Wednesday’s Mini-Report

December 26, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* AP: “President Bush, still voicing concern about special project spending by Congress, signed a $555 billion bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war well into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through next September. Bush’s signed the massive spending bill as he flew on Air Force One to his Texas ranch here to see in the new year…. ‘I am disappointed in the way the Congress compiled this legislation, including abandoning the goal I set early this year to reduce the number and cost of earmarks by half,’ the president said in a statement.” He signed it anyway.

* Juan Cole: “Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007.” Well worth reading.

* On a related note, Matt Yglesias notes that the surge is going to end in a few months, so it’s worth considering what will happen next, especially given that the policy has failed to produce its desired political results: “Well, things will just get worse again. [Bush and Petraeus] said that the temporary increase in troops would lead to a temporary increase in security which would lead to political reconciliation which, in turn, would lead to sustainable security gains. But it hasn’t happened. So when we start desurging, we’re just going to find that nothing’s changed and nothing’s been accomplished.”

* Glenn Greenwald: “One of the few things I dislike more than end-of-the-year ‘looking back’ articles is the incessant chatter and worthless speculation over the upcoming primaries.” As a remedy, Glenn offers an actual look back with his favorite quotes of 2007. There are some real doozies in there, most of which are a reminder of why the political media establishment is a near-constant source of bitter disappointment.

* Paul Krugman: “I very much hope that the next president will open the records and let the full story of the Bush era’s outrages be told. But Bush will soon be gone. What progressives should be focused on now is taking on the political movement that brought Bush to power. In short, what we need right now isn’t Bush bashing — what we need is partisanship.”

* I foolishly thought Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R) corruption scandal couldn’t get much worse. I stand corrected: “The Seattle Times reports on its interview with David Anderson, a foreman for the corrupt oilfield services company, Veco, who supervised the renovation of Stevens’ Girdwood, Ak., home. Anderson is the nephew of former Veco chairman Bill Allen, who has pleaded guilty to bribery in the wide-ranging federal criminal investigation into political corruption in Alaska. According to Anderson, Veco provided $150,000 worth of labor renovating the Stevens home, which the FBI raided earlier this year as part of its investigation into Stevens and his connection with the Veco. That’s compared to the “more than $130,000″ Stevens claimed last summer to have paid for the renovation. So if labor alone was $150,000, what does that make the total price tag on the project?”

* We’re all very lucky that Sen. Jim Webb (D) lives in northern Virginia: “In case you missed it — and we hope you did — the Senate gaveled open at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, and closed up shop 26 seconds later. On Sunday, the Senate slept in a bit, opening up shop for under a minute at 11 a.m. And today, the day after Christmas, the Senate gaveled open and gaveled closed another one of these meaningless ‘pro-forma’ sessions in less time than it took you to take out your trash bags full of wrapping paper.”

* Oh my: “A September 2007 State Department report, obtained by TPMmuckraker, found that contractors DynCorp and Blackwater can’t account for $28.4 million in U.S. government-issued property in Afghanistan, including armored cars, guns and radios. The report, prepared by the State Department inspector-general’s office, hits the department for its lack of ‘adequate internal control over the government property held by contractors.'”

* And finally, Charles Murray loves Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”: “‘It is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion,’ Jonah Goldberg writes near the beginning of Liberal Fascism. My first reaction was that he is engaging in partisan hyperbole. That turned out to be wrong. Liberal Fascism is nothing less than a portrait of 20th-century political history as seen through a new prism. It will affect the way I think about that history — and about the trajectory of today’s politics — forever after.” Well, if Bell-Curve Murray loves it, the book has to be good, right?

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

We’re all very lucky that Sen. Jim Webb (D) lives in northern Virginia: “In case you missed it — and we hope you did — the Senate gaveled open at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, and closed up shop 26 seconds later.

Thank you thank you thank you Senator Webb!

  • The fact that Charles Murray likes Goldberg’s book is a pretty good indicator of how bad it is.

  • You’re giving the bell curve a bad name, CB. Murray’s only that zero-point-one-four, uber-fringe outlier at the far left-hand edge of the bell curve. His opinion is one of the few things in the universe less popular than the beardless ayatollah/hyena hybrid we’ve got for a vice-president!

  • “The report, prepared by the State Department inspector-general’s office, hits the department for its lack of ‘adequate internal control over the government property held by contractors.’”

    yeah, internal control…..its a term used by us geeky accountants. but its also what keeps our government from throwing billions of dollars away. interested now?

  • ‘I am disappointed in the way the Congress compiled this legislation, including abandoning the goal I set early this year to reduce the number and cost of earmarks by half,’ the president said in a statement.”

    If the Congress had balls bigger than carrot seeds, it could have achieved that by cutting out the funding for the contractors like Blackwater and Dynacorp. They’ve already been way overpaid long ago and, since they still can’t say what they’d done with the money then, presumably, they still have it and don’t need any more..

  • “…what we need is partisanship”

    Any candidate that runs on that simple platform will help solidify a moderate’s/centrist’s.independent’s election to the President of the United States.

    Keep quacking Prof. Krugman!

  • So maybe there’s hope for Joementum yet! Yay endless war!

    Krugman, though he happens to be wrong on this one, has done more for this country and its better angels than warmongering douchebags like your hero Holy Joe ever could.

  • “A September 2007 State Department report, obtained by TPMmuckraker, found that contractors DynCorp and Blackwater can’t account for $28.4 million in U.S. government-issued property in Afghanistan,”

    And this property will remain unaccounted for until someone forgets to burn the Thank You notes from Osama.

  • “…what we need is partisanship”

    Any candidate that runs on that simple platform will help solidify a moderate’s/centrist’s.independent’s election to the President of the United States.

    Perhaps. But Krugman’s indisputably right. Bipartisanship in the current environment amounts to moderates (Democratic partisans), starting negotiations from their true moderate position, trying to compromise with batshit crazy reactionaries who have no interest in compromise (Republican partisans). No good can possibly come from that. While politicians can’t afford to be honest, we’re also in trouble when they appear to genuinely believe things that are manifestly false–i.e. that bipartisanship is, in the current political environment, good. Politicians should be politic, but when they appear to believe their own hype we’re better off with them figuratively shot between the eyes than having them trying to actually accomplish anything.

    No one ever accused Krugman of putting politics ahead of honesty. Well, at least no one honest ever accused him of that. Of course, if more people were honest then honesty would be better politics. There’s a reason Krugman’s a pundit and a policy wonk, not a politician. And there’s a reason those he criticizes are really bad politicians.

  • Another 555 billion dollars added to the Federal Deficit. Great job of fiscal mismanagement you politicians accomplished in 2007 . Bush signing on AirForce One is sybolic of American dollars flying all around the world with money Americans cannot afford. .

  • Paul Krugman: “I very much hope that the next president will open the records and let the full story of the Bush era’s outrages be told. But Bush will soon be gone. What progressives should be focused on now is taking on the political movement that brought Bush to power. In short, what we need right now isn’t Bush bashing — what we need is partisanship.”

    A-men. I can’t emphasize enough that liberals need to look to how we can proselytize to the “red” areas of the country that have provided the political support to get men like Bush to positions of power. We need to convert the lower-class, rank-and-file Republican voter, and we can’t put it off. We are inevtiably going to keep running into big problems if we just count on these people to change their minds without our helping them see the world in a different way.

  • Trying to stop the effects of the right-wing political movement, without actually trying to stop the right-wing political movement, is like trying to have breakfast without procuring or preparing any food for yourself.

  • “And today, the day after Christmas, the Senate gaveled open and gaveled closed another one of these meaningless ‘pro-forma’ sessions in less time than it took you to take out your trash bags full of wrapping paper.”

    Well, the meaning of them is to defend ourselves from Bush so he can’t fuck us over again.

    • Comments are closed.