At 7:00, a press aide began to escort us up the stairs, round a bend, and through the famous front doors of the White House. Don't try to bring water into the residence --- they'll confiscate it. I snuck some in anyway.
Then we wait. Most of us have prepared questions, even though there's a roughly one in twenty chance that we'll be asked. Actually, fewer than one in 20, because all the network correspondents get a question. Last night, Fox's Major Garrett didn't, but maybe the White House was retaliating because the Fox network decided it did not want to lose more money and refused to air the presser.
The more experienced correspondents amble in later; the eager beaver newsbies -- like me -- get in there early, even though we have assigned seating. Last night, I was placed between the New York Post's Charlie Hurt and the presidential historian Martha Joynt Kumar. CSPAN's Steve Scully escorted Helen Thomas, still the dean of the press corps, to her front-row seat.
After spending some time chatting with Kumar about the history of presidential press conferences, I joked around a bit with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza about seating: what would it take to get Chuck Todd to rush out -- so we could grab his seat in the front row? We recalled a Murphy Brown episode where the lead character telephoned her network's White House reporter and told him that his wife was in labor. The reporter bolted and Murph got the seat.
....and cnn continues to sink deeper into the stank of shite journalism. Shaft? Really?
One of the key findings of this Gallup Poll is that a majority of Americans in retrospect believe the use of harsh interrogation techniques by the Bush administration was justified. Some of those who believe the techniques were justified still believe that an investigation into what transpired would be appropriate, but when all is said and done, just a bare majority of 51% of Americans support an investigation, while 42% oppose it...Notably, a majority of those following the news about this matter "very closely" oppose an investigation and think the methods were justified.
At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament. In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.
We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation.
“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.
A man urinates on April 25, 2009 in the toilets of the Sodoma bar in central Reykjavik where photographs of the former bankers who left their country after the financial crash have been stuck on the urinals. AFP PHOTO OLIVIER MORIN.
The photos, examined by Air Force and Army criminal investigators, are apparently not as shocking as those taken at Abu Ghraib, which became a symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But Defense Department officials nevertheless are concerned that the release could incite another backlash in the Middle East.
Still, we justify the rhetorical contortions that excuse black people from challenging examinations; in the end, it is based on a tacit sense that such things are antithetical to black authenticity, that it is somehow untoward to require this kind of concentrated scholarly exertion on black people. It is the grown-up version of what Barack Obama termed in his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention "the slander that says that if a black youth walks around with a book in his hand he's acting white."
"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not," W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903. A century later, the International Association of Professional Black Firefighters tells us, "Cognitive examinations have an adverse effect upon blacks and other minorities." Du Bois crowed, "Fifty years ago the ability of Negro students in any appreciable numbers to master a modern college course would have been difficult to prove," and proudly documents 2,500 black college graduates. Imagine Du Bois listening to a rep from the black firefighters' association now sneering that the promotion test merely measures "the ability to read and retain"--i.e. engage in higher-level thinking processes! O tempora, o mores.
This will not do: People like Du Bois did not dedicate their lives to paving the way for black people to be exempt from tests. Sure, the tests may not correlate perfectly with firefighters' duties. But which falls more into the spirit of black uplift that you could explain to a foreigner in less than three minutes: teaching black candidates how to show what they are made of despite obstacles, or banning a test of mental agility as inappropriate to impose on black candidates?
Zora Neale Hurston had some apt words in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road: "It seems to me that if I say a whole system must be upset for me to win, I am saying that I cannot sit in the game, and that safer rules must be made to give me a chance. I repudiate that. If others are in there, deal me a hand and let me see what I can make of it."
If the Supreme Court is truly committed to racial justice, it will listen to Zora.
On the question of Turkey's accession, I used to be able to make either case. Admitting the Turks could lead to the modernization of the country, whereas exclusion could breed resentment and instability and even a renewal of pseudo-Ataturkist military rule. On the other hand, admission would put the frontiers of Europe up against Iran and Iraq and the volatile Caucasus, so that instead of being a "bridge" between East and West (to use the unvarying cliché), Turkey would become a tunnel.The Strasbourg crisis clarifies the entire picture and should make us grateful to have been warned in such a timely fashion. Turkey wants all the privileges of NATO and EU membership but also wishes to continue occupying Cyprus, denying Kurdish rights, and lying about the Armenian genocide. On top of this, it now desires to act as a proxy for Islamization and dares to waste the time of a defensive alliance in trying to censor the press of another member state! Kouchner was quite right to speak out as he did, and the Turkish authorities will now be able to blame the failure of their membership scheme not on the unsleeping plots of their enemies, but on the belated awakening of their former friends.
Timonen downplayed Kunitz's hit, but Stevens said he thought the Penguins forward was trying to put his top defenseman out.
"It was a hard, hard hit," Stevens said. "He's not just trying to get the puck there, he's trying to hit him to hurt him. I'm not saying it's a good hit. Your team should be able to respond. That's hockey, that's playoff hockey. That's the way it happens. Emotions run. That's why I feel the game has a way of policing itself."
After seeing the replay, Timonen said he's surprised he didn't sustain a concussion.
"It's not really my job to judge if that's a penalty or not," he said. "It was a hard hit, obviously, and I have to move on. If you let that affect your game, and I know they're going to try to hit me, if you start thinking about that before the game, you're going to kind of let your own game down."
The Washington Post reports:
President Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, and he will order its members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days, according to a senior administration official....Earlier this month, both chambers of Congress passed Obama's $3.5 trillion budget outline for 2010, which includes unprecedented new investments in health care, education and energy. But the huge budget, which contemplates a $1.2 trillion deficit, has drawn the ire of small-government conservatives, who say that such high deficits jeopardize the nation's economic future.Just to be clear: $100 million represents .003 percent of $3.5 trillion.To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.
What is going on here? I think two things, one negative, the other historical.
The negative trend is, I think, that a significant portion of students are finishing at our best universities feeling let down and unfulfilled by the experience. It just wasn't all it they'd expected it to be. There is too much drinking and dope-smoking and too little sense of commitment to anything larger than one's own ambitions and appetites. Ultimately, they tell me, they didn't feel challenged to be more than themselves, intellectually or morally.
The historical moment is that these young men are from the 9/11 generation. Most of them were 13 or 14 years old then that attack occurred -- that is, barely conscious of the larger world. Since then, for all their conscious lives, they have lived in a nation at war. So what I think fundamentally is going on is that they are deciding that al Qaeda's attack and its consequences are becoming the defining event of their lifetimes, and they want to be part of that.
Yet US officials recognise that the task ahead is fiendishly hard. On a trip to the Middle East last month Mrs Clinton told Arab officials she was "doubtful" that Iran would respond positively to US engagement. Even if it does, the speed of Iran's nuclear programme is likely to outstrip the pace of negotiations. Indeed, Mr Obama's approach to Iran is only the latest of a series of attempts dating back to 2003 to convince Tehran to rein in its nuclear programme - none of which has prospered.
Mr. Fleischer fails to mention that the marginal income tax rate for those in the highest-earning bracket fell from 39.6% to 35% due to Bush's tax cuts. (http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/printer/151.html) That those in the lowest bracket paid 5% less, as Mr. Fleischer reminds us, is hardly reassuring when we consider that these are the same people who benefit most greatly from social programs funded by the income taxes of the extremely wealthy, whose taxes fell precipitously and by almost the same deficit. (It's the lowest tax rate for the wealthy in decades.)
Also, I have to take issue with Mr. Fleischer's using shares of total tax receipts, as many could be easily misled by these figures. He cites that the share of taxes paid by the top 10% went from 67.8% in 2001 to 72.8% in 2005. Since their tax rates were lowered during the same term, this figure is due in no part to Bush's taxes policy, but to the unprecedented rise in personal income by those same top 10%. (www.census.gov)
It's the same story. The rich are got richer and the poor got poorer. Mr. Fleischer's deceptive use of statistics just puts the icing on the cake.
"The rivalry here is well known," Flyers coach John Stevens said. "The teams don't like each other very much. Any time you play a team two years a row in the playoffs, the emotions roll over."
As a result of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, the share of taxes paid by the top 10% increased to 72.8% in 2005 from 67.8% in 2001, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. He reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child, both cuts that President Barack Obama says we should keep. In so doing, millions of lower income taxpayers were removed from the tax rolls, shifting the remaining burden to those at the top, even after their taxes were cut.
According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 -- 60% of the country -- paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation's income.
When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that's a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes. For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.
...The upside of Pax Americana is rarely highlighted. Between 1976 and 2006, the number of "free" nations more than doubled, from 42 to 90, while nations "not free" fell from 68 to 45, according
to Freedom House. There are 123 democratic countries today, compared to, give or take, 22 in 1950. One Australian government report found that between 1972 and 2006, 67 dictatorships had fallen. Half the world's population was in poverty in 1950. Today, about a fifth of the world remains impoverished.
The world's progress during Pax Americana is no accident. The United States could do more. But between 1946 and 2000, in constant year 2000 dollars, the United States gave about $1.5 trillion in foreign aid--that 50-year total, even while excluding billions in private annual aid, likely dwarfs all other nations. A success story of post-war U.S. aid, Japan, is now a top government donor.
In unveiling his priorities for the future of the defense budget, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates talked of "matching virtue to necessity." What "necessity"? Gates is the skeleton at the feast, the only Cabinet member whose budgetary problem isn't figuring out how to spend money fast enough...
When the operating theory in Washington is that deficit spending on every possible priority is conducive to economic growth, there's no justification for slamming the brakes on the defense budget. The world hasn't gotten any less dangerous, a fact to which Capt. Phillips can attest. If we ever tip below the level of capability necessary to enforce a rough global order, we -- and the world -- will regret it.
Predictably, the absence of ownership of these waters means no one has had much incentive to prevent activities that destroy their value — activities such as piracy. The result is a kind of oceanic “tragedy of the commons” whereby, since no one has an incentive to devote the resources required to prevent piracy, piracy flourishes. In contrast, if these waters were privately owned, the owner would have a strong incentive to maximize the waters’ value since he would profit by doing so. That would mean suppressing and preventing pirates... Rather than trying its hand at Somali state building, the international community should try auctioning off Somali’s coastal waters.
Does this boilerplate goodwill represent anything true? In order for the great and civilized nation of Persia to take its rightful place in the community of nations, it would have to be able to demonstrate that its leadership was freely chosen by its own people and that it was willing to abide by agreements and undertakings (on nontrifling matters such as nuclear proliferation) that it had solemnly signed. The mullahs rule Iran on the basis of a Khomeini-ite dogma known as the veliyate faqui, which makes them the owners and "guardians" of all the country's citizens. And they have been covertly seeking enriched uranium of the sort not required for a civilian nuclear program, while never ceasing to proclaim the imminent and apocalyptic return of the 12th or "hidden" imam. In other words, in order to claim its "rightful place" in any recognizable community of nations, Iran would in effect have to cease to be an Islamic republic.
Meanwhile, the theocratic regime has several times exerted its power to arrest and imprison Iranian-Americans for "offenses" that would not be crimes in any civilized country. The most recent such outrage is the imprisonment of journalist Roxana Saberi, framed for allegedly buying a bottle of wine. We should hear more from the White House about her case and less about the sensitivities of her jailers. Some differences cannot be split. Many conflicts are real and do not arise from mere cultural misunderstandings. Obama must learn this or be taught it, whichever comes sooner.
Five U.S. soldiers were killed today in a truck bombing in northern Iraq. It was the deadliest attack against American forces in Iraq in more than a year.
Obama's other great enthusiasm is renewing disarmament talks with Russia. Good grief. Of all the useless sideshows. Cut each of our arsenals in half and both countries could still, in Churchill's immortal phrase, "make the rubble bounce."
There's little harm in engaging in talks about redundant nukes because there is nothing of consequence at stake. But Obama seems not even to understand that these talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era START talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry.
I'm not against gift-giving in international relations. But it would be nice to see some reciprocity. Obama was in a giving mood throughout Europe. While Gordon Brown was trying to make his American DVDs work and the queen was rocking to her new iPod, the rest of Europe was enjoying a more fulsome Obama gift.
Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?
To merit the world’s respect, Obama’s effort to neutralize al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan has to show progress. He’s doing the right thing in pledging $1.5 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan and trying to get other nations to provide more.
But it’s not a good sign that NATO allies did not answer his call for more troops for Afghanistan. They will provide 5,000 trainers, but no more combat forces...
While he was overseas, North Korea fired off an intercontinental ballistic missile. Prior to that, Obama declared that, referring to United Nations resolutions against Pyongyang, “rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”
But North Korea went ahead. And the U.N. Security Council did nothing because the United States could not persuade China or Russia to impose sanctions, or even make a menacing statement. That’s not a good sign of respect.
I've had a feeling for a while now, a rather unsettling feeling, that world leaders across the board were beginning to recognize that the wave of popularity that Obama rode into the White House coupled with his relative novice as a Commander-in-Chief could lend itself to potential strategic opportunities for their respective countries. I think a brief chronology (just a few) of the events since Obama took over could help contextualize this idea:
1. January 20, 2009 - Barack Obama becomes 44th President of the United States (POTUS)
2. February 2, 2009 - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Pres. of Iran announces the first Iranian satellite-Omid-was launched into orbit on an Iranian-made rocket.
3. March 14, 2009 - Russia announces the possibility that both Venezuela and Cuba could play host to fleets of Russian Bombers.
4. March 23, 2009 - China's central bank call for new reserve currency other than the US dollar.
5. April 5, 2009 - North Korea launches multistage rocket despite worldwide condemnation the day before Obama made his call for nuclear disarmament.
All first-term presidents are new to the role of Commander-in-Chief. But Obama is new to both governing and foreign policy (he comes from a more domestic policy background); he is a genuine rookie. National Review had a number that the McCain campaign didn't seize upon luckily for Obama: the Senate was in session for 140 some-odd days before Obama announced that he was running for president.Regulators say all 19 banks undergoing the exams will pass them. Indeed, they say this is a test that a bank simply will not fail: if the examiners determine that a bank needs “exceptional assistance,” the government, that is, taxpayers, will provide it.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, were given a signed photo of Saddam Hussein by US marines after the former Iraqi leader was shown their movie in prison. During his captivity, US marines forced Saddam, who was executed in 2006, to repeatedly watch the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, which shows him as gay, as well as the boyfriend of Satan.
Posts
All Comments
