you just want to cry.

As Michael Hirsh wrote in Newsweek, President Obama arrived in office perceived by many as the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet rather than acting like FDR, he "presented himself as completely unprepared to address the broken economy and financial system and faithfully channeled Summers and Geithner and their conservative approach to stimulus and reform", while putting health care reform above all else.

To this point, just a week ago, on November 8, President Obama very mistakenly said that he and his administration "didn't do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically." The truth is that FDR took office on Saturday, March 4, 1933, called Congress into special session to meet five days later on March 9th, and by June 15th, at the end of the "Hundred Days", had seen almost all of the early New Deal financial legislation passed.

The Obama economic team, all of whom were once acolytes of Clinton Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, who was the champion behind much of the financial deregulation and the unfair free trading which have brought our economy to its knees, gave the President a too-small and misdirected stimulus package, with way too much going toward transfer payments and way too little to job-producing public works and infrastructure. Larry Summers said that unemployment would peak at 8 percent in 2009, and then at the team's urging, the President claimed the package as the greatest early-term achievement ever by a first-term President, which immediately turned Bush's Great Recession irretrievably into Obama's.

As James Galbraith has written, "the original sin of Obama's presidency was to assign economic policy to a closed circle of bank-friendly economists and Bush carryovers...who had no personal commitment to the goal of an early recovery, no stake in the Democratic Party, no interest in the larger success of Barack Obama."

So when voters saw unemployment rise a lot further - there are now 5.2 million more real unemployed Americans than in December 2008 - there was no one left for the electorate to blame but Democrats.

Then the team, in this case led by Tim Geithner, let Wall Street off the hook by resisting and arguing against virtually every tough amendment to the proposed financial reform legislation. Behind his back and sometimes to his face, Geithner sabotaged the recommendations of Paul Volcker, especially his idea of barring commercial banks from indulging in heavy risk taking and proprietary trading. By letting his team win against Volcker and the likes of Rob Johnson and the Roosevelt Institute, President Obama lost his capacity to harness the justified anger of voters and gain the support of the disaffected.

In a blog I wrote back in March, I drew contrasts among: (1) President Roosevelt's abiding commitment to workers, economic justice and a vibrant middle class that grows from the bottom up; (2) Candidate Obama's amazing speech on July 2, 2008, to the United Steelworkers in which he said that, "The reason I'm running for President is because I don't want to wake up one day many years from now and see that we're still standing idly by while even more plants are shut down, and even more jobs are shipped abroad, and even more workers are denied the good benefits and decent wages they deserve"; and (3) President Obama's seeming inattention until just this past Labor Day to actually fixing real unemployment and improving workers' rights.

And by committing his administration to a too-small stimulus package early last year, now that John Boehner is soon to be the Speaker of the House, President Obama may have foreclosed achieving the only major remedy left to the nation to bring unemployment down and economic growth up, which is more and better-directed economic stimulus. By effectively conceding the argument over the role of government in a deeply depressed economy, the Obama economic team essentially left for now only the Fed and its imprecise quantitative easing to jumpstart the economy.

The Obama economic team also fell prey to the President's and his most senior advisors' belief that, in their own words, Mr. Obama won the 2008 election "because of character, not issues." In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

The administration's almost complete failure to connect with voters on the jobs front - despite unflinching efforts on jobs creation by Nancy Pelosi in the House and by Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and their comrades in the Senate - is just one example of voters' disillusionment. The 2008 election was very much about "issues", and everyone who voted in it had a strong sense of how Mr. Obama would govern and with what priorities, because his campaign promises were so precise. The story is often told of the man found weeping when Franklin Roosevelt's funeral train went past, who when asked if he had known the President, replied, "I didn't know him, but he knew me." And frankly, we all thought Mr. Obama knew us.

Chris Lehane, an esteemed veteran of the Clinton White House, says that Barack Obama ran such an "aspirational campaign" that "if you were a centrist, or if you were a progressive, you projected that he was the kind of president you wanted."

So, if your focus was health care reform, you envisioned the very precise reform that the Obama Campaign advanced, not the bill that was eventually passed. If you are gay or lesbian, you thought you had a President committed to all of your civil rights, including your right to help defend our country - instead, regarding the latter, the President called for a study of what he said he already fully understood, a study that is not even due until this coming December 1 when all the impetus in the House has shifted to the Republicans and the progressive majority in the Senate has been emasculated. And if one's desire was to see workers have the unfettered opportunity to join unions and have their benefits and rights protected, well forget that too.

We hear from sources within the White House that the President and his closest advisors have concluded that the "electoral thrashing" we all just saw had more to do with larger economic forces and strategic decisions about health care and economic stimulus than with the particular operations of the White House. In their very own words, "it wasn't that the White House did things wrong, but that it did the wrong things."

How can the administration say on the one hand that it "did the wrong things" and then on the other hand exonerate itself by saying that "it wasn't that the White House did things wrong?"

President Obama did attempt to advance some job-creation initiatives - albeit not nearly large enough or the ones I would have recommended as his first actions - and he was obstructed at every turn by Republicans, even his initiatives based on policies supported by the GOP in the past. But when the President got push back, he seemed to give up, without following the example of FDR who engaged the American people by telling them that "your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst without flinching and losing heart."

A staggering 55 million voters who voted for Members of Congress in November 2008 didn't vote for any Member in November 2010, and the critically important independent voters chose Republicans this year by a staggering 18-point margin. As I contend was also the case in 2008, the November 2010 election was again mostly about jobs and the economy - there is simply no hiding the dismal real unemployment figures, which show an unemployment rate of 18.7% (not the 'official" figure of 9.6%), 29.9 million unemployed workers (not the 'official' 14.8 million figure), and a "jobs gap" of 21.9 million in order to be at full employment in real terms.

And now, because of this disaffection, come January, for only the second time in eight decades and for the first time in more than six, the House will have fewer than two hundred Democrats in it. And sadly - and ironically - the American people, who are unconvinced by vague promises of "green jobs" and even vaguer studies showing that offshoring creates two jobs in America for every one lost overseas, just rewarded the Republicans who not only opposed the stimulus but also blocked even the extension of unemployment benefits.

Yet even now, no one in the White House seems to have an economic plan or growth agenda to create these needed jobs. Nor does anyone seem able to explain and justify the President's stimulus, health care, and financial regulation initiatives in ways that relate to workers or that eliminate the uncertainties which have been keeping American businesses 'sitting on their [investment] wallets'.

You really do have to wonder what happened to the laser focus on the economy that Candidate Obama promised would be the hallmark of his administration. Instead, all we've really seen is a promise to double gross exports over the next five years, which would add a meager 2.5 million jobs (the administration's own figure) when we need to find 22 million today and which ignores the fact that the only exports figure that really matters is net exports (namely, our balance of trade). This exports agenda of the President's, which he described on November 5 on the eve of his post-election trip to India and elsewhere as "how we'll create jobs, prosperity and an economy that's built on a stronger foundation", is so short of what's really needed to create millions of American jobs that I want to cry again.

The point - and the ongoing problem - is the sharp contrast between FDR's actions and Candidate-cum-President Obama's promises and actions. President Obama needs to feel in his core what the two Roosevelts felt, and remember how to talk with angry working-class people. He needs to pursue jobs creation with the same priority, focus and determination that characterized his health care reform efforts. And then he needs to propose concrete initiatives to create jobs and rebalance incomes, whether the Republicans agree or disagree.

When he does these three things, his own promises will have turned into actions and the nation will again believe that he and his administration deeply care about and are working diligently to alleviate the plight of America's workers and the middle class.

-- Leo Hindery


Posted by jollyroger, Nov 23, 10:13PM Some upthread concern troll waved the new bloody shirt: "Uncertainty! Uncertainty!" It's parallyzing impact will surely vitiate t... read more
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Media Alert: START Up with Pete Dominick

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 18 2010, 2:55PM

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Pete Dominick Capitol.jpgI have been chatting up Pete Dominick on his Sirius/XM program Stand up with Pete Dominick for a long time, but I never had any idea what the guy looked like. Same with Rachel Maddow for years until we finally met at the Democratic National Convention. But like Rachel, Pete's sorta worth getting a camera on. CNN has figured this out.

Well, today at about 5:30 pm EST, I'll be chatting with Pete about the showdown brewing on the START Treaty.

So, I'm renaming his show "START Up with Pete Dominick" at least for today.

For those following START, here are some of my views on the stakes of the debate for the Obama administration that appeared today in the Financial Times. Here too is a blog post telling incoming Senators to leave the prerogatives of incumbent Senators alone. Also a great slam by Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee icon Richard Lugar against many in his own party -- who he implies will be responsible for enormous degradation of US security if they succeed in blocking START.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by JohnH, Nov 23, 10:11PM Nadine, if Obama made the speeches, show me! I gave you the list of Obama's speeches, but you can't seem to find any that focus on... read more
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READ the 20th Amendment: New Republican Senators Violating US Constitution

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 18 2010, 10:06AM

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Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for constitution.jpgA handful of newly elected Republican US Senators have written to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trying to undo the Constitutional authority of other elected incumbent US Senators.

That's right. Even the so-called strict constitutionalist Rand Paul is engaged in lobbying that would impose illegal burdens on incumbent elected representatives violating the word and spirit of the United States Constitution.

According to the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution, the respective terms of US Senators and US Representatives ends at noon on January 3rd.


AMENDMENT XX

Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933.

Note: Article I, section 4, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of this amendment. In addition, a portion of the 12th amendment was superseded by section 3.

Section 1.
The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 2.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Senators "elect" Roy Blunt (R-MO), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Marco Rubio (R-FL)** have written to Senator Reid stating, as reported by Joshua Rogin:

On Election Day we were elected to represent the constituents of our respective states in the Senate. Out of respect for our states' voters, we believe it would be improper for the Senate to consider the New START Treaty or any other treaty in a lame duck session prior to January 3, 2011.

Too bad guys!

You are not yet elected and the incumbent Senators seating in seats they "won" previously have ALL the powers embedded in their positions until 12 noon, January 3rd.

Your efforts to impose your will beforehand are extralegal, irresponsible, and unconstitutional.

Rand Paul -- you owe many of your supporters a note of regret for having agreed to sign on to this letter giving your strict Constitutionalist views.

Rob Portman -- an old friend, and someone I respect for his sensible Republican pragmatism -- you too should know better than try to disrupt the operations of our government before your time has clicked in. De-sign this letter please.

Roy Blunt -- this was clever, but you know it was wrong. Dial down please.

Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio** -- don't follow the leader so quickly.

This is an inappropriate request of Reid, and the US Senate should move post haste to whatever issues its elected body agrees to move to -- including the START Treaty.

-- Steve Clemons

** Editor's Note: The original piece by Joshua Rogin included the name Senator Mark Kirk as one of the signers of the letter and did not include Marco Rubio. I do not know if Mark Kirk removed his name or never agreed to sign -- but good for him in either case. I have added Senator Marco Rubio to the list.


Posted by Don Bacon, Nov 20, 1:20PM I'm on a roll. TSA confiscates heavily-armed soldiers' nail-clippers http://tinyurl.com/2dgkf... read more
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Richard Lugar: America Cannot Afford to Fail on START

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 17 2010, 3:57PM

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard Lugar is on fire -- telling his colleagues that the failure to ratify START will be enormously consequential to the 'real' national security interests of the United States.

This is an enormously important, inspired, passionate demand to pass START -- and I am in total agreement with Senator Lugar.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by non-hater, Nov 18, 5:33PM Don't be so hasty, John W. The only thing we can say for sure is that we're headed for a nadir.... read more
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On the Other Side

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 17 2010, 3:14PM

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Some of the fellows and the author at Frida Kahlo's Blue House in Mexico City.

This is a guest post by Andres Martinez, who directs the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program at the New America Foundation.

A group of New America Foundation Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows seized upon an opportunity recently to visit one of our nation's most overlooked strategic partners - Mexico, the one next door (I know, I know, Canada, you feel the same way--maybe next year). We were invited to an impressive TED-like conference in Puebla called "Ciudad de las Ideas" put on by Grupo Salinas featuring the likes of Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Dawkins, Chris Anderson and Jarred Diamond, but were also able to tack on a couple of whirlwind days in Mexico City to meet with leading senators from the three major parties, business leaders, prominent media, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, and President Felipe Calderon's national security adviser.

Continue reading this article

-- Andrew Lebovich


Posted by Randy, Dec 01, 12:28AM Thank you for the insight into your country, Ms. Martinez.... read more
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NATO's Next Stuff Up Close

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 17 2010, 9:20AM

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This is a guest post by Mark Leon Goldberg, a correspondent for UN Dispatch, who is attending the NATO Summit. This post was written for UN Dispatch and The Washington Note. Among many previous avocations, Goldberg used to work with Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation.

mark leon goldberg dc.pngAs I write this I am en route to Lisbon, Portugal, courtesy of the Atlantic Council for which I am attending the NATO summit as part of their Young Atlanticist Network.

The Lisbon summit is shaping up to be one of the most important NATO meetings in many years. For one, NATO is at a turning point in Afghanistan. There are some 100,000 American troops and 50,000 troops from NATO countries on the ground. In Lisbon this week, President Obama is set to unveil a new Afghan strategy that pushes away from the July 2011 drawdown date to a plan that foresees American troops in Afghanistan until at least 2014. It remains unclear, however, how structured the July 2011 to 2014 draw down will be, what forces will remain, for how long and for what purpose? In the meantime, a number of NATO members are growing weary of this decade long war. Canada and The Netherlands, for example, are set to withdraw combat troops next year.

Beyond Afghanistan, the NATO summit is an opportunity for NATO to engage in a moment of self-reflection about its goals and purpose. NATO has not updated its strategic guidance in over a decade, and for the past year a group of experts led by Madeline Albright has worked on a new strategic guidance for "NATO in 2020" and beyond. Most press reports suggest that the draft guidance will strongly resemble the final version to which NATO heads of state will agree this week. That would mean a new focus on non-conventional threats like cyber warfare; a ballistic missile defense system to deter a potential attack from Iran; and a new focus on looking beyond the North Atlantic to forge new strategic partnerships with emerging powers.

Throughout the week, I will be given fairly intimate access to newsmakers who will be participating in a meetings arranged by the Atlantic Council. This includes people you know well - though I am not sure that the schedule is public yet so I will have to keep it a tease for now. I'll be posting regular updates throughout the week, and hope to parlay my access into a number of scooplets.

In the meantime, I owe it to readers to lay out some of my own biases going into this meeting. I'm strongly skeptical of both the current United States-led counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and of the underlying assumption that deploying large numbers of troops in Afghanistan is necessary for securing the American mainland. On top of that, I am becoming increasingly unconvinced that the extraordinary financial costs of maintaining this posture--$100 billion last year alone - are a worthy investment for American national security.

That said, anyone who follows my writing knows that I have a deep and abiding fidelity to human rights and morality in international relations. We - the United States, NATO, and the world--have an obligation to the Afghan people. We cannot let the Taliban return. We must protect gains in human rights and women's rights that have been made over the past ten years. We have to invest in the long term economic development in Afghanistan and support international efforts to build Afghanistan's governing institutions.

And finally, we must maintain this commitment long after Afghanistan fades from the headlines. Unfortunately, the United States has a poor track record on that account. It is worth noting that the same month that the United States announced that combat operations in Iraq were over, a $367 million United Nations appeal for Iraqi refugees and internally displaced was only 18% funded, with the United States contributing about $17 million. We have to do better than this. We owe it to the Afghan people.

That said, I am entering this meeting with an open mind. I hope to have my biases challenged by both my fellow Young Atlanticists and by the many dignitaries, soldiers and diplomats with whom we will interact throughout the week.

This brings me to my last point. Because of the access I've been given by the Atlantic Council, I will have the opportunity to put questions to some top officials in NATO and NATO member countries. Please send me a note on twitter @undispatch or via email--undispatch-at-gmail-com if you have any burning questions or provocations that you would like to see raised during the summit.

In the meantime, you should check out the Young Atlanticist blog and Facebook page for regular updates.

-- Mark Leon Goldberg


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 18, 8:10PM Well dang, I was kinda thinkin' Mark might "engage" with us for a while. Seems like these guest bloggers are usually hit and run. ... read more
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Louie, Louie, Louie Gohmert: A Big Lie on Palestine & Raging Homosexual Hormones??

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 17 2010, 8:45AM

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rep_gohmert.jpgRep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) needs to read up on some things -- like learn some facts and stuff. . .and use those facts to stop illegals from taking land that is not theirs. You know those Israelis are taking land that is not theirs from Palestinians who are stealing land too, just like those nasty Mexican drug thugsters. And we need the entire country to intervene, like the Chilean government did with those miners, because a Mexican drug investigator was killed at Falcon Lake and beheaded and Fox News totally agrees with me, but I say we should cheer on those people stopping Palestinian land grabbers. . .and by the way, those gay soldiers just can't stop their raging homosexual hormones. I know it. They can't. Done deal.

For more absurdity from Congressman Gohmert, here is the Fox News clip connecting Chile's miner rescue to law and order problems in his district (from Gohmert's own home page) -- and here is the most absurd statement on Palestinian-Israeli territory disputes ever uttered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:

GOHMERT: The only good news I see out of that is that for so long, I've been greatly concerned with the hypocrisy of this administration telling Israel, "Just let Palestinians build illegal settlements and take over areas that are not theirs. Just let 'em take over." And I thought, "How hypocritical for our U.S. administration to tell Israel, 'just let people take over areas of your country they're not authorized to takeover,' cause we would never allow that here in the U.S." Which brings me to the only good thing about violent illegal alien drug smugglers taking over American soil: At least we're not hypocritical anymore when we tell Israel just to let people take over land that's not theirs. Because now this administration can say, "Look, Israel, we're doing it here. We're letting people take over American soil that they shouldn't. So you can do it, too."

And on those raging uncontrollable homosexual hormones that we can't let on the battlefield, have some fun.

It would be lovely to hear Fox News chat with Representative Gohmert in a serious way about any technical issue within his portfolio as a Member of the House Judiciary Committee.

From Gohmert's website, the role and function of this committee is defined well:

The Committee on the Judiciary has been called the lawyer for the House of Representatives because of its jurisdiction over matters relating to the administration of justice in Federal courts, administrative bodies, and law enforcement agencies. The Committee has oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, civil and criminal judicial proceedings and Federal courts and judges, issues relating to bankruptcy, espionage, terrorism, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional amendments, immigration and naturalization, interstate compacts, claims against the United States, national penitentiaries, Presidential succession, antitrust law, revision and codification of the statutes of the United States, state and territorial boundary lines and patents, copyrights and trademarks.

Given his backwards statements on Palestinian land issues and gays in the military, one wonders how much of the above he may get backwards as well.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by sdemetri, Nov 20, 5:53PM Wow, Steve, you do snark pretty well. Though, I guess Gomer(t) Pyle here makes it rather easy...... read more
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Young Gay Student Challenges Local School Board on Gay Issues -- Reminds that Howell was Once a Base for the KKK

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 15 2010, 10:30PM

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This is a pretty amazing, articulate, important plea by a young student to a local school board defending his teacher Jay McDowell, disciplined for actions he took to prevent anti-gay bullying at Howell High School in Howell, Michigan.

The "content of character" of this young man is off the charts. Let's hope that the Howell School Board has the same degree of character that this young man showed and which is unfortunately so rare.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by DakotabornKansan, Nov 17, 7:02AM Life is short…the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. “I travel a lot…Real life i... read more
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Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 15 2010, 9:36PM

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Just back from Abu Dhabi where I met all sorts of interesting folks, discussing national security and foreign policy issues amidst the backdrop of the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

I will be sharing tomorrow -- but wanted to note that I was back in Washington -- and have had an incredible set of experiences there. Much to reflect on.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 21, 8:50PM "One Rule For One, Eh Steve?" Whats a matter, Nadine? Afraid Steve will ban you again for showing us what an unbelievably despic... read more
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Ari Shapiro on Obama's Shifting Foreign Policy Attention

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 12 2010, 6:00PM

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National Public Radio's Ari Shapiro did a great piece this morning taking a look at the traditional and new in President Obama's foreign policy attentions.

With the NATO Summit coming up very quickly, Shapiro asked what the links were between President Obama's trip to major ascending economies like India an Indonesia and the convening of NATO's stakeholders.

I think it's an important question because we are increasingly seeing the inadequacy of old arrangements and power structures when applied to new emerging problems. In my view, the NATO commitments 5000 kilometers out of theater to Afghanistan are part of this trend.

I shared this and other thoughts in the segment which you can listen to above or read here.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 17, 12:18PM Notice too that Nadine ignores the recommendations of the BIPARTISAN "Iraq Study Group" that concluded direct talks with Syria and... read more
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Note to Hillary Clinton: Time to Do Israel/Palestine the DoD Way

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 12 2010, 12:10AM

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Hillary Clinton just met with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and here is the pro forma "read out" of the meeting which the State Department distributed:

Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary Clinton had a good discussion today, with a friendly and productive exchange of views on both sides. Secretary Clinton reiterated the United States' unshakable commitment to Israel's security and to peace in the region.

The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that "the United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements." Those requirements will be fully taken into account in any future peace agreement.

The discussions between the Prime Minister and the Secretary focused on creating the conditions for the resumption of direct negotiations aimed at producing a two-state solution. Their teams will work closely together in the coming days toward that end.

This kind of statement that appears to say that the US and Israel agreed on some principles about direct negotiations leading to a two state outcome really says almost nothing.

Nonetheless, Israel-Palestine "is" a defining challenge for the Obama administration.

I'm in Abu Dhabi now and have had a number of conversations in less than a day here in which UAE government officials have emphasized that the fastest and most efficacious way to constructively confront Iran's growing power in the region is for the US to pull off a real breakthrough in the Israel/Palestine two state standoff.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving this peace process some of her considerable muscle -- but to be blunt, she has done nothing yet that reflects a change in strategy, personnel, inclusion of negotiating participants, or anything from what was underway before her involvement and earlier failures.

General Anthony Zinni once told me that the real weakness of the State Department is that it rarely gamed out scenarios and didn't do what the Department of Defense did in considering a lot of different strategies that consider various key inputs in a war game simulation. Zinni may be on to something.

DoD scenarios allow virtually every kind of option to be considered. A DoD style scenario exercise would consider various strategies to either put Hamas on a track that would lead to inclusive negotiations or would consider through a cost/benefit calculation how to make the isolation of Hamas less beneficial to their obvious growing power and legitimacy. A DoD scenario would consider the economic, strategic and political factors in trying to either undermine Netanyahu and his government, move closer to it, or provide a mixed approach.

Hillary Clinton would be smart to assemble a group of people with whom she does not agree on Israel/Palestine and engage in some real simulation discussions of alternative tracks to get Israel and Palestine to "yes" on a two-state arrangement. The room should include the folks who have been part of the infrastructure of the past but should also include those who have strong disagreements with the current policy -- and various scenarios should be played out with the Secretary listening and learning.

My sense is that this has not yet happened and needs to. When I heard recently that Andrew Shapiro's policy guidance to Hillary Clinton on Israel/Palestine matters had not changed from what he gave her in the US Senate to what he feeds her today at the State Department, it became clear to me that the cocoon Secretary Clinton is on Israel/Palestine issues needs some new inputs.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by leanspa, Nov 22, 3:26AM Odds are in favour of Obama but I still feel if by chance he wins the election he would be the president of America who is really ... read more
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George W, Michael Moore & Osama bin Laden?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 11 2010, 11:30PM

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michael-moore d.jpgThe publicists of George W. Bush's memoir, Decision Points, have not put me on their distro list so I don't yet have the book. I may wait until it gets really cheap on Amazon's used bookseller list, but in the mean time, i leafed through a copy that someone on my Abu Dhabi bound plane had.

I saw this passage that just seemed to be part of Bush's typical reckless swagger:

In 2000, our October Surprise had come in the form of the DUI revelation. In 2004, it came from Osama bin Laden. On October 29, the al Qaeda leader released a videotape threatening Americans with "another Manhattan" and mocking my response to 9/11 in the Florida classroom. It sounded like he was plagiarizing Michael Moore. "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country," I said. John Kerry made a similar statement of resolve.

W's easy slide into comparing policy activist Michael Moore to Osama bin Laden is really gross and demonstrates how little George W. Bush ultimately respected the rights of American citizens to question their leaders and yes, to doubt their own government and its course in the aftermath of 9/11. Bush and Vice President Cheney did more to undermine the system of checks and balances in the US government than any other leadership team in modern American history.

I think that the work Michael Moore does is vital and helps the nation see beyond what a homogenized political and media culture feed it.

George W. Bush wasn't all bad, and I really do need to read and review the book, but he was bad in too many ways. This Michael Moore/Osama bin Laden slime helps to remind of much that Bush got wrong.

I learned that Michael Moore will be on Larry King Live and Real Time with Bill Maher tomorrow and will be interesting to know if this comes up.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by plato, Nov 14, 8:14PM "Doesn't Bush Derangement Syndrome ever go away?" (Nadine) Doesn't the infantile partisan obsession ever go away???... read more
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Pic of the Day: Samurai Pooch

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 11 2010, 11:18PM

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This was sent in by a TWN reader in Japan. It just kind of sticks with you. This dog is not my kind of dog -- and I'm really not into the whole samurai scene.

That said, I think that this pup could have his own TV show some day.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Nov 15, 6:40AM This is absolutely fascinating! http:/... read more
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On Gay Bullying and DADT: Cindy McCain vs. John McCain

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Thursday, Nov 11 2010, 9:35PM

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(April 1, 2008 - Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America)

Over the years, this blog has expressed admiration for some of the principled issues that John McCain stood by when his Republican Party was off course. He was gay friendly then and had lots of gay staffers in his campaign. He was backing serious efforts in campaign finance and broad election reform. He was the epitome of a "radical centrist" when he was the straight-talk express John McCain.

If John McCain had beaten George Bush in the 2000 primary, I would have strongly supported his campaign.

But something has happened. He has become more mean, more rigid, an angry Senator who seems bent on destroying his own considerable legacy by doubling down against the normalization of gay rights in the country.

I don't understand why he is doing this. I've known and respected him for years and have always felt that whether it came to national security policy with regard to North Korea, or leading on normalization of relations with Vietnam, or believing that we needed to fundamentally change the dynamics of the corporate takeover of the nation's election machinery, McCain has been a great leader. I haven't supported his views on Iran, think he oversells "the surge" in Iraq - but reasonable people can debate these important matters in a civil and respectful way as I have tried to do with the Senator on many fronts for years.

Some of his closest, long term advisers and friends are well respected gay lawyers and politicos. He knows that the military is packed with honorable gay men and lesbian women serving their country. I've personally heard him express appreciation for their service.

But now he's the lead opponent in the US Senate of efforts to end Don't Ask Don't Tell -- and McCain who is probably in his last term in the US Senate is going to scar his legacy badly by making himself into one of those Senators who voted against the Civil Rights act or who supported racial segregation and upheld an infrastructure of bigoted law in America's past.

I want the straight-talking John McCain back -- a McCain that is going to be relevant to our nation's future, not one that we have to always express shame about as we look back at his legacy because he was the person who 'delayed' the normalization of gay rights in this country and in the US military. Strom Thurmond eventually remade himself and found ways to demonstrate that he had dropped his once raging bigotry, but John McCain at the current point of his career is possibly going to end on a very dark note.

As the intrepid John Aravosis has pointed out today, John McCain's wife will not join him in his anti-gay crusade.

Aravosis writes:

John McCain is leading the filibuster against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" "repeal" legislation in the Senate (it's not an actual repeal, but we'll leave that for another time). Today, Cindy McCain joined a number of celebrities in a video about gay youth suicide and bullying.

Mrs. McCain's part of the video condemned DADT and then accused our government of sending bullies a message that what they do is okay.

The woman basically accused her husband of sharing the blame for gay kids killing themselves.

I'm astonished. And impressed as hell.

CINDY MCCAIN:

Our political and religious leaders tell LGBT youth that they have no future.

They can't serve our country openly.

VARIETY OF SPEAKERS:

What's worse, these laws that legislate discrimination teach bullies that what they're doing is acceptable.

CINDY MCCAIN:

Our government treats the LGBT community like second class citizens, why shouldn't they?

I want to express thanks to Cindy McCain for this brave and much appreciated message to bulliers everywhere and for her support of the gay men and women serving this nation and risking their lives in military engagements thousands of miles from home.

I can't imagine to know or understand the contours of their marriage. That is their private affair.

But I can't help wondering whether Cindy McCain misses her straight-talking, do-the-right-thing husband as much as I do.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 13, 2:40PM Here is Cantor, ADMITTING to a felony, if his own definition of "felony" is to be taken seriously...... <a href="http://www.pros... read more
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Five G-20 Countries Placed on New America's Current Account Surplus Watch

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 10 2010, 11:50AM

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China ,Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia have been placed on a new Watch List for countries that have excessively large current account surpluses and for not taking adequate corrective measures. Check out the full list.

Ahead of the G-20, President Obama rightly stated that all countries, surplus as well as deficit economies, have a responsibility to help rebalance the global economy. For too long, current account deficit economies have borne the major burden of adjustment to the detriment of world economic growth.

In recognition of the negative impact chronic surplus economies have on global demand, the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation has launched the Current Account Surplus Watch. The Surplus Watch is the first comprehensive measure of economies with large current account surpluses that also takes into account the policies economies take to stimulate demand or otherwise offset their surpluses.

Thumbnail image for New Image.JPG

Unlike the simple numeric current account targets that U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has proposed, the Surplus Watch takes into consideration the policies countries pursue to increase domestic and international demand through fiscal expansion, exchange rate appreciation, and international development assistance. The Surplus Watch also divides surplus economies into two lists, Manufacturing Economies, which mainly export manufactured goods and Resource Economies, which mainly export energy commodities.

In many economies, surpluses remain elevated and are projected to rise more in the years ahead, threatening a sustainable world economic recovery. Leaders must pay attention to their rise and also the measures they can take to address these surpluses.

-- Sam Sherraden


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 16, 11:07PM Steve, heres the fuckin' outfit that hosts the slimeball sites that keep spamming your blog.... <a href="http://www.markosweb.com... read more
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Glenn Beck's Obsessive Compulsive Soros Twitch

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 10 2010, 9:54AM

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Yesterday evening, I watched Glenn Beck's 'defamercial' on George Soros. There is already much commentary out there -- Michael Tomasky's being among the best -- that knocks back the slime, slurs, and defamation of Soros by Fox and Beck.

I encourage you to watch the show, if one can call it that.

I learned a long time ago that when someone is so compulsively committed to tearing someone down, to bullying them, to spending every moment obsessed with them that it often exposes one's own views of himself. I think that this may be the case with the strange fixation of a Michigan Assistant Attorney General on a young, charismatic, gay student body president at the University of Michigan.

And I think that the same may be true about Glenn Beck and George Soros. Glenn Beck's attack about nefarious networks operating and controlling every aspect of our society from behind the scenes reminds one of German hyperventilation about the Jews.

But these are the questions we should be raising today about Fox, Rupert Murdoch, and the $32 million dollar a year constantly unhinged Beck himself.

I am on a plane for the next 12 hours -- but I will be back with more on Fox and Beck very soon. Lots.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Nov 14, 4:10PM Happy medium? Deal. Let the kids play. Give them some pointers about how to run w/o tripping on each other, how to resist using... read more
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Walt's Brilliant Take Down of the Bush Presidency Whitewash

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Nov 09 2010, 9:02AM

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bush decision points.jpgHarvard University's big think realist and Foreign Policy blogger Stephen Walt has published a brilliant take-down of George W. Bush's just-released-today memoir, Decision Points.

Walt's article is titled "Delusion Points" -- and goes through key moment by key moment major league GW Bush decision disasters and what they did to undermine America's brand and global power position. Walt hits 14 points where he outlines the stakes for the US and the consequential errors of the Bush White House.

I would add Bush's mugging of Secretary of State Colin Powell on North Korea policy as well as Bush's appointment and tenacious support of John Bolton's appointment as US Ambassador to the UN to the already long list of Walt's Bushian screw-ups.

Walt starts his essay with this important preamble that gives some context to why Obama has had such a tough time escaping the gravitational pull of GW Bush's policy black hole:

Two years into Barack Obama's presidency, it has become a cliché to observe that the newish president, who spent his 2008 campaign promising a U-turn from his deeply unpopular predecessor's activities abroad, has ended up with a foreign policy that looks surprising like George W. Bush's. The United States has more troops in Afghanistan than it did at the end of the Bush years, Guantánamo is still open, efforts to engage Iran have failed, and while American soldiers may have begun pulling back from Iraq, they've left plenty of Western defense contractors in their wake.

In anticipation of tomorrow's release of Bush's memoir, Decision Points, this line of thinking is reinforcing one of the Beltway press corps' favorite rituals: the "was he really that bad?" nostalgia for a president that the same reporters and analysts were happily pummeling only two years ago.

Don't believe a word of it. George W. Bush's presidency really was that bad -- and the fact that Obama has largely followed the same course is less a measure of Bush's wisdom than a reminder of the depth of the hole he dug his country into, as well as the institutionalized groupthink that dominates the U.S. foreign-policy establishment

Here is a list of 14 targets Walt takes on. Read his great piece for more on each:

1. Listening to Cheney

2. Criminal Minded

3. No-Go on Kyoto

4. Osama bin Who?

5. Department of Rhetorical Catastrophes, Part I: The "Global War on Terror"

6. Making "Waterboard" a Household Word

7. Department of Rhetorical Catastrophes, Part II: The "Axis of Evil"

8. Iraq

9. Snubbing Iran, Again

10. Sabotaging Peace in the Middle East

11. Hurricane Katrina

12. Democracy, but Only When Our Guys Win

13. How Not to Stop Nuclear Proliferation

14. The Crash Heard 'Round the World

While Barack Obama has not yet been able to escape the pull and continuities left over from the George W. Bush/Richard Cheney presidency, he needs to double down and break out. That might give America another chance at restoring its global leverage and purpose.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by DonS, Nov 14, 8:46PM " . . . always takes them to task" POA, your not following the narrative here.... read more
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Air Force One Off Into the Smog

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 08 2010, 10:31PM

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I just caught AFP correspondent Stephen Collinson's pool report from India as President Obama wraps up his trip there.

Here is the full, short report. . .but catch the last line on Air Force One taxiing off into the smog.

Pool Report # 1, Nov, 9 -- New Delhi

Motorcade rolled at 8.35 am through emptied streets with armed soldiers and police stationed every few yards along the route.

No issues with departure pictures for pool as POTUS and FLOTUS in a cream dress worked a receiving line in reverse and walked up stairs hand in hand to wave farewell to India.

AF1 about to taxi off into the smog.

These fast-growing behemoth nations that are urbanizing and modernizing at lightning speed are generating city-smothering gobs of smog and pollution -- but I daresay until I saw Collinson's report I haven't heard a single report this week about India dealing with its pollution issues or working further on climate.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Andrew Winner, Nov 12, 12:30PM Delhi's air quality has improved markedly over the past decade. I see much less haze and smog there than I did in my trips there i... read more
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The View from My Window

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 08 2010, 10:54AM

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Steve Clemons Pocantico Window.jpg
(click image for larger version)

I am up north of New York City today where it's rainy, windy, and beautiful. Thanks to the hospitality of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, I'll be staying at the Pocantico Conference Center which is the former coach and horse barn for Kykuit, the estate of John D. Rockefeller.

Our topic for discussion will be how to frame America's defense and security challenges. The US in the World project will be presenting research findings on alternative ways to conceptualize America's current security dilemmas -- and how to move away from the troublesome 'war on terror', 'war on al Qaeda', 'war on xxxx' frames that distort America's roster of global concerns.

Not sure I'll be able to report out the findings just yet -- but they've assembled a great group of thinkers and communications experts to sort this out.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: Thanks again to Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish who allowed me to follow his lead in posting occasional pics from readers and yours truly under the "The View from Your/My Window" heading, which was his construct.


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 09, 8:07PM "The "ultranationaistic agenda" that you describe is wishing to survive and keep their very successful democratic country, and not... read more
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Jeb Bush: Silky Sullivan Surprise in 2012?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Saturday, Nov 06 2010, 2:38PM

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jeb_bush.jpgI don't care what he says and don't care what the analysts think, my hunch is that Jeb Bush may be lurking way behind in the shadows preparing to run in 2012 -- and that could be a very tough race for President Obama. And even if he doesn't then, he's only 63 in 2016.

Jeb Bush is going out of his way to squash rumors that he might run. He told the New York Times' John Harwood he was definitely not running in 2012.

But what if there just isn't anyone serious out there who can bridge the ascendant Tea Party movement with the GOP establishment? My bet is that the more Jeb Bush says "NO", the more the party will eventually demand that he be the candidate -- and my bet (as things look today) is that Sarah Palin will be the kingmaker in the decision.

I spoke with a very wealthy, somewhat secretive GOP donor in the Hamptons in the late summer who told me that those who prefer Jeb Bush in 2012 want him to wait in the background until the reality sets in that the GOP has no candidate. Then, like Silky Sullivan, Bush will come out of the closet as the only candidate that the Tea Party and gray hairs of the party can coalesce around.

Taegan Goddard posted a link to a CNN survey of Republicans which asked them as they left voting polls on Tuesday who they'd like to have as their GOP presidential candidate in 2012.

The results:

Iowa: Romney 21%, Huckabee 21%, Palin 18%, Gingrich 7%

New Hampshire: Romney 39%, Palin 18%, Huckabee 11%, Gingrich 9%

South Carolina: Palin 25%, Huckabee 24%, Romney 21%, Gingrich 20%

In match ups against President Obama, Huckabee leads 52% to 44% and Romney is ahead 50% to 45%. However, Obama beats Gingrich 49% to 47% and tops Palin 52% to 44%.

Other candidates mentioned but all of whom were in single digits were Ron Paul, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, and Rick Santorum.

I don't think any of these candidates, including Romney and Palin, can bridge the differences inside the GOP.

Bush wasn't included on the list. Neither for that matter was Mitch Daniels, who I think would make an attractive candidate on many levels -- but again is probably not someone the Tea Party crowd would go for.

Despite rumors that he has some serious family issues that might complicate a run, I think Jeb Bush would be the GOP's best shot at dislodging President Obama.

And if Bush does take the lead on the ticket, the question is then whether Obama will shuffle his own team and consider Hillary Clinton. Lots of stuff would have to happen for that to take place -- but it's in the realm of possibility even though President Obama is rumored to have already told Joe Biden that he wants him on the ticket in 2012.

This all could be wrong -- but I'm still suspicious that Jeb Bush has been studying up on Silky Sullivan. Obama should too.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Don Bacon, Nov 08, 4:04PM It has come to my attention that while there are about the same number of registered motor vehicles in the USA as people, a relati... read more
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On Israel/Palestine, What Does "Unwavering" Mean?

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Friday, Nov 05 2010, 8:41AM

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ValerieJarrett.jpgOn Wednesday evening, Obama confidente and White House Senior Advisor for Public Outreach Valerie Jarrett held a conference call with progressives around the country who may have been disheartened by Tuesday's election results. It was a brave thing for her to do as many in the progressive community have felt ignored and abused as the White House in policies ranging from the health care public option, to carbon limits, to Don't Ask Don't Tell, and so on.

One of my New America Foundation colleagues, Jonathan Guyer, who happens to be the official cartoonist of The Washington Note, asked Jarrett where the President stood on Israel/Palestine.

As reported by JTA's Ron Kampeas, Jarrett responded:

"The president has made it very clear that he is committed to doing whatever he can to foster talks in the Middle East - that's unwavering," Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser for public engagement, said in a conference call Wednesday with a broad array of special interest groups, including Jewish groups. "That's not a partisan issue; his commitment to that is unwavering."

Jarrett initiated the call to reassure several sympathetic groups about the White House's commitment in a number of "progressive" areas in the wake of Tuesday's Republican sweep of the U.S. House of Representatives -- one that Obama has described as a "shellacking."

What does "unwavering mean?

If it means following the same unsuccessful strategy as before -- with the same personnel, the same half-baked approach that leaves key participants out of the process, that tries to get Netanyahu to be nice to Palestinian moderates, and more of this -- then Obama's "unwavering" commitment is something worrisome.

If he wants to get things right, then the President needs to stand up, dust himself off, recommit to the vision he had when he won the White House, push Netanyahu around the sumo ring, and communicate a more definitive plan for what this White House expects in a settlement.

This is when "unwavering" might be something to applaud.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Nov 09, 2:09PM A new solution! http://opinionator.bl... read more
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My Election Facebook Update

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 03 2010, 11:00AM

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Steven Clemons:

Can it really be possible that every single issue I care about -- from DADT, to jobs and infrastructure, to smarter foreign policy strategy, Iran, China, Afghanistan War, Israel/Palestine, Cuba, Syria, energy-led innovation projects, climate, the broader Middle East, to global economic rebalancing, to global institutional reform, the START Treaty, Law of the Seas, WMD non-proliferation, Russia, Brazil, Turkey just got worse?

Looks like it.

-- Steve Clemons

Follow me on Twitter @SCClemons


Posted by DakotabornKansan, Nov 06, 2:41PM The Virtues of Selfishness…the ideology of Ayn Rand, “the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right" “Why should any person hav... read more
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The 2010 Election: Bill Clinton is the New "One"

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 03 2010, 9:00AM

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President Obama's team -- heck, even Hillary Clinton's presidential team -- saw former President Bill Clinton as a problem, as unpredictable, as off his game and a potential major liability.

But as Terry McAuliffe pointed out the other night at a fundraiser for the Tomorrow's Youth Organization which had Clinton, Cherie Blair, and Quincy Jones as headliners, Bill Clinton is the most popular politician in the United States today -- and may be the most popular politician in the entire world.

Clinton pulled off a stunning comeback after being clobbered badly by Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in 1994. And Barack Obama may want to sign up for Clinton lessons from the man himself to see what he did to become a winner after losing so dramatically.

Continue reading this article

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Nov 05, 6:16AM OMG, they've gotten Pape, too! h... read more
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Dems Choke in Red Tide

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Wednesday, Nov 03 2010, 7:41AM

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It's 1:40 am, and I have just finished election night. The Republicans have gained 60 more seats than they last had in the House of Representatives and six in the US Senate.

A new era has begun. John Boehner and Eric Cantor have gone from eccentric fringe to near monarchs over night. Obama will no doubt try and reach across the aisle (again) at 2 pm Eastern and then will be heading out of town to do some distraction-designed globe-trotting, at least for him if not for the country.

Some commentators are correct that it could have been worse -- and that Dems beat expectations. Now, that is spin! The Dems keep the Senate and aren't vulnerable to a flip in control if Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson designed to come out of the closet as the Republicans they seem to want to be.

But the Tea Party's insurgency -- while it mattered and put some Red Bull in the Republican get out the vote efforts -- was limited. Angle did not beat Harry Reid. (Sending Schumer some anti-depressants!). Christine O'Donnell took her expected fall against Chris Coons in Delaware. Politico's Patrick Gavin asked me if she'd have a lot of TV contracts offered today -- and I responded that AMC Channel has a new series called "The Walking Dead". That might work.

Quick highlights -- as I said, Harry Reid squeaked by. Senator John Kerry exclaimed last night that Politico and HuffPost were wrong on Reid. Kerry's words:

"Politico was wrong, Huffington Post was wrong, hell, all the pundits were wrong.

Harry Reid isn't just Dracula, he isn't just Lazarus, he's our leader, and our whole caucus is just thrilled that he's unbreakable and unbeatable."

OK. Moving on.

Jerry Brown is back in as Governor of California. His dad was Governor, his sister California State Treasurer, and of course he was Governor decades ago. The only thing that happened last night that may be good for gay rights. Boxer won. Some high profile lefties in House, including Alan Grayson and Tom Perriello lost. Dozens of blue dog Dems lost in House. Ike Skelton, the Democrats chief anti-gay military hawk, is gone. Bye bye Ike.

Former Republican turned Independent Lincoln Chafee won the Rhode island governorship. In a meeting I hosted with him, he once called Sarah Palin a "cocky whako."

Cuban-American Marco Rubio won Florida -- and many already see him as a White House contender some day. Sestak lost in Pennsylvania. The witch lady lost in Delaware.

I predicted 53 wins in the House...so was off in my analysis just a bit. In the Senate, West Virginia stays Democrat. Russ Feingold's loss in Wisconsin is a big loss. The nation lost part of its conscience last night -- and Ron Johnson, businessman or not, often sounds to me like he doesn't understand how checks and balances in our system work.

Marijuana stays illegal.

A last note to a few friends. I watched a number of races very closely as I saw young people working their tails off to get into representative politics. I've never seen people work harder and scramble more than Judd Legum, Andrei Cherny, and Tommy Sowers.

Legum is the brilliant founder of Think Progress at the Center for American Progress and a former research chief for Hillary Clinton who didn't quite make it in his quest to become a Maryland State Delegate in the 30th District. Running as a Dem in Arizona but having former Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe as his campaign chair, Andrei Cherny didn't win his State Treasurer race. Lastly, Tommy Sowers -- an Iraq War veteran and critic of the Afghanistan War who taught new media and politics at West Point and had a campaign-friendly dog travel with him throughout Missouri's 8th District, couldn't beat back the red tide.

Whether Republican or Democrat, there are hard-working young people working to break their way in, and most lose trying, particularly on the first round -- but I salute all of them in addition to these three guys.

On a personal note, I am happy that Republican Jeff Flake won in Arizona. I chatted with Dick Armey last night about the Pacific Island-loving, hunky Congressman -- and we may try another push getting him on the House Appropriations Committee. Flake is one of the sensible Members who believes that the American right to travel is a human right and that the government ought not to interfere as it has in blocking travel to Cuba.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen Grasso Andersen, Nov 08, 10:47AM People who bandy the term "Socialism" about as though it is a disease are really closet monarchists who want the return of feudlis... read more
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National Security Priorities of the 112th Congress

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Nov 02 2010, 1:31PM

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Anticipating National Security Priorities in the 112th Congress from Stimson Center on Vimeo.

Gordon Adams, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, is one of the nation's premier national security budget experts and a big part of the muscle behind the defense budget blog, The Will and the Wallet.

I recently joined Gordon Adams as well as Politico's Jen DiMascio, National Public Radio's Tom Gjelten, and Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy's "The Cable" for a feisty discussion titled "Anticipating the National Security Priorities of the 112th Congress."

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 03, 11:21AM So, right in unison with this electoral referendum on Obama's pathetic political cowardice, the State Department releases an audit... read more
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Jonathan Guyer: DC's Right to Vote (Not!)

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Jonathan Guyer is a program associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and the official cartoonist of The Washington Note. He blogs at Mideast by Midwest.

-- Steve Clemons


Remember to VOTE!

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Tuesday, Nov 02 2010, 8:57AM

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-- Steve Clemons


Posted by questions, Nov 03, 4:55PM Kos has a nice front page piece up about the shape of the electorate -- the "base" didn't turn out for the dems in the numbers it ... read more
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David Frum and John Bolton Ahead of Obama on All Things Gay!

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 01 2010, 5:31PM

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david_frum gb.jpgDavid Frum is really coming out of the closet on all sorts of things.

First, he agreed with me in a BloggingHeads/New York Times exchange that Iran's leadership was behaving as if it really wanted to be bombed with some of its antics and thus Israel and all parties should take a step back from their hyperventilating intoxication with the subject and reconsider. Then he blasted the Republicans for their health care position -- and now he is giving credit where credit is due on making Halloween a sexy, fun, adult holiday -- to the gay community.

When I was 13, all of my closest friends happened to be Jewish while I was a failed and perpetually failing Episcopalian. So, I got an honorary Bar Mitzvah party.

After this great post reflecting on gay heritage and a holiday about dressing up in all things fun and ghoulish or fabulous, David Frum earns my vote as an "honorary gay man" -- at least for a few days.

Frum writes:

To understand the global appeal of the Halloween holiday, go back to its origins. Those origins are found not in mystic Celtic folklore, but in modern gay culture.

Halloween is overwhelmingly an adult holiday. This year, for example, Americans spent an estimated $800 million on costumes for children, $1 billion on costumes for adults. Where did that adult dress-up party begin?

As best we can tell: in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. In the 1970s, that neighborhood emerged as the heart of a new home-owning, bourgeois, coupled gay community. A local variety store had long sponsored a Halloween street festival for kids. In the 1970s, the street festival transitioned into an adult party of lavish costumed theatricality. The "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" -- a troupe of transvestite nuns -- got their start here.

The Castro Halloween party spread to other gay neighborhoods in the 1980s: Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, Key West, Florida. In 1994, University of Florida anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass published a book on the new trend, "Masked Culture," describing Halloween as an emerging gay "high holiday."

And after a while -- the straights imitated.

From the spread of disco in the 1970s -- to the habit of paying money for sparkling waters such as Perrier -- culminating in Halloween, gays have incubated and developed major cultural trends. Straights adopt, and then ungratefully forget whom they are adopting from -- just as American Christians forget how much of the modern Christmas music they enjoy was written by Jews, starting with the most popular of them all, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." The majority culture forgets what the minority culture has produced.

The "masked culture" first developed by the gays of San Francisco has reached across the lines of orientation -- and now jumped across the boundaries between nations and languages. It's not just a party. It's an ideal of personal emancipation, self-expression and self-fulfillment -- an ideal that loses none of its power when it takes the form of a sexy nurse's outfit.

I want to take David to Nellie's, JR's and Cobalt (his wife Danielle too) and introduce him around. David Frum, no matter what he once inspired on Iran as a leg of the axis of evil, could make great bait at a gay bar (not for me - but for others. . .)

john_bolton_.jpgBut in all seriousness (i.e., the last part was NOT serious), I admire David Frum -- who no doubt will be an architect of some future Republican order -- for working hard to neutralize the anti-gay currents of his party.

I don't think he has succeeded yet, but it's good to have him there pushing the right buttons that embrace and include gays and lesbians in our national narrative.

And while I don't want to get too far down this track, mark me as "pleased" that even John Bolton is making increasingly clear his support for "gay marriage."

That's right. John Bolton supports gay marriage. And I salute him for it.

And he supports the abolition of Don't Ask Don't Tell. That's right. JOHN BOLTON.

While I don't agree with Bolton's views in much of the international sphere, he is darned right enlightened on these issues.

Not even President Obama, who admits his own views may be on a bit of a journey, has gotten to the admirable place that John Bolton and David Frum have on the civil rights issue of this era.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Nov 02, 8:57AM Bolton, who has a great chance of getting his talons on some power once again, is just covering all his bases. Realizing that he w... read more
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Lawrence Summers Needs to Retool his Wall Street Tilt

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 01 2010, 2:09PM

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lawrence summers wef.jpgWhen Senator Jeff Bingaman was working diligently in the mid-1990s to get not only the White House but also Republican and Democratic Senators and House Members to focus on the large scale, structural deficits that were building between the United States on one hand and Japan and China on the other, he tasked his team with smartening up on what leading economists of the day were saying about global imbalances but also about the dynamics of a turbo-charged, stock churning equities market. Not only were policy makers on the whole not paying attention to trade and current account deficits, they were also ignoring the impact of hot, impatient money on the domestic sector.

Bingaman, via his staff including yours truly and his then chief of staff Patrick von Bargen, began quoting economists Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Summers on their groundbreaking, compelling work on financial equities transaction taxes -- minor taxes on major equities churning that could both help promote longer term decisions in the equities markets but which also could generate revenue to fund portable educational benefits for workers and investments in high tech R&D.; Stiglitz and Summers both felt that such taxes would not only not hurt markets but could help prevent excesses.

I remember getting a phone call from an Assistant Secretary of Treasury on some of Jeff Bingaman's quotes of then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers and was told "Dr. Summers changed his mind on those excise taxes when he joined the Treasury Department."

Lawrence Summers has largely been a Wall Street-tilting force ever since.

Continue reading this article

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by DakotabornKansan, Nov 03, 9:09AM All those ass-busting American workers must be too dumb to "compete"… Gross inequality can be fatal! “The class warfare that we a... read more
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Dereliction of Duty? Feingold's Opponent Would NEVER Publicly Challenge White House on War

Share / Recommend - Comment - Permanent Link - Print - Monday, Nov 01 2010, 12:23PM

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Wisconsin Republican Senate challenger Ron Johnson would not publicly challenge the White House on matters of war and peace from his perch if elected to the US Senate.

In a report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Johnson makes clear that challenging the Executive Branch publicly when it comes to armed conflict is not something he would do -- except privately.

Johnson's most pointed comments were directed at Feingold, saying that when he and other senators "come out and start demanding a U.S. pullout and that kind of thing in public, it just undermines what our troops are trying to do."

Said Johnson: "That's not saying if you have real grave concerns as a member of Congress you should not be talking to the administration. It's just extremely harmful to our nation when it's all done in public."

Asked whether he was saying it's improper for Feingold or other senators to be speaking out publicly against the war, Johnson said: "I guess what I really object to is how quick and early he has been throughout his career (to criticize military action) .?.?.?he has been carping about this from the sidelines forever."

Johnson then repeated his suggestion that when there are troops in the field, lawmakers opposed to U.S. policy should be expressing their opposition in private rather than in public.

"There's an appropriate way of opposing a policy and an inappropriate way," he said. "The appropriate way if I'm a U.S. senator is going to be not public. If I'm opposed to something, I'll make those views known very, very well, but privately with the administration."

This is the most remarkable and disturbing statement I have ever read from anyone hoping to serve as his state's chief spear carrier in the US Senate.

Does Ron Johnson not have any background on the history of this Chamber and the many great Republicans and Democrats who have helped shape the national security decisions of the nation -- often knocking back or kicking along the White House?

As I was prepping for a recent discussion about US policy and the Afghanistan War at the PBS NewsHour studio, I had a conversation with Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) which I share here.

I am in agreement with Senator Feingold on his take on Ron Johnson's disturbing comments.

More of my conversations with Senator Feingold later today.

-- Steve Clemons


Posted by Kathleen Grasso Andersen, Nov 05, 5:40PM Russ Feingold lost...I am soo bummmed...he was my first choice to run for prez....in courage and competence, he had no equal in Co... read more
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