KCRW's Left, Right & Center Halloween Edition 08

Scare tactics - that is all it is. McCain is trying to Swift Boat Obama, with absolutely no tie to facts.

Once again the crew has demonstrated its lack of common sense. What is the evidence that the debts in the financial system would have failed to appear if there had been regulations????? NONE AT ALL. Yet once again Bob and Adrianna complain as if their point has solid proof. Why is no one considering that mass hysteria has appeared in this country in the past twenty years, and bankers have demonstrated their share in this nonsense by inventing and then putting huge sums into financial set-ups (such as derivatives) that anyone with common sense would have seen are recipes for disasters. There is no regulation that would have stopped that exercise in fantasy.

I am confused at the way Tony criticizes the bailout philosophy while simultaneously acknowledging that it is necessary in a crisis.

Oh no, Arianna is back. With Bob AND Arianna, the show can go south in double time.

Socialism is a systemic form of government It isn't a one time emergency infusion of dollars into the economy. The world has had a financial meltdown and the government has intervened to rescue the nation. This is how it should be. The government should work for the people when it's necessary.Some may say it has only helped the rich, but the rich own the places of employment. Just try to get an unemployed person to pay you what they owe you.

For the record, it wasn't FDR's New Deal that took us out of the Depression. It was World War II. The New Deal had some good programs, but none of the New Deal programs were money makers.

Bob grossly exaggerates when he says "most of Americans" disapprove of Sarah Palin. I don't believe Bob. I would like to know where he is getting his numbers-and please don't tell me CBS/ABC/CNN everyone knows those polls are in the Obama tank.

Finally, from the Drudge Report today... reporters from the Dallas Morning News, NYPost and Washington Times, were banned from riding with Obama's campaign because they began to ask hard questions. Obama has also refused to give any more interviews to the Florida station (WFTV 10/26/08) because the reporter was asking Biden some hard questions-something NPR, ABC, NYT, MSNBC and other mainstream media have as yet failed to do.

Mr. Blankley-Keep the faith. You are right on.

McCain-Palin 2008

Drudge, Newsmax?? Those sources of information are definitely NOT in the tank for anyone. And exactly what $10 billion budget did she balance?

Even though I don't share his ideological views, Tony Blankley is someone I at least try to listen to for an alternative point of view that sometimes has merit. His latest, rather wild speculation about Obama having "possible" Marxist leanings is an example of desperation more than thoughtful commentary. It's similar to his recent claim, equally outlandish, that Obama and Palin have equivalent experience. I think his wording was "he's a one-term senator and she's a one-term governor". Of course, this is nonsensical as well as inaccurate in portraying their backgrounds. Obama is a three-term state senator and has been in the US Senate since 2005, while Palin has been the mayor of a small town in Alaska and governor for a year and a half. Tony seems determined to distort when he's trying to spin for his preferred conservative candidates. He's an intelligent guy, yet he continues to rationalize the choice of Palin after she's made it clear she's an intellectual lightweight with little grasp of national or international affairs, whose only strength is her likeability among conservatives with no clue and her stage presence which is largely about self-infatuation. Whether forced by Republican powerbrokers or not, McCain picked this utterly unqualified woman after stating that his choice for VP would be someone "ready from day-one to be President". We need to know nothing more than that to evaluate his own judgement. Tony is obviously desperate to find a rationale for supporting someone who is anywhere in the vicitinity of conservatism, no matter how many gaffes, misjudgements and betrayals of their original principles fall by the wayside as the campaign gets dirty.

Hmmmmm, I'm still feeling a bit twitchy about this "rightwing vs conservative" thing.

Looking for the source for the $40 billion going to top execs in the financial companies being bailed out. Anybody got a link they can post here?

The beauty of the

I read an interesting blog commenting that in this election, the Republicans' core constituencies were divided among a large number of potential candidates. The Republicans have been a coalition of corporate finance (the tail that wags the Republican dog most of the time), small business people who have much cultural affinity with them and the antitax anti government conservatives who staff think tanks and articulate their concerns. Then there is the "war party" composed of neoconservative intellectuals, the military industrial complex and a lot of the working people in America whose hearts and respect belong to the military, who staff its low levels in their youths and pass their valuews on to their children who do the same in later wars. Before the USSR fell many of these were the anticommunists, and remnants of the emotion of that period is directed at China, Castro and to some extent Chavez. The Republicans also have the social conservatives concerned about issues of sex, gender roles and religious authority. And there are the white working class "Reagan Democrats" concerned about losing their jobs due to affirmative action, street crime, drugs, guns and related issues. There are other members but these are the main ones.

In 1980 all of these groups were highly motivated and coalesced behind Reagan. This coalition hung together well, that is the interests of these groups generally have supported each other and not conflicted, allowing them in varying degrees to divide the pie of power. They were also exceptionally well disciplined, recognizing that they did the best for themselves by sticking together.

The blog's thinking was that in 2008, that was no longer the case. Bush had no natural successor and had turned off much of the country. Each interest group had its own candidate, but none of them had mass appeal. The war party had McCain and Guiliani, the business class had Romney, the Christian right had Huckabee. Thompson had some appeal in the media but didn't get traction with anyone. Guiliani, Romney and Huckabee all had significant negatives with various coalition members, so McCain won the nomination, but without the level of internal support that previous candidates have had. Thus his campaign has faced dilemmas. His strength was his relative independence from Bush, valued by those for whom Bush was unpopular, and his military connection, valued by the war party. To try to add the Bush social conservative base, he picked Palin. However this cost him with the business class who value competence, and gave away the issue of Obama's relative inexperience. Obama turned out to be much more mediagenic and able to speak to the big picture aspirations of Americans. Of course Bush left McCain with two wars that have worn out their welcome, as well as issues like Katrina torture and the environment, that left many Americans queasy.

McCain could have used a really scary international crisis. The Georgia/Russia thing was not enough, it was obviously going to be limited in scope and had been initiated by the Georgians to hold on to people who preferred being part of Russia. Instead, McCain got an economic crisis, and with it a Republican administration spending $750+ billion to intervene in the markets and buy out banks (leaving their pundits like Blankley to explain how this is consistent with their usual world view), with a tanking stock market eliminating retirement 401(k)s, foreclosures imperiling home values, and recession/unemployment on the media's lips.

McCain may also face a changing demographic issue, where a critical mass of voters is not attached to the emotional issues of the 1960s that politics has been about ever since. The Weather Underground may mean as little to them as Sacco and Vanzetti. Diversity and gender role changes are accepted as part of the scene. The Vietnam war is over, as is the cold war that it was a part of, and we don't need to keep trying to refight it. People looking to the future and the myriad of problems, but less affected by that baggage that Republicans rode to power. Blankley suggests that Republicans with advanced views are already working on how to govern in such a world, but they seem to be either too burdened with Bush, or for whatever reason, don't have the ear of McCain's decision makers.

Mostly McCain is left with trying to make Obama's negatives the issue. In addition to questionable effectiveness, these have various levels of legitimacy. Obama is admittedly a relative newcomer to the national scene, and has not developed a legislative record, nor one as an executive. There is precedent for this, Kennedy for instance, and in many ways being president and a Senator are different jobs. Obama has written some fairly high quality books, by politician standards, but they do not say what he thinks about the future of China, for example. This is not an issue of character, as Rightguy suggests, but it would be of interest. Less legitimate as issues are Obama's African ancestry, his middle name, and whatever mudslinging and namecalling today's world of talk radio and the internet can allow to develop to stick. Somewhere in between are the various associations with people like Ayers and Wright. These have proven to be thin reeds for those who are not committed to their significance, in part because the connections are so attenuated and in part because McCain has some associations of his own. The Keating Five S&L Scandal is, for better or worse, more relevant to our present situation than the Weather Underground. And of course, there are crooks in and around politics in Illinois, in Arizona and in the US Congress. The real question for any future president is how is he going to prevent the Abramoffs of the world from abusing their position in his administration, and how quickly will he get rid of them if they do so. This is a hard one to answer in advance.

McCain will also be pitting his turnout machine against Obama's (and also the "antiturnout machine" that is the various conflicts and court challenges over voter registration, challenging, purging and counting that have become too much a part of our election system). Bush succeeded here, and we can only wait and see what happens this time.

StanH - That was an excellent summation of the destruction of the Republican party coalition and of the election cycle as a whole. Well put.

Hi Barry - I'm a little confused regarding your flurry of posts. Allow me to elaborate on my confusion, and hopefully you can clear up the details:

"Perhaps it is the first draft of the liberal mythology that liberals are trying to push this election cycle. The passage is simply a rehashing of CW, misunderstandings of small town American and the military class, pop-history and liberal idealism and mythology. Frankly, some passages sound like they could have been included in LOTR."

In this passage, I don't know what the acronymns stand for. Additionally, I'm a bit confused about what you're refering to with regard to the "liberal mythology." I am certainly no liberal, and I'm no political insider, but the breakdown of the Republican party coalition stated by StanH seemed pretty accurate to me. I think most Republicans would argue that it was pretty accurate. Some of the quotes might have been stated a bit pejoratively, and without lofty euphemisms, but it more or less used general categorizations to identify large swaths of the Republican party. I have friends that vote Republican, not because the party represents their value system, but because it represents their financial interests. I also have friends who are hurt by Republican taxes but vote Republican because they believe that the party represents their values. Every individual chooses their party by prioritizing issues, rarely does it happen that a single party encompasses every iota of what a person believes. I for one happen to believe that the GOP represents me in some interests and the Democratic party in others. I'm pretty sure you and I would agree on that point, so my question is, where do you see inaccuracies with the description of the GOP coalition. Is it too general? Not broad enough? Overlooking certain constituents?

My second point of confusion was when you jumped into your comparison of Nader and his role in helping divide the Democrats. There is no question that Nader was divisive, but doesn't that only serve as a good analogy to what the GOP faced this year? I don't see how your point about Nader then logically leads to the question you asked: "So, the real question is not what the Republican Party will do to regroup, but how will the Democrats behave while in power. How will they govern?"

Your question is a legitimate one, I just have no idea how you arrived at it. Lastly, I'm not sure that pacifists have anything to do with anything. It just seems like you went on a diatribe against pacifists. If I may interject, although I myself am not a pacifist, I believe that the pacifist movement is an important part of the extraparliamentary political process. They help shape ideology and push a certain extremist agenda that although will never have a strong foothold as policy, is a necessary fringe within the process. I tend to feel this way about most extremist groups, including social conservatives that preach creationism and war hawks that believe in pure militaristic defense of the country. My worry is when extremist groups tend to gain a strong foothold within government and enact policy.

Anyway, I don't mean to pick on you, but a little clarification would be great.

Cheers.

I am not sure where this argument argument about pacifism came from, but it is worth a more serious look. It may be that there are few this side of Jesus who are pacifists in theory, but the recent events may be arguments for why we should be more like pacifists in practice. At least to the extent that violence should be used, if at all, as the last resort after all alternatives have been given a chance and failed, be short in duration and limited in scope, with its end and the peace that follows clearly in view. The level of investment that we put into war should be put more into peaceful and just resolution of conflicts, with an eye to prevention, resolution and reconciliation.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq may be seen in hindsight as the product of irrationality, shock and anger clouding our minds following the 9/11 attacks. But whether you think 9/11 made Iraq and Saddam look and feel more dangerous and less worth putting up with, or that neoconservatives had been planning this attack in order to put US troops into the Middle East, get the oil, protect Israel, Westernize the Middle East with capitalism and democracy, or some combination of these, and siezed the opportunity 9/11 provided, or whether the invasion was the action of a wounded power seeking to show it was still dangerous and intimidating, we see the results:

1. uncertain facts were interpreted inaccurately;

2. the advocates for war manipulated the presentation for war, silenced the voices that ended up getting it right, and cut off voices of reason, using a moral imperative of patriotism;

3. the view that we are good and they are evil, while practically useful in operating a war, are never totally accurate;

4.accordingly the ease and certainty of victory are overestimated and the costs underestimated;

5. particularly in a war involving invasion, occupation and the inevitable insurgency by those who don't want to be invaded and occupied, we get massacres, tortures, abuses and a spiral of violence;

6. violence creates more violence, makes enemies and generates a need to settle scores. The longer it lasts the more new violence it creates;

7. violence creates dehumanization, which creates more violence. It leads to viewing the other with a broad brush. For example anti-semitism which had been discredited after the holocaust experience, has been revived in the middle east because of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The brutality violence generates makes conflicts less possible to resolve by other means. Who wants to negotiate with beheaders and torturers?

8. The technology of violence continues to expand, as does the technology of surveillance and the sophistication of torture. The firepower of today's arms dwarfs those of say World War II. What we call "collateral damage" to civilians becomes more of an inherent part of these wars.

9. The cost of violence is immensely destructive, to them and us.Think what we could do with the money we are spending in Iraq. Think of the cost in lives and wounded bodies.

10. Once war starts, it is exceptionally difficult to stop. The troops are at risk. Lives have been lost. Everyone wants victory. The dynamic is that it is easy to fight on, until everyone is exhausted and overwhelmed with pain and loss.

11. The US experience is shaped by victories in major wars that temporarily left us in better shape than everyone else. We are less familiar with the failures of colonial domination, and seem more willing to repeat them.

12. They say that an orthopedist looks at a problem and sees a knee operation. If the US invests heavily in a war machine and sees problems in the world, the answer is likely to be a war. Where your treasure is your heart is also. But the war may not solve the problem. It can just as easily create more problems.

13. War becomes incompatible with democracy, both here and abroad. Probably with consuer capitalism and a diverse community as well.

14. Restraints on war, whether substantive like the "just war" doctrine or procedural like votes in Congress or the UN, have not been effective. We have been unable to make these effective.

15. There is a book called "War is a force that gives us meaning." That factor can not be underestimated in a world where change is theatening, consumer materialism is unsatisfying and social bonding is weak, or where many feel they have little else.

War is therefor becoming too much of a blunt instrument to accomplish whatever policy goals it is supposed to accomplish.

This election has not been about pacifism, but about which war or combination of wars are tenable. Obama argues that the war in Iraq was unwise but the war in Afghanistan, after 7 years, is not. It is not clear why the same problems will not arise in both places. Both sides in the US seem to agree at some level that US war can not be endless, that the people in these countries must primarily resolve their problems themselves through some community political process, and that a higher quality of economic, psychic and cultural life in these countries is the eventual solution to the creation and support of "terrorists".

So while what we think of as "pacifism" may seem untenable to most, it also seems that what we need to do is to create social institutions around the world that provide well being, shalom, and dare I say it, peace to the world's people. This includes the serious need for ways to prevent abuses, genocides, acts of evil if you will, by ways other than war. These have not been tried seriously, other than by small groups like Christian Peacemaking Teams, who live in as much danger as soldiers. If we invested in creating institutions of peace and limiting wars more, we might avoid debacles like the present one..

Actually I add a few of McCain's favorite phrases.

"My guess is you come from an academic background as you substitute quantity for concise arguments. Either that or you are an English major. "

I have a professional degree, was not an English major, and while I am not an academic, I respect their job of speaking truth to power. I do often find it necessary to raise many issues on complex issues, which you may perceive as quantity rather than conciseness. Oversimplifications and sound bytes tend not to be accurate or solve problems.

"1. Without someone to make a pacifist safe, through fighting common enemies, a pacifist wouldn't have the stage from which to pontificate."

Maybe. Maybe we aren't safe when the world is engaged in violence. Maybe pacifists don't pontificate any more than war advocates do.

"violence should be used, if at all, as the last resort after all alternatives have been given a chance and failed, be short in duration and limited in scope, with its end and the peace that follows clearly in view. The level of investment that we put into war should be put more into peaceful and just resolution of conflicts, with an eye to prevention, resolution and reconciliation.

If this truly were the description of a pacifist, there wouldn't be an issue. Even neocons would be say they were pacifists if this is the definition."

Well not really. That's certainly not what happened concerning Iraq, no matter what Bush said about it. That is one of the problems we have making this requirement real, instead of just something qwe have to say to get the war started.

" I'm referring to extreme pacifists. The ones who would eliminate the military, much like Costa Rica has, and who disagree with the use of violence or force of any kind for any reason. Less extreme, but toward the same spectrum are people who think all disputes can be resolved through diplomacy, i.e. "appeasers" though that term is thrown around too loosely by neocons."

Whether all disputes can be resolved through diplomacy or negotiation, certainly many can. "Appeasement" is a somewhat different concept. It has a bad connotation because of the Hitler-Checkoslovakia experience, but it essentially what happens every time someone negotiates a "win win" situation. The Hitler Checkoslovakia problem is one of guraranteeing that negotiated solutions will be enforced as agreed, a real issue but not one that makes resolution of disputes by means other than death and destructions weak or unrealistic. Even if power is required in diplomacy, it doesn't necessarily have to be military power or the threat of it. And if the latter is used, it comes at a cost that may be avoidable. Most of us don't use violence to get what we want in our daily lives, even though there is a potential level of violence, by police forces for instance, that underlies daily living.

"neoconservatives had been planning this attack in order to put US troops into the Middle East, get the oil, protect Israel, Westernize the Middle East with capitalism and democracy, or some combination of these, and siezed the opportunity 9/11 provided

I think it's fairly clear already that this is the correct analysis."

I think that all three of the causes I mentioned were influential.

"Obama argues that the war in Iraq was unwise but the war in Afghanistan, after 7 years, is not. It is not clear why the same problems will not arise in both places. Both sides in the US seem to agree at some level that US war can not be endless, that the people in these countries must primarily resolve their problems themselves through some community political process, and that a higher quality of economic, psychic and cultural life in these countries is the eventual solution to the creation and support of "terrorists".

This is the pacifism I was arguing is self-destructive to whichever party it infects. Intellectualism aside, if the U.S. is attacked by Japan or Afghanistan, we must respond following the Powell Doctrine. Did we nuke Afghanistan? No. Did we get sidetracked by a war of revenge, greed and pre-taliation. Yes.

Win or lose, Afghanistan is an example of fighting the good fight. And we must never back down."

Whether this is the "pacifism" that you find intolerable, it remains an accepted truth that military violence only gets you so far. After that you need to do something else.

Most people, including I'm sure Gore had he been president, would see the need to oust the Taliban militarily after 9/11. We were not actually attacked by Afghanistan in the same way we were attacked by Japan in WWII, but the Taliban obviously gave al Qaeda too much slack. The question is, what happens next? We can in the short time chase and try to eliminate as much of al Qaeda as is possible. To the extent that we try to occupy a place like that, we pretty much guarantee the same fate that Britain and the USSR suffered. This is the untenable model of colonialism. Of course, it was not done well. Bush's invasion of Iraq took the focus off Afghanistan. If we had a chance of investing there and perhaps constructing a country and culture more to our liking, like we did with the defeated powers after WWII, that never happened. Arguably we could have if Iraq hadn't distracted us. However given Bush's disdain for "nationbuilding" and overseas aid, maybe not. Obama may get his chance, and we must hope that it doesn't do for him what Vietnam did to LBJ.

More likely, as in Iraq, we will become engaged in the conflicts of warlords on their turf and in their culture, being one more warlord with one more militia, which is ultimately a losing effort. They are more likely to manipualte us than we are to manipulate them. We also face the probability that we define victory differently. Bin Ladin may have been happy that America aroused the emnity of millions of Moslems in the Middle East, even if he and his organization were destroyed. The reality may be that an invasion of places like Afghanistan and Iraq, the emphasis needs to be quick in, quick out, and then let the locals take over and hope they learned enough to avoid futre 9/11s. More grandiose investments of lives and treasure, whether 7 years or a hundred years, will lead to the costs outweighing the benefits. Even people who really believe that American military power is the world's greatest force for good must admit that we can't fight in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and in North Korea, and in Darfur, and in Somalia, and in Venezuela. The rest of the world knows this too. The big stick is only so big, and we only want or can swing it so many time. A problem is that we get entranced with the idea of swinging a big stick, particularly after a trauma like 9/11. However, as in our daily lives, most conflicts are resolved between relative equals seeking win win situations, rather than people killing each other with guns and bombs. In general the society we want to live in minimizes the latter. That's why the wild west is legend and entertainment but not reality. And that's why we need to invest in building institutions of peace more than war, even if we risk being called pontificating pacifists.