brainrow

A former Texas governor used to say, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”

No, it wasn’t George W. Bush. Bush was born rich, and while he’s certainly been a poor president, this is a different meaning of the word “poor” — a meaning Bush would know only from books, if he read them.

I’m not sure Bush would have said “rich is better” even if a speech writer had handed him the script. His entire administration has seemed dedicated to leveling a tilted economic playing field — but he seems to believe it’s the rich who have it rough, and poor folks get all the breaks. So while one hand taketh away, cracking down on civil liberties, judicial review and habeas corpus, the other hand giveth:

The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance.

In presenting the revised rules, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty called the changes a substantial and direct response to a lobbying drive by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others.

Since devastating bankruptcies at Enron and WorldCom prompted Congress to pass a stringent corporate accountability law four years ago, business interests increasingly have pushed back on efforts to police their operations, arguing that the government has imposed too many costs on companies with too few benefits for investors.

The Salt Lake Tribune shows us how law enforcement works for people without lobbyists:

If only for a few minutes, Maria felt like an “illegal alien” in her homeland – the United States of America.

She thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant here on Tuesday, but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets.

The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were “cleared” or arrested by “la migra,” the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said.

“I was in the line because of the color of my skin,” she said, her voice shaking. … “I’m from the United States, and I didn’t even get a blue bracelet.”

…

Women were crying as they were handcuffed with plastic ties and put on the buses. Some weren’t allowed to get their belongings from their lockers. Maria, who declined to use her last name, argued with an agent because she was getting the coat for her 34-year-old niece, Blanca, who was arrested.

“She [the agent] told me, ‘Do you think it’s going to be cold in Mexico?'” Maria said, holding back tears. “I’ve never seen people get treated como animales.”

Bush is wrong about the tilt of the playing field. Former Texas Governor John Connolly was right: rich is better.

Jon Stewart was on fire last night. (Warning: strong language. Bleeped, but still strong.)

Goodness gracious? Mr. Secretary, we’re three years into what may be the most poorly-managed war in American history. So enough with the “golly,” and the “gee whillikers” and the “oh, my.”

Aasif Mandvi offers a painful perspective that hits close to the bone:

For a brief time, you can see the whole show here. Watch the entire Fareed Zakaria interview.

Josh Marshall worries about the meaning of the sudden resignation of the Saudi ambassador:

The main mistakes I’ve made thinking about foreign policy over the last half decade were, I think, all cases where there were certain outcomes I just didn’t find credible because they were just too stupid and dangerous for anybody in a position of power to try. Good luck on that.

Yeah, whenever you think you’ve figured out just how bad the Bush Administration is, they always find a way to surprise you. I hate those surprises.

The world of financial services offers us the familiar disclaimer, “Past performance is not an indicator of future results.” It’s a warning against excessive optimism — “irrational exuberance” — and an acknowledgment that nobody really knows what the future holds. Last year’s high-flyer might be next year’s boat anchor. Market predictions that seem brilliant in January can look idiotic in December — and vice versa.

But sometimes I think past performance is an indicator of what to expect from the future. When the past record is one of failure after failure after failure after failure, and the new plan is more of the same, it’s not very reasonable to expect success next time around.

Via Atrios, Jim Henley says the stakes go up every time we fail, but the solution remains the same:

[O]ur mission is no longer preventing “full-blown civil war,” which used to be what we had to prevent, or “increased sectarian strife,” which is what we had to prevent before that, or “increasing insurgent violence” which is what we had to prevent before that. The pattern has always been:

1. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Bad Thing from happening.

2. Bad Thing happens anyway.

3. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Worse Thing from happening.

4. Worse Thing happens anyway.

5. Reiterate sequence.

At no point does the “Sensible Center” consider that the previous failures implicate our ability to fulfill the new mission, which is always paradoxically grander in scale while being a retreat from previous ambitions.

From the Washington Post:

The administration had said the president would address the nation before Christmas but scrapped those plans as Bush grapples with a host of proposals for adjusting policy in the increasingly unpopular and costly war.

Mostly, I think it’s the speech writers who will be busy, searching for a way to make the same old policy sound like a bold new idea.

In his later years, George Harrison liked to keep a ukulele close at hand, particularly when traveling. So I think he might have enjoyed Jake Shimabukuro’s version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

I’ve linked to this video before, but thanks to YouTube I can now put it right on this page.

Some people still believe that the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report is the cover story that allows the country to change course in Iraq and George W. Bush to save face. I don’t think so.

Take this Freudian slip from yesterday’s joint press conference with Tony Blair. Bush responded to a question from Los Angeles Times reporter James Gerstenzang. Pay close attention.

I don’t think Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton expect us to accept every recommendation. I expect them — I think — I know they expect us to consider every recommendation, Jim. They — we oughta pay close attention to what they advise. And I told ’em yesterday at our meeting that we would play close attention.

Notice: not “pay close attention,” but “play close attention.”

I don’t like amateur psycho-analysis of people not present, but let’s be honest here — the theory that Bush sees the presidency as a big game of “Pretend” goes a long way toward explaining the past six years.

I know a little something about computers. Maybe I should volunteer to help CNN fix this persistent bug in their polling software. Time and again, their “QuickVote” polls seem to be missing at least one option. In this case, for example, where’s the “It’s none of my business” option?

I’ve been using Macintosh computers since about 1989, I think, and I’m an unabashed fan. Sometimes when I hold forth about the glories of the Mac, I see eyes rolling and resigned, weary sighs from my rapt listeners, and I wonder: Am I wrong? Am I crazy? Do I carry this thing too far?

It’s a source of comfort to me when I see something like this, from The Omni Group blog:

Michaela brought in some pillows that her friend Roberto spent the last several months crafting for her. Mac nerds can’t be content with a row of regular pillows on the couch, no, no way. Our decor needs to resemble graphical user interfaces whenever possible! Behold, Michaela’s dock in cushiony fabric form!

Or this hand-made oak clock, called the Macintock.

See? I’m not the most obsessive person in the world. Really!

Or maybe it’s just that I’m really, really lazy, and making those things looks too much like work.

The New York Times remembers Pearl Harbor with “a triumphant but mostly forgotten story of World War II“:

In 1942, Robert Trumbull, The Times’s correspondent at Pearl Harbor, detailed the salvage effort that rebuilt the Pacific Fleet after the Japanese attack. These articles did not run because of wartime censorship, and are available to the public for the first time.

The articles are in a series of PDF files, which show images of the reporter’s typed pages. There are also excerpts of Trumbull’s reports as normal web pages.

You can make George W. Bush look talented, but it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work:

I used to be an optimist, but time and experience have cured me of that.

Or so I thought. Recently I learned that there is still a streak of absolute Pollyanna-ish optimism in me. On the day after Election Day, when Bush announced that Donald Rumsfeld was out, for the space of one heartbeat, I dared to hope that this meant a new course in Iraq. Oh, what a fool I was!

Over at TIME magazine, they still believe. Their question, “Can Bush Find an Exit?” is based on a faulty premise — that Bush is looking for an exit.

But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy and instead begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq, rewrite the mission of the 150,000 U.S. troops there as they begin to draw down, and launch a diplomatic Olympics across the Middle East and between Israel and the Palestinians. Even calling all that a reversal is a misnomer; it would be more like a personality transplant.

The TIME writers have already given Bush the personality transplant. Do they really believe he is “contemplating” a change? They must be talking about some other guy.

In Latvia last week, Bush said:

We’ll continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.

Flexible? Bush is as flexible as a tire iron.

If he’s so inflexible, why did Bush show Rummy the door? Not, I think, for his long record of failure in Iraq. No, I think it was for the memo:

Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.

In the end, Rumsfeld’s faith was not sufficiently blind.

Over on the Al Franken Show’s blog, Eric Hananoki asks the uncivil question:

What should we call the Iraq war if we refuse to call it a “civil war”?

E.g. “that thing over there.”

There’s a link where readers can submit their suggestions.

Some of the responses are in a later post. A few of my favorites:

Mark M = Ongoing celebratory gunfire

Alex C = Cross Cultural Exchange of Gunfire

Jim B = CSI – Everywhere

There are also suggestions in the comments of both posts. One commenter suggested “That thing we do.” Before you venture into the comments, be warned: there’s some strong language there.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling shows us the home life of a neoconservative.

Nate, you’re in the wrong house again! You live next door!

Meanwhile, Tom Tomorrow brings us the Ballad of a NeoCon.

Rumsfeld really screwed this up! Not to mention Condi! And don’t get me started on Chalabi! Am I alone in my competence?

What a surprise. George W. Bush seems to be rejecting recommendations from the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group before they have even made any recommendations:

Although the president was not asked directly about the panel’s recommendations, which will be made public next week but which were partially leaked to reporters late Wednesday, he did say that “this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.”

Hey, if anybody knows about “no realism whatsoever,” it’s George W. Bush.

What Bush says:

President Bush on Thursday dismissed calls for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq as unrealistic, saying American forces would “stay in Iraq to get the job done, so long as the government wants us there.”

What I hear: