Profiles In Stupidity

This weekend's failed terror attack has the Wingers screaming that we need to be racially profiling Middle Eastern men.  We've been having this battle for years now.  It didn't work then, and it's not going to magically work now:

Broad-based ethnic profiling is counterproductive for a host of reasons. It creates a false sense of security and causes law enforcement resources to be wasted in chasing the wrong targets. Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. John Walker Lindh was white, while Richard Reid was Jamaican and British. As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has reported:

Terrorism profiling is a crude substitute for behavior-based enforcement. It violates core American values, including the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It also hinders anti-terrorism efforts because it alienates people and communities that are critical to the success of the anti-terrorism effort.

Non-specific profiling of certain religions or races amounts to a witch-hunt against a class of people, creating the perception among the larger society that those individuals containing certain suspect features (skin color, foreign-sounding names, foreign-language skills, etc) are to be feared.

Yesterday, two Middle Eastern men were pulled off a flight heading to Phoenix because passengers reported they were engaging in suspicious behavior. The men were speaking in a Middle Eastern language. And on a Detroit-bound flight yesterday, a Nigerian businessman was taken off an airplane because passengers became suspicious that he was lingering in the bathroom for too long. The FBI confirmed that the individual’s behavior was due to a legitimate illness.

Hasn't stopped the Wingers however.  All Muslims are the Enemy to them.

And they wonder why AQ can still recruit.

The Worst Thing Ever

As John Cole reminds us, the worst thing a Democrat can ever do is to be mean to David Broder.

This is almost comical (from a pretty good column by E. J. Dionne):

With Pelosi off the hook, the Washington press corps needed a new goat, and along came Harry Reid. The Senate majority leader, it should be said, sometimes makes it easy for his critics. He can be irascible, and has no qualms about yelling at journalists. (It’s happened to me.) He is not always careful with words. Earlier this month, he at least implied that Republicans were slow on the slavery issue, an odd charge since opposition to slavery was the passion that animated the founding of the GOP. (In those days, most Democrats were, as we might put it now, bad on the slavery issue.)

And, yes, Reid criticized my friend and colleague David Broder. It’s true that Reid was hitting back, since David is not wild about Harry. Nonetheless, I dearly love Broder, as does everyone who has ever worked with him.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how absurd this is, that the very worst sin a Senate leader can commit is to insult a lazy, senile newspaper columnist.

Even E.J. Dionne serves Broderism.

Nothing will ever improve until the existing Village structure is dismantled.

Chess Versus Crazy Eights

Democrats like Obama play chess.

Republicans like Mary Matalin on the other hand are playing Crazy Eights.

I was there. We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it. And within a year of his presidency at this comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent. And we were creating jobs.

And the great thing about it is a grand total of zero people on CNN's Sunday show called her on it.  Republicans are genetically incapable of accepting responsibility for anything, and it's precisely because our "liberal media" won't do a single thing about it.  The entire statement is a lie (even the unemployment part, it was almost 6% then.)  Every sentence in that statement is in fact a lie with the exception of "I was there."  The following sentences clearly cast doubt on the veracity of the first one.

And yet, Mary Matalin is a Serious Washington Insider Pundit.  The entire eight years of Bush's Presidency and the first year of Obama's was in fact all Bill Clinton's fault according to her.

Can we exchange our pundit class this week in the stores?

[UPDATE 9:32 AM] Think Progress has the video:

Everything You Need To Know

...about Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposed balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Mr. Pawlenty's proposal for a federal amendment would include exceptions for war, natural disasters and other emergencies. The U.S. has been at war for most of the past decade.

So under this proposal, Bush still would have run up a multi-triliion dollar tab on the national debt in the Middle East, but we would have no stimulus or health care reform, or Medicare or Social Security for that matter.

It's funny how the GOP wants to work punishing social spending in the Constitution, but has zero problem for a decade of war spending.

Running The Numbers On Terror

Nate Silver reminds us that we do not live in a world of absolutes, just events with extremely low probability.

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Indeed...we get lucky every day on a cosmic scale.  We've got a President who is not treating us like idiots for once and warning we're all going to die on airplanes unless we do exactly what he wants.

StupidiNews!

• Iranian officials are cracking down on dissidents, calling for the arrest of anti-government demonstrators.
• A pair of mass whale strandings in New Zealand has left 125 whales beached and killed.
• The federal budget rose by four percent under Obama's first year, but that's less than the double digit increases under Bush.
• Japanese Finance Minister Hirohijo Fujii has been hospitalized for high blood pressure.
• More Amazon.com e-books for the Kindle were sold on Christmas Day than physical copies according to the retailer.
  

Last Call

While the Iranian protests have never really left us this year, the crackdown this weekend in Tehran has been the worst in months, and as Spencer Ackerman notes as the Iranian protesters are likening the Ayatollah to the unfaithful Muslim ruler Yazid:

I don’t know how long it’ll take, but a theocracy that the faithful equate with the man whose iniquity ultimately prompted the creation of Shiism is doomed.

In a Shi'ite nation, absolutely.  It's like comparing a Western leader to Judas Iscariot.

Pound Of Flesh

The Wingers DEMAND!!!1! heads for this weekend's failed terror attack in Detroit, and they've decided the first head needs to be Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."

Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."

Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened."

And you know what?  I can actually see the argument here for once.  This guy should have been on the no-fly list.  He never should have been allowed on that flight out of Amsterdam.  He got on board there with this device.  That's a mistake.

It became a full-fledged error in judgment when Napolitano said "the system worked."  It didn't work.  Nobody believes that, left or right.

Real Manly Ye-Men

You're kidding me, right Joe?

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn) a renowned hawk and one of the foremost champions of the invasion of Iraq, warned on Sunday that the United States faced "danger" unless it pre-emptively acts to curb the rise of terrorism in Yemen.

"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face."

So in your official capacity as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, your suggestion for protecting Americans on airliners is to...what, invade Yemen?  Really?

Honestly?  Is the position of Replacement Cheney actually needing to be filled?

[UPDATE 5:47 PM] And speaking of Lieberdouche, Aimai at NMMNB has a must-read on why Obama has to go over the heads of the Centrists, and ask the House to eat a bowl of crap, and has to sign the Senate health care reform bill into law before this weekend's attack becomes the excuse Joe needs to kill this bill.

Previously, even a day ago, I was opposed to the ping ponging of the bill. I hoped that a conference report might, with the good wind at its back, materially improve the bill and still squeak through the Senate's sixty vote bottleneck. Now I'm sure that Lieberman is going to step up and screw us if he can, when he can. Just imagine his puffed up self hectoring us about how irresponsible it is to spend money on health care when there are terrorists attacking us in our valued cities, like Detroit?

I recommend that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi take what they can get--push the Senate version of the bill through as is and then fix every bit of it they can as it relates to the budget through Reconciliation. Do it fast and without warning. And make the terrorist attack your excuse, if you want. Say "the country has been through enough and we need to get on with things. We believe this bill is very good and we can fix the parts that need fixing through reconciliation in a timely manner." And then just do it. Lieberman will be left with his mouth hanging open and the majority of the bill will be irrevocable. But promise the progressives that they will absolutely be able to get the rest of their initiatives through the reconciliation process and hew to that promise. It will be the best of all possible worlds.

Agreed.  Fast track this thing.  Sign it ASAP, or Lieberman will kill it.  Period.

Bobo Goes All Rational On Us

David Brooks today admitted to ABC's Jake Tapper that he would prefer a single payer health insurance plan to the current Senate bill.

Conservative columnist David Brooks expressed support Sunday for a system of health care otherwise demonized in the press by the right wing. "I wouldn't mind a single-payer. Frankly I prefer a single-payer to what we have now," Brooks told ABC's Jake Tapper.

Brooks' support for single-payer comes late in the health care reform debate.

He was asked about single-payer on July 29th but deflected the question, writing, "I'm not that thrilled with the insurance companies." He also wrote, "There is no way something that big and complex and dynamic can be run out of Washington."

Brooks said he can't support the health reform passed by both houses of Congress. "I oppose it," he said. "It's a close call for me." He has consistently charged that health care cost controls are not enough to support the Democrats' bill.

You know what?

In the end, from Jane Hamsher to David Brooks to Michele Bachmann, the country is going to eventually come to the conclusion at some point that single payer is the only real solution to both reducing costs and providing care.

Bobo's finally figured it out.  This bill is only a start, frankly.  It's better than the status quo, but again that's only an indication of how truly awful the status quo is.  The profit motive in health care has to go.

A Different Response

Steve Benen argues that Obama's decidedly non-Bushian response to this weekend's blown airline attack is yet another indication of the President's cool and collected competence.

In the Bush/Cheney era, we know officials read from a far different script. Incidents like these became opportunities to exploit. Top officials -- Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Ridge -- would fan out and start hitting the talking points. There'd be talk about invading Yemen. Maybe the Bush gang would get a bump in the polls, maybe Dems and administration critics would hold their fire for a few days. If they didn't, the White House could take comfort in knowing that critics would be accused of "aiding and abetting" terrorists by attacking the Commander in Chief in the wake of a crisis.

Obama and his team obviously prefer a far more mature, strategic approach. It's about projecting a sense of calm and control. It's about choosing not to elevate some lunatic thug who set himself on fire.

Indeed, notice the pattern throughout the year. The Obama administration has taken out Saleh al-Somali, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, and Baitullah Mehsud, while taking suspected terrorists Najibullah Zazi, Talib Islam, and Hosam Maher Husein Smadi into custody before they could launch potential attacks.

In each case, there were no high-profile press conferences, no public chest-thumping, no desire to politicize the counter-terrorism successes. Indeed, most of the country probably never heard a word about any of these developments.

It's about competent and effective leadership, and it's what the country was sorely lacking up until 11 months ago.

He has a valid point:  Bush would have called a press conference yesterday.  Cheney would have made his remarks from his bunker.  Skeletor would have been on the Sunday shows along with Mukasey and Condi.  We would be hearing how only luck saved us, and that Bush would be expecting Democrats to sign off on a raft of strict new airport security procedures.  The Village would be told to measure the support for hitting Yemen.  Cheney especially would be arguing for another invasion, calling it an act of war and that Yemen would soon be getting the Iraq treatment.

Cheney will still be arguing for that.  Except now the world can safely ignore him, especially since 7 years of "making us safer" still wasn't able to stop this guy.  What credibility would he have in a just, sane America?

Why, none, as it should be.  The adults are in charge now.

[UPDATE 11:37 AM]  What Betty Cracker said.  And also, Rep. Pete Hoekstra can basically go screw himself.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday that it is "fair" to hold the Obama administration responsible for the a failure to detect an attempted terror attack. Friday, Hoekstra told the Detroit Free Press that the Obama administration needed to "connect the dots."

"You were quoted in the Detroit Free Press this morning as saying that, you know, the key is to connect the dots and maybe the Obama administration will now realize that. Is it really fair to hold the Obama administration responsible here?" asked Wallace.

"Yeah, I think it really is," replied Hoekstra. "Connecting the dots here is not really on this particular case. It's connecting the dots that we've seen over the last 11 months, over the last eight years."

The same people who said "It's not fair to hold Bush responsible for every single thing" wrong with America after seven years since the last shoe bomber attacked an airline are of course the ones who say it's perfectly reasonable to hold Obama accountable after 11 months.

Deal With It, Obama

Politico drops a warning piece to the President that Senate centrist Dems have done everything they are going to do on Obama's domestic agenda, and that they want him to drop the rest, starting with cap and trade.

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.

The creation of an economy-wide market for greenhouse gas emissions is as the heart of the climate bill that cleared the House earlier this year. But with the health care fight still raging and the economy still hurting, moderate Democrats have little appetite for another sweeping initiative — especially another one likely to pass with little or no Republican support.

“We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it’s very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,” said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economy-wide cap and trade “unlikely.”?

At a meeting about health care last month, moderates pushed to table climate legislation in favor of a jobs bill that would be an easier sell during the 2010 elections, according to Senate Democratic aides.

“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). “What we don’t want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.”

“Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,” added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I’ve told that to the leadership.”

All the usual suspects have lined up against it: Landrieu, Nelson, Bayh, even Kent Conrad.  Considering Obama has indicated his next piece of legislation will be a jobs bill in 2010 and there's still another several months of additional wrangling on health care reform ahead, it looks like Obama's going to take his win and put off any climate change legislation until, well, let's be honest here, never.

Regulating carbon through the EPA seems like the only way to get things done.  Congress wants to put that all on Obama's head, because they know what the President's EPA can regulate today will be stripped and de-regulated when the next Republican gets into the White House.

Besides, who does Obama think he is, President?  Didn't you know that every Senator outranks him according to the Village?

[UPDATE 11:25 AM]  BooMan wisely points out that since cap and trade can't get 60 votes but could most likely get 50 plus Biden, that climate change legislation needs to become the rallying point for removing the filibuster.  Ezra has a great interview with Sen. Tom Harkin on doing just that.

Well We're Living Here In Allen's Town

The Eric Holder DoJ is trying to determine just how much of Washington was disgraced banker Sir Allen Stanford's town, because he certainly had friends in high places inside the beltway.  Just how good those friends were, well...the Miami Herald investigates.

Just hours after federal agents charged banker Allen Stanford with fleecing investors of $7 billion, the disgraced financier received a message from one of Congress' most powerful members, Pete Sessions.
"I love you and believe in you,'' said the e-mail sent on Feb. 17. "If you want my ear/voice -- e-mail,'' it said, signed "Pete.''

The message from the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee represents one of the many ties between members of Congress and the indicted banker that have caught the attention of federal agents.

The Justice Department is investigating millions of dollars Stanford and his staff contributed to lawmakers over the past decade to determine if the banker received special favors from politicians while building his spectacular offshore bank in Antigua.

Agents are examining campaign dollars, as well as lavish Caribbean trips funded by Stanford for politicians and their spouses, feting them with lobster dinners and caviar.

The money Stanford gave Sessions and other lawmakers was stolen from his clients while he carried out what prosecutors now say was one of the nation's largest Ponzi schemes.

Sessions, 54, a longtime House member from Dallas who met with Stanford during two trips to the Caribbean, did not respond to interview requests.

And it wasn't just Republicans like Pete Sessions, either.

In late 2001, Stanford confronted another threat: A bill allowing state and federal regulators to share details about fraud cases -- which would have brought Stanford's brokerages under closer scrutiny -- landed in the Senate Banking Committee.

Though the Senate was now controlled by Democrats, Stanford was prepared: He had given $500,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002 -- his largest-ever contribution.

``I told him that the Democrats were going to take over, and he needed to make friends with them,'' recalled his lobbyist Ben Barnes, once Texas' lieutenant governor.

Stanford also doled out $100,000 to a national lobbying group to fight the measure.

The bill, which sparked sweeping opposition from brokerages and insurers, never made it to a vote.

A hundred thousand here, a half a million there...money well spent when you're illegally taking in billions.  Only now after being busted for one of the largest fraud schemes in planetary history is the Holder DoJ forced to look at Stanford's corrupt connections.

The best part?  The system in place that assured Stanford could buy influence will continue to remain.

And we're living here in Allen's town.

Last Call

Nooners has a truly bizarre column in the WSJ today (it drifts into MoDo the Red territory of weirdness) as she feels she must defend Barack Obama, because gosh, nobody else will and it's cool to hate the guy.

Cannon to the left of him, cannon to the right of him, cannon in front of him volley and thunder. That's our president's position on the political battlefield now, taking it from all sides. And the odd thing, the unique thing in terms of modern political history, is that no one really defends him, no one holds high his flag. When was the last time you put on the radio or TV and heard someone say "Open line Friday—we're talking about what it is we like best about Barack Obama!" When did you last see a cable talking head say, "The greatness of this man is as obvious as it is unnoticed"?

Is the left out there on the Internet and the airwaves talking about him? Oh, yes. They're calling him a disappointment, a sellout, a DINO—Democratic in name only. He sold out on single-payer health insurance, and then the public option. He'll sell you out on your issue too.

The pundits and columnists, dreadful people that they are, call him cold, weak, aloof, arrogant, entitled.
So let's denounce him again.

Wait—it's Christmas. Let's not. There are people who deeply admire the president, who work with him and believe he's doing right. This week, this column is their forum. They speak not for attribution to avoid the charge of suckupism.

It gets truly odd from there.  What Nooners just doesn't understand is that it's precisely because of the Village Idiocy that's so pervasive in Washington that it has become the in-thing to bash the President, one who has largely had a fantastic and productive first year in office.  It's precisely because the Village pushed two incompatible Obama memes:  the Messianic agent of change that would finally fix all of America's problems after Bush (not to mention absolve White America of racial guilt) and at the same time, the Village was fascinated with the Birther/Muslim/Manchurian Candidate angle.  It played up both of them.

The result was that the bar was set so high for Obama that even his amazing year was deemed an utter failure, and Village scolds like Nooners pushed him off the cliff.

Now they need to build him back up again...or at least they have to appear human enough to forgive and forget for a couple weeks.

In addition to a better Senate political system, we need a better fourth estate, too.

History Of The Filibuster

Ezra has a pretty informative interview with UCLA poly sci prof and Congress expert Barbara Sinclair.

And is there a particular moment where the filibusters accelerate? Or is the rise gradual?

It's gradual, to some extent. But in terms of its impact on legislation, it really has a big impact from the first Clinton Congress on. If one can say there's a break point, that's where filibusters become a regularly used partisan tool.

Previously, the filibuster frequently had some partisan element, but you'd have a lot of cases where individuals or small groups would hold them. But now it's much more a tool of the minority party. And the minority party is organized and relatively large, even when it's small by our standards. Forty Republicans is as small as it's been in a long, long time. That still means if you really get the minority to hang together, everyone on the other side becomes key.

Which is how you get the process we just saw, where Lieberman and Nelson and others become absolutely must-have, can't-lose votes.

And that means it's an invitation to extortion.

What's the story that you tell your students, or that political scientists tell their students, about the rise of the filibuster? Why did it happen?

It's not a simple story. in the more recent period in the 90s and on, it does have to do with partisan polarization. You have two fairly distinct and ideologically distinct parties. For example, one could make the argument that the first time it became official policy on the part of the minority party to use extended debate to deprive the majority of real victories was that first Clinton Congress.And then the Senate Republicans not only didn't pay a price, but they ended up gaining control. Then combine that with the fact that in a more polarized country, is harder to come up with deals that both the majority and minority think is better than the status quo.

So part of it is polarization, but part of it, you're saying, was a strategic realization that the American people do not reward the majority if it fails to deliver on its promises, and the minority recognized it had the power to keep the majority from delivering on its promises.

That's right, and we're seeing the result. It seems pretty clear that at some point early in this Congress, the Republicans really did decide their best approach was to bring Obama and the Democrats down. It is hard to make yourself popular, but to make the other guys look incompetent is not that difficult, and it worked for the Republicans in the first Clinton Congress, and the Republicans would argue the Democrats used these techniques as well.

As  you can see, the Republicans used the filibuster because it worked so well for them in 1993-4.  It got them the House and Senate back.  They then blew it because Newt decided Clinton was now irrelevant and shut the government down, which was too much even for the Clinton-hating Village.  The GOP then returned the favor by impeaching the guy.

Things will never improve on this front unless we demand it.