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Sarah-Ten Reasons or Two?

By Ron Beasley

So Sarah Palin has resigned as governor. It was a surprise to nearly everyone.  Now Mark Halperin has come up with ten reasons why she may have done this.  Josh Marshall only has two:

Either Palin is resigning ahead of some titanic scandal (which should emerge in short order if it exists) or her resignation was triggered by an even more extreme mental instability than we'd previously suspected.

I have a different idea.  Sarah Palin is ignorant but I don't think she is dumb.  She may have realized that she has a following but it's not nearly big enough for her to ever be a serious candidate on the national scene.  But there is gold in those followers.  He future fortunes are in the media as in FOX.  If only five percent of the population watch your show it's good for a seven figure salary.  And people buy the books by wingnut superstars although those people rarely read so those books are rarely read but you get the money anyway. 

Of course there could also be a new scandal.  That will only make her fans love her more.

No sign Iran seeks nuclear arms: new IAEA head

By Steve Hynd

Promising to be neither a "soft" Director-General or a "tough" Director-General," the next IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, has already rained all over the neocon parade. (H/t Kat)

VIENNA (Reuters) - The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

That's a bit of a blow to folks like John "bomb them" Bolton and the Weekly Standard's Peter Berkowitz, who have busily been claiming that - despite and indeed because of Iranian election protests and the following clampdown - "the central question for Middle East politics" namely, "what to do about Iran's illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons," is best answered by an immediate Israeli attack because "relying on prayer for Mousavi and the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs is no option at all, at least not for the state of Israel, the front line in Islamic radicalism's war against the West."

They go on to claim, beyond all credibility, that Israel could attack with relative impunity as far as Iranian blowback is concerned - using as part of their data for this wargames conducted by the neocon Heritage Foundation back in 2007 (which of course found the result the participants most wished to find) and for the rest wishful thinking.

So, this statement by the next atom watchdog head severely undermines their narrative, as it removes that first premise beloved of neocons and Clintonistas alike: that Iran is in "illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons." Expect the warmongers to ignore Amano as much as possible, just as they always ignore contrary expert advice and evidence. The point is to justify an attack by someone on Iran, not prevent a war.

And these warmongering, lying, cherry-picking Wormtongues are why I want to urge caution on the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Trita Parsi. I respect Trita immensely but he's forgotten the wolves in the wings when he says that the important criterion for American policy right now has to be to reject Ahmadinejad’s attempts at portraying his victory as final and that the best way to do that is by holding no negotiations for now. Steve Clemons points to pieces by Robert Dreyfuss and former UK ambassador to Iran Richard Dalton today and writes " I very much agree with Dreyfuss' kicker on engaging Iran and ignoring the John Bolton types who want to launch a new war." Ignore as in sideline, not hand them ammunition by derailing negotiation attempts.

I'd like to ask Trita - would he rather Obama talked or Israel bombed? Because I think those are going to be his choices. The meme that the election protests humanized Iranians and made an attack harder to justify - as repeated by Zakaria - didn't play at all in Tel Aviv or in US rightwing circles. White House opposition to an attack may also not be a meaningful deterrent factor if Obama himself has already implied, by disengagement, that the current Iranian government cannot be talked to. As long as Netan-yahoo, his Likudniks and their American neocon co-conspirators think US opinion is usefully split on an attack and that the waters of international opinion can be thus muddied, they will be highly tempted to tell themselves there will be no repercussions in the U.S. or internationally.

Dear Sarah, WTF? (Update: An Embezzlement Scandal?)

by Jay McDonough

Sarah Palin announced today she would resign her responsibilities as Alaska governor at the end of July.  She will turn over the responsibility to govern the state to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

The speculation is Ms. Palin abandoned her responsibilities in order to concentrate on a 2012 Republican presidential nomination run. Here's the governors announcement.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The news comes the same week as the release of a devastating Vanity Fair profile of the governor and the leaking of McCain campaign emails.

Honestly, this is the lamest excuse for abandoning elected office I've ever heard.  "I'm a lame duck so I'm just gonna bag it now?"

I'm sure all the Palinphiles will put on their game faces and feebly attempt to argue Ms. Palin is doing the right thing for Alaskans.  The rest of us are just gonna see a narcissist who's bailing from her job midstream in order to pursue yet another office she's unqualified to hold.

Update: by Steve Hynd

Several blogs are leading with speculation that an embezzlement scandal is about to engulf Palin and is the direct cause of her resignation. Brad Friedman writes that:

I've now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin's house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the "same windows, same wood, same products." Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.

The BRAD BLOG has not been able to receive confirm from any federal sources on this. Our information comes from local Alaskans who follow Palin, and who have been keeping an eye on this for some time, while keeping it quiet at the request of federal investigators.

Think Progress adds that:

The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home

Where's My Monkey Wrench?

By Steve Hynd

A couple of days ago,  Chris Bowers snarkily announced his conversion to being a "conservative Democrat".

After several years of trying to "retake" the Democratic Party and make it more progressive, today I am giving up and becoming a conservative Democrat. Upon careful consideration, the benefits packages are simply too heavily tilted toward the corporate wing of the party. Check it out:

It would be pretty sweet to be able to endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes to keep me in the Party. I mean, if you do this as a progressive, then you are pretty much screwed for life.

...If you are a conservative Democrat, you get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own. If you are a progressive, you have to stand at the back of the line, and then get threats about never hearing from the White House again if you step out of line.

Further, if you are a conservative Democrat, you can also refuse to pay your Democratic Party Committee dues, and still receive disproportionate expenditures from Democratic Party Committees. That is just a straight up good deal.

...Being a conservative Democrat gets you more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors. Hard to argue with receiving both enormous big dollar fundraisers held in your honor and huge amounts of money from small progressive donors. So really, who cares if bloggers complain about you. Their readers are still going to fork over huge amounts of money.

If you are a conservative Democrat, you get to hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want. And there are no repercussions. In fact...

Being a conservative Democrat also makes you far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama's cabinet by 7-1.

Finally, if one of those crazy progressives decides to challenge you in a primary campaign, if you are a conservative Democrat you can also count on the endorsements of 95% of your congressional colleagues, the entire party leadership, and virtually every progressive advocacy organization. They will stand by you.

"Bonesparkle" at Scholars & Rogues took up the issue (H/t Kat):

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence...

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

...Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

It's not a new idea. The same ideas play out in the run-up and aftermath to every major election cycle as progressives - perpetual victims - steel themselves to vote for people they're sure are going to screw them, get screwed, then wonder how to stop being screwed. Indeed, back in 2005 I contributed some ideas to the discussion a whole bunch of bloggers were having for a "coalition of the left", an American Solidarity movement which would be a progressive "big tent" outwith the self-imposed political rapings of the Democratic Party. The best round-up of the discussion came from American Samizdat.

Then, as now, the biggest real-world barrier to a divorce of progressives and Beltway Democrats is the way in which the big two parties have the electoral process sewn up at the earliest stages, making it nigh-on impossible for a new third party to get on the ballot in enough places to mount a truly national campaign. The biggest emotional barrier is the perennial notion that "this time it will be different" - the Dems playing Lucy with the football, as Fester likes to describe it. For the 2006 cycle, the football was Iraq. For 2008, it was Barack Obama himself and his promises even convinced cynical me to back off from urging that divorce. But Obama has become more and more a Tony Blair figure - he said a lot of stuff to get elected but on healthcare, the economy, social safety nets, interventionist foreign policy, state secrecy, torture and the Imperial presidency he's turned out not to mean a whole lot of those words.

No more excuses. "Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet."

Solidarinosc!

The CBO Cudgel

By Fester:

The CBO has scored the HELP committee's full healtcare bill. The bill is the complete vision of what Senators Kennedy and Dodd want to do and it includes a reasonably strong public option, Medicaid expansion, comparative effectiveness research and an employer mandate. The goal is to expand coverage by a significant margin and introduce significant and well backed competition in regional health insurance markets that are overwhelmingly quasi-monopolosistic or duopolistic.

The CBO previously scored a partial version of the HELP framework that did not have the public option or the employer mandate in it. That partial scoring produced estimated costs of about 1 trillion dollars but with a significant portion of the population still uncovered. The marginal increase in coverage per dollar over the next decade was not good.

The new scoring of the bill that takes into account the actual coverage expansion and cost control measures is pretty damn impressive. From the AP:

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office

Not a bad deal at all if we can get 97% coverage in even if there is a reasonable argument that the CBO score is a bit low as made by Jonathan Cohn. The real value of this CBO score with the complete HELP framework including the public option and the employer mandate is that it is a cudgel against the 'centrist' Democrats who don't want the public option overtly because it is 'too expensive' and potentially because it is a threat to major local employers and campaign contributors of regionally dominant health insurance providers. The public option is the best means of cost control and doing without it means a weaker bill for significantly more cost.

Time for a Blogger's Ethics Panel

By Fester:

Time for a blogger ethics panel as there is no invinsible wall between editorial and business functions at this and many other blogs. The Newshoggers recently received a paid advertisment from the ACLU that advocates Twittering Against Torture. Once BlogAds takes their cut, we may be able to afford a pint of good Kentucky whiskey to split amongst everyone. The ACLU advertised on the 'Hog because they consider the writers and by implications our audience to be a receptive audience to their message that torture is an inherent bad and should not be condoned. Our opinions as writers made us notable and potentially valuable to an advertiser. Time for an ethics panel...

If this Politico Report is to believed, the Washington Post really needs a Bloggers' Ethics Panel:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors....

 

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders …

 

“Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. …

 

“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion....

 

Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ..

Of course we know it is the job of the national print media to star-fuck.  Why would that raise any ethical concerns at all.  And why would this raise any credibility concerns when it is so difficult to get decent steaks with an appetizer, desert and a pair of drinks for two for less than $20,000, they barely are making any money on this at all.  There is nothing suspicious here.  Nothing at all besides the complete confirmation of the malleability of the Washington Post’s editorial stances for deep pockets. 

But there is no need for an ethics panel as Tom in Comments at Balloon Juice wins quote of the week on this story with this line:

So we have now come to the point where a health care lobbyist is more ethical than the Washington Post.

Wow!

I got a paper cut and Obama is to blame

by Jay McDonough

Some things are almost too stupid to be true.

Here's Rush Limbaugh the other day explaining South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's disappearance and affair:

...So he ups and leaves for five days, doesn't leave anybody in charge of the state, in case there's an emergency.

This is almost like: I don't give a damn! Country's going to hell in a handbasket. I just want out of here!

He had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn't want any part of it. He lost the battle and said "What the hell? The Federal government is taking over! I want to enjoy life!"

Not quite stupid enough?  OK, then...how's this?

Michael Jackson's biggest successes, and as it turns out his final successes, real successes took place in the eighties. That was Billie Jean, Thriller and all this. I mean he was as weird as he could be but he was profoundly, because of his weirdness, an individual. He wasn't a group member. He reached a level of success that may never be equaled. He flourished under Reagan; he languished under Clinton-Bush; and died under Obama. Let's hope the parallel does not continue.

Got that?  Mark Sanford's and Michael Jackson's stories have nothing to do with bad judgment and bad choices.  It's actually the federal government and Barack Obama that forced the governor to disappear for five days, leaving his state in the lurch while he was off in Argentina with his mistress.  And it's the suffocating power of the state that caused Michael Jackson's declining popularity and death, not the multiple botched plastic surgeries, persistent rumors of improper behavior, freakish lifestyle, and reported drug abuse that doomed Jackson.

For a group that claims personal responsibility as a mantra, these conservatives sure are quick to blame someone, anyone, else for all their troubles.

Next IAEA Head Elected

By Steve Hynd

The BBC reports that the next director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, will be Japan's Yukiya Amano.

Mr Amano won the required two-thirds majority from the IAEA governing board, defeating his South African rival, Abdul Samad Minty, by 23 to 11 votes. The present head, Mohamed ElBaradei, is scheduled to end his term in November.

It's a victory for Western nations over the developing world, probably ensuring that in future there will be less of the kind of criticism of Western nuclear hypocrisy we've seen from el-Baradei.

Mr. Amano is generally endorsed by Western nations, while Mr. Minty has backing from developing countries -- a split that led to the deadlock in March.

...The split vote reflects the deep divide between Western nations, including the U.S., and developing countries that accuse the West of being indifferent to the problems of poorer countries. The two sides have also faced off over the issue of Iran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment. Representatives of some developing nations have privately said they share Western fears that Iran may seek to use enrichment to develop weapons. But as a bloc, they tend to support Iran's argument that it has a right to an enrichment program for generating energy.

But whatever happened to the Bushies' fave candidate, DDG Olli Heinonen? He was happily prepared to set up briefings of dubious US-provided intel just so that the Bush administration could leak it to the press as "coming from the IAEA". Did that torpedo him with other members? Did the Obama admin. withdraw U.S. backing for him? He just faded from contention some months back with no media coverage. Someone must know the backstory there.

US Effective Unemployment Rate: 18.7%

By Steve Hynd

Steve Clemons has published an email from Leo Hindery in which Hindery looks at the aggregate jobless totals and comes up with a figure of over 30 million Americans out of work.

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the "labor force reserve" because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are "part-time of necessity" (i.e., 8,989,000) or "otherwise marginally attached" (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers - 13,290,000 - have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

That's a lot more than the 9.5% and 14.7 million jobless of the official figures but it is the true extent of America's unemployment problem. Clemons writes that "the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential". He's the master of understatement, some days.

When Did The Af/Pak Policy Change?

By Steve Hynd

One of these things is not like the other.

Back in March, President Obama set out the broad outlines of his Af/Pak policy. One of the bright lines was supposedly that US forces in Afghanistan were not there to engage in long-term nation building. The US most definitely wasn't in Afghanistan so that in a decade or more at a cost of over a trillion dollars that nation could be bootstrapped up to the level of, say, Chad. Instead, the mission was twofold: to go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban's hardcore militants, disrupting safe havens and killing leaders, while giving Afghans the bare beginnings of providing for their own governance and security.

In his March speech, Obama was plain that a long-term COIN operation wasn't to be on the cards and that the US "surge" was to take the fight to the Taliban.

We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

...I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.

At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home.

Sometime over the last few months, that mission has changed. Without informing the American people and wthout any real debate, the COINdinista interventionists have taken over and redirected Obama's policy. From the WaPo today:

Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan…

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban, and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Counter-insurgency "clear, hold and build" has entirely taken over from counter-terrorism "hunt, kill and disupt". That might be the right thing to do - although I have my doubts - but the point is that it wasn't what Obama said would happen and government policy has radically shifted in favor of an interventionist, long-war, nation-building policy straight from the military and the folks at CNAS without any official announcement or very much public debate. In fact, it's almost as if Obama himself hasn't been told.

Update: In comments over at VetVoice, commenter Ben says that one data point does not a trend make. Ben's critique correctly notes that there was going to be some COIN even in Obama's mainly CT-aimed original plan and so he asks how do might tell the difference from meagre evidence. But of course there isn't just one data point. There's been a continual stream of officers, wonks and policy officials - from Gates and McChrystal on down - saying that it's about civilian protection and nation building, not killing bad guys and getting out. The genesis of the change is easy to see too. CNAS' David Kilcullen has estimated another 10-15 years. Back in March, Eric Martin noted a CNAS report written by four of the leading COIN scholars arguing why a 5-10 year military/diplomatic commitment in Afghanistan was necessary.

Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal sees the same mission creep as I do.

And a new piece at The American Conservative details the alliance between Petraeus' COIN team and CNAS that has quietly changed Obama's Af/Pak policy.