Blog Title: Three Wise Men

A blog in which three Texans discuss politics and other subjects.

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AR Ballot Initiative Would Ban Gays from Adopting/Fostering

Because you know, they have SO MANY people in Arkansas willing to adopt and foster kids who don't have homes that the state can afford to just ban people wholesale from doing so. Honestly, it's this kind of stuff that just makes it all too easy to accuse conservatives of only caring about kids BEFORE they're born...because the accusation is right.

Best Line

This is easily the best line I've read this week. On the potential pairing of McCain and Lieberman, James Wolcott has this to say:

Together on stage, he and McCain would look like a gay Metamucil ad.

If that doesn't cause whatever you happen to be drinking to shoot out of your nose, nothing will.

We're Number One!

...in the number of uninsured residents, topping out a whopping 1 in 4 who lack any health coverage whatsoever. According to the article, this prompted John Goodman, president of the ultra-generically named National Center for Policy Analysis here in Dallas (whose nonsense we've covered before) to opine thus:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American ? even illegal aliens ? as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

See, you're not uninsured. You merely have an alternative means of payment! Never mind that debt collectors will hound you to your grave even if the government picks up the dime for hospitals that provide care for those who visit their emergency rooms, and NOBODY visits the emergency room for treatable but minor conditions that can worsen over time. With the flip of a magic wand, the health care crisis in this country is solved! Believe it or not, the total number of Americans without without insurance has declined, but only because more Americans have moved onto the Medicaid and Medicare rolls. Which actually, is a start.

UPDATE: I failed to note that Goodman has served as an adviser to the McCain campaign on the issue of health care. The McCain campaign is distancing from Goodman's statement (something that seems to happens a lot around those parts) though as Jonathan Cohn explains, McCain's approach on health care is still notably unserious.

Tensions Escalate

It's been three weeks since Georgian forces invaded South Ossetia, prompting a swift counter-response by Russian forces, and Russia still does not appear interested in either withdrawing their forces from Georgia or helping to de-escalate the war of rhetoric between Russia and the West. On Tuesday Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, over the protests of the United States. Humanitarian aid being delivered to Georgia on NATO warships has prompted an assertive Russian response, which has responded by ordering more of their own warships to the Black Sea (though U.S. ships have declined to dock at the Russian-controlled Georgian port city of Poti.) Mysterious explosions on a Georgian railway have heightened suspicions that Russia is demonstrating it's ability to hamper energy supplies to Europe, and Russia's occupation in general has permanently damaged plans to turn Georgia into an alternative energy corridor that would circumvent Russian control of energy resources (a fact that the Russians were almost certainly considering when they invaded Georgia.) Russia's stubborness has prompted calls for sanctions by members of the European Union, a move that seems more likely now that Russia's Asian allies have failed to offer diplomatic support for Russia's actions.

The Future of Afghanistan

Articles about the worsening of the military and political situation in Afghanistan are becoming distressingly commonplace. The situation is not at all helped by our insistence on bombing the hell out of Afghan civilians in our efforts to counter the Taliban insurgency. In an effort to counter the resurgent Taliban-hopefully without managing to kill more Afghans than the Taliban do-U.S. Marines are being shifted out of Iraq and to Afghanistan. At first glance bolstering our efforts in Afghanistan would appear to be the right course of action to take, but writing in the NY Times a couple of weeks back, Bartle Breese Bull argues that we should limit our goals in Afghanistan to ones that we can realistically obtain...and that this does not include building Afghanistan into some kind of stable and functioning democracy:

Destroying the Taliban regime after 9/11 was just and rational. And it was done in an effective and proportionate manner: over just six weeks in late 2001, with several hundred American special operatives on the ground, American air support and our allies in the Northern Alliance.

Since then, however, the mission has grown. Today there are 71,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, yet things are getting ever worse. There were 10 times as many armed attacks on international troops and civilian contractors in 2007 as there were in 2004. Every other measure of violence, from roadside bombs to suicide bombers, is also up dramatically. Our principal ally at the beginning of the war, the Northern Alliance, controlled more of the country at the end of 2001 than President Hamid Karzai, our current principal ally, effectively controls today.

The United States must certainly punish those who attack it and those who give sanctuary to such people. This is why the Afghan war has always had popular support. But our initial goals ? dethroning the Taliban and disrupting Al Qaeda ? have been as thoroughly accomplished as is possible given the porous frontier that Afghanistan shares with Pakistan.

Thus the creeping mission in Afghanistan has fed on a perception of four further American interests: the denial of sanctuary to global terrorists; the projection of American power in a sensitive part of the world; support for modernity in the global struggle for the Muslim mind; and cutting heroin exports. Each needs careful reconsideration.

Which he then goes on to do, arguing that essentially none of these goals can be achieved by an open-ended and massive commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan. His logic is compelling. Thus far stability and democracy (of a sort) in Afghanistan has been seen as the panacea to all four interests listed above, but the question is the feasibility of a stable government in Afghanistan that is capable of protecting itself from the Taliban, or capable of controlling the various warlords that still dominate Afghani politics. Frankly, a strong and democratic government in Afghanistan is probably impossible to achieve, at least without an completely open-ended occupation of Afghanistan (and probably not even then, given the nation's history.) So what goals can we achieve? At best, we can continue to deny the Taliban the ability to reassert themselves as the ruling power in Afghanistan, and we can continue to harass Taliban fighters and their Al Qaeda allies who move back and forth in and out of Afghanistan via Pakistan. Unfortunately, as long as Pakistan's Western provinces operate as something of a safe haven for the Taliban, they can continue to harass our troops, Afghan civilians and the Afghan government with spectacular raids and ambushes, suicide attacks, and assaults on remote outposts. Bull arrives at the crux of the problem, the porous border with Pakistan and the safe havens that the Taliban operate out of in Pakistan that we can do precious little about. Of course, fighting between the new Pakistan government and the Taliban has increased in recent weeks, and the uneasy "peace" that existed between Musharraf and the Taliban seems to evaporating. But counting on any government in Pakistan to completely eliminate a group that is highly supported by the mostly Pashtun residents of Western Pakistan, has proven to be stubbornly resistant on the battlefield and has the not-so-cover support of the Pakistani intelligence services is certainly expecting too much. It would appear that the ability of the Taliban to operate with some semblance of freedom out of Pakistan is a fact of life that we simply must grow accustomed to.

The question then is, what exactly should our focus in Afghanistan be? Bull appears to think the mission as it exists now, to harass the Taliban and maintain Karzai as the leader of Afghanistan, is all we can hope to accomplish. And although I'm full aware of the difficult strategic position we're in when it comes to Afghanistan, I just can't bring myself to agree fully with him. I do think additional troops can make a significant difference, and I'm more disturbed by the threat posed by a virtual safe haven for Al Qaeda's leadership (including bin Laden, who's still out there somewhere.) However, I agree with him that domestic political considerations make it easy to engage in the sort of mission creep that will see our goals in Afghanistan grow out of all proportion to our ability to achieve those goals. Bolstering the mission in Afghanistan will be justified not only by the language of security, but also by the language of democracy, thus helping to establish expectations for Afghanistan in the mind of the American public that we cannot possibly meet without being willing to occupy Afghanistan for decades (a necessity that will most certainly NOT be mentioned to the public.) I for one am willing to let things develop further. I'd like to see to what degree the government of Pakistan can control the Taliban, and I'd like to see what additional American and NATO forces can do to bolster security in Afghanistan. But we should all certainly understand that success in Afghanistan is far from a foregone conclusion, and that Afghanistan in ten years may look pretty much the same as it does now.

So About That Timeline...

Last week it appeared that the Maliki government and the Bush administration had come to some sort of agreement about a timeline for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. However, it appears now that American and Iraqi negotiators might have meant two slightly different things by "withdrawal", as while the Bush administration took it to mean combat troops only, Maliki appears to have meant ALL American and otherwise foreign troops:

US and Iraqi officials said last week that negotiators had reached an agreement to withdraw American combat troops from Iraqi cities by next year, and pull out the rest by 2011 if the security situation is stable enough.

"There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," said Mr Maliki yesterday, speaking at a gathering of tribal leaders in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Actually, this doesn't not appear to be the agreement "actually" reached, at least not in the minds of American negotiators:

?These discussions continue, as we have not yet finalized an agreement,? a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said on Monday. ?We?re optimistic that Iraq and the U.S. can reach a mutual agreement on flexible goals for U.S. troops to continue to return on success, based on conditions on the ground, and allow Iraqi forces to provide security for a sovereign Iraq.?

As you can see, our officials are in a position only to point out that this isn't actually what anyone has agreed to. But it's difficult to publicly argue that our troops should remain in Iraq even if the government of Maliki doesn't want them there, and Maliki knows this. As Marc Lynch observes, the Iraqis are playing a game of chicken here, and they are willing to hold as long as it takes to get what they want...and that may be longer than we are willing to hold out. But as Lynch also points out, things are still up in the air at this point and it's hard to say exactly what the final agreement will look like. Or what that might even mean next year, or the year after, or the year after that, depending how the situation changes on the ground in Iraq. As has been stated before, this insistence on the withdrawal of American forces along with recent moves against the Sunni Awakenings movement, makes it appear that Maliki is ready to consolidate power in Iraq and feels strong enough to do it (thanks to the determined effort on our part over the last five years to bolster Iraqi/Shiite security forces) whether we are willing to help or not. Whether he's actually capable of it or not will greatly determine the future of our military and political mission in Iraq.

It's Official

What has been de facto is now de jure, as Barack Obama is now officially the Democratic nominee for President.

Eighteen

Fresh off of another few weeks of almost completely meaningless games, it would appear that the NFL is looking to chop off a few pre-season games and add two more regular season games to the schedule, bringing the total number of games teams will play in a season to eighteen. In my opinion, getting rid of useless pre-season games can only be a good thing. Pre-season consists of four (or five!) mostly meaningless games that in total may come out to four quarters of real football and increase the odds of important players getting hurt before opening day. Sure it gives coaches a chance to evaluate their players, but they could probably do the same over two games, and still give their backups a chance to prove themselves. Animosity to the pre-season is pretty common and has been for a long time, but about nobody could envision the NFL ditching games that still manage to make them money, whatever the uselessness of those games. So their solution is apparently to, in conjunction with ditching pre-season games, add two more regular season games to the schedule. In case you're wondering, the last time the NFL added two games to the schedule was the 1978 season, thirty years ago. The sixteen game season then has long been the standard, to the point now where quite a few people (myself included) consider sixteen games to be the "right" number of games for the sport. What are two more games going to do for the season? Ditching two pre-season games in favor of two regular season games-which starters will of course play in-only increases the odds of injury to players. It increases the wear-and-tear on every player, all of whom beging to suffer aches and pains as the season drags on. Perhaps it increases the amount of time that we spend speculating about bad teams actually making the playoffs, but can the addition of two games really make a difference as far as which teams see the post-season? I doubt it. So basically we'll see two more games that, instead of being meaningless are actually highly meaningful, but the impact of those games is reduced by the fact that the teams already have sixteen other games to sort out who's good and who isn't.

Of course as you can probably tell from the very fact I'm writing this post, I am something of a football fan. So why do I have a problem with two more chances to watch NFL football in a season? After all, it's not like I'm going to boycott the last two games of the season (maybe the first though.) Call me a traditionalist (at least in the sports sense) but I think sixteen games works, and I don't see the need to milk fans out of money anymore than the NFL already does each season. But I suppose I'll probably be writing this exact same post with my thought-reading brain computer in 2038 when the NFL expands the season to twenty games.

Economy still tightening

You feeling the squeeze yet? If you are, you're not alone. Millions of Americans are right there with you. Starry-eyed predictions that the mortgage crisis would quickly pass and America would be in good shape by the end of the year (last year) have proven to be ridiculously false. Not only that, the housing market is still falling further:

A widely watched housing index released Tuesday showed home prices dropping by the sharpest rate ever in the second quarter.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index tumbled a record 15.4 percent during the quarter from the same period a year ago.

The monthly indices also clocked in record declines. The 20-city index fell by 15.9 percent in June compared with a year ago, the largest drop since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index plunged 17 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.

No city in the Case-Shiller 20-city index saw year-over-year price gains in June, the third straight month that's happened.

And don't let anybody tell you it's bottomed out yet. It hasn't. It may be that it's slowing down, but it's still got further to go. It's a hard, hard hit for people who bought homes thinking they were rock-solid investments and a source of income, only to be rudely awakened when the American economy could no longer stand the strain of all that debt. And the news is not going to get better for a while. From Business Week Online:

Still, the loudest complaints on Main Street relate to rising commodity costs and inflation, especially expensive fuel and food. Gasoline prices have become a key issue in the Presidential campaign. U.S. consumers are spending less as retailers and restaurants struggle.

So have inflation worries finally replaced credit conditions atop the list of investors' biggest concerns? Is the credit crunch finally waning? Not a chance.

An August survey of economists conducted by the National Association for Business Economics did show an uptick in worries about energy prices and inflation, to 16% and 15%, respectively. However, 46% of economists said the credit crunch and the state of the financial system was their top worry.

Here's the thing: there is not going to be a point at which the housing market has bottomed out and the only direction is up. The problem is that utterly, fundamentally, the money has disappeared. Or rather, I should say, the illusion of money has disappeared. There was no real equity in those houses to begin with. Well, there was, but the banks told people that it's not actually just more debt. The illusion of money disappeared, but the debt didn't. When a new administration comes into office (because the current one obviously has no qualms with corporate misbehavior) it's almost certain that credit and lending regulations will be tightened with the probability of more legislation being passed. The circumstances that allowed this crash to occur are not likely to be present again for a long, long time. There have been other recessions, but despite the rhetoric issuing from this administration, this one is bad. We haven't seen the worst, and we have no way of knowing when we'll recover. The problem is really that the US's sources of income are pretty narrow. We make a lot of money off services. We no longer manufacture and export like we did, which is what helped us recover from the Great Depression and brought us our enormous post WWII prosperity.

Here's a fact: the economy will be given negative stimulus from the housing sector until housing demand is growing and high again. Here's another fact: according to the studies I've read and quoted in one of my other posts, If they quit building homes today, there would be enough of a surplus to last for two years or so (and longer if demand slows down even further). But it's a self-reinforcing cycle: the harder it is to get credit for a home, the fewer homes are sold. The fewer homes that are sold, the more the housing sector detracts from the market. This can last quite a while until other segments of the economy begin to make up for it and pump enough cash in to cause growth. If that occurs. I mean, it's not a given we'll recover. Cambodia was rich too, a long time ago.

Using that example, it may be that the death knell of the credit driven society is sounding. We may never borrow our way to prosperity again. The best time to make a commitment will be at our lowest point. That way the fewest people will be hurt. If this change does occur, we will be living in a vastly different society from the one our parents did. Of course, until consumer good prices come in line with consumer earnings, we may see sales of our luxury toys (like big screen lcd tvs) falling off sharply to reach the point where people actually have to save up money in advance to buy them. Wouldn't it be amazing? Inconvenient as hell, yes, but much more resistant to the kinds of slowdown we're seeing now. Our society may become merely as rich as the aggregate real wealth of it's people, not the aggregate amount of debt we can get into. Strange, I know. We'll see.

I'm sure it would have been cheaper just to fix things in the first place

Dallas County hit with $900,000 verdict in jail neglect case

Dallas County was slapped Tuesday with a $900,000 verdict in a federal jail neglect case involving a prisoner who suffered a stroke while in custody after being denied proper medical care, the man's lawyer said.

Stanley Shepherd sued in 2005 in federal court, saying the county violated his constitutional rights by denying him basic medical care while he was in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.

The jury issued its verdict Tuesday morning after deliberating since about 1 p.m. Monday, said Don Tittle, the attorney for Mr. Shepherd. The trial began last Monday. If lawyers' fees and interest are granted, the county could have to pay more than $1 million, he said.

Yep. This is not the first time the jail has been mentioned in connection with a lawsuit. Probably won't be the last.

Going Negative

Now and again you'll hear people lamenting the nasty turn the race between McCain and Obama has taken lately. Of course, the only reason anybody thinks the race has taken a turn is because Obama has elected to go negative, attacking McCain over the latter's inability to recall exactly how many houses he owns; McCain's ads referring to Obama as merely a celebrity candidate were an example of the new era of positive politics I suppose. Now usually, I'm one of those people who expresses grumpy irritation with completely substance free politics, and I'm usually one of the first to call out other Democrats for silly, ineffective (and frequently hypocritcal) attacks. Of course the key word there is ineffective. The reason Obama's ads targeting McCain's gaffe are effective is because it paints a picture of McCain as a man who is wealthy enough to not be able to remember off the top of his head how many houses he owns, a figure that is usually around one or two for the vast majority of the rest of us. Does he live in them all? Of course not; most are investment properties. But do you or I know anybody who owns multiple investment properties, let alone so many they can't remember how many they have? No, and the attack works because McCain and his allies have consistently tried to portray Obama as the out-of-touch elitist; Obama's response turns the attack back around at McCain and forces him to deal with a weakness his own attack creates, his wealth. And both Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, liberal pundits who I believe actually know what they're talking about, think that more attacks like these are the way to go. Here's Krugman:

In an ideal world, politicians would be judged by their actions, not by their wealth or lack thereof. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born to wealth, but that didn?t stop him from doing more for working Americans than any president before or since. Conversely, Joseph Biden?s hardscrabble life story, though inspiring, didn?t stop him from supporting the odious 2005 bankruptcy bill.

But in the world we actually live in, pro-corporate, inequality-increasing Republicans argue that you should vote for them because they?re regular guys you?d like to have a beer with, while Democrats who want to raise taxes on top earners, expand health care and raise the minimum wage are snooty elitists.

And in that world, stripping away the regular-guy facade ? pointing out that everything Rush Limbaugh said about Mr. Kerry applies equally to Mr. McCain, that Mr. McCain lives in a material world few Americans can imagine ? is only fair. Yes, Mr. Obama vacations in Hawaii ? and Cindy McCain says that ?In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.?

And here's Rich:

The argument against Obama?s ?going negative? is that it undermines his message of ?transcendent politics? and will make him look like an ?angry black man.? But pacifistic politics is an oxymoron, and Obama is constitutionally incapable of coming off angrier than McCain. A few more fisticuffs from the former law professor (and many more from his running mate and other surrogates) can only help make him look less skinny (metaphorically if not literally). Obama should go after McCain?s supposedly biggest asset ? experience ? much as McCain went after Obama?s crowd-drawing celebrity.

It is, after all, not mere happenstance that so many conservative pundits ? Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru ? have, to McCain?s irritation, proposed that he ?patriotically? declare in advance that he will selflessly serve only a single term. Whatever their lofty stated reasons for promoting this stunt, their underlying message is clear: They recognize in their heart of hearts that the shelf life of McCain?s experience has already reached its expiration date.

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America?s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America?s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

Now, "going negative" doesn't simply mean throwing in an ad whatever attack you can dredge up. Because McCain's base is chock full of people who are deathly afraid of angry black men and Muslims, McCain's surrogates can references Obama's secret Muslim boyhood or Wright or Ayers or Rezko, et al, and those attacks will work to some degree. Obama, on the other hand, is not free to insinuate that McCain was brainwashed as a POW (like Bush's surrogates did against him in 2000) because most voters likely to vote for Obama will not respond to these attacks, and many of them will be turned off by them. But those who think that negative campaigning of any kind turns off voters (I'm lookin' at you David Brooks) are just being silly. Negative attacks aimed squarely at McCain's weaknesses, such as his wealth, or his disconnect from the average voter, or his "robust" military policy, or his connections to various crooks and felons, are effective because they inform the average voter about McCain. The attacks may be exaggerated or somewhat disingenuous, but this is politics after all it's hardly unfair when McCain's surrogates lambast Obama as a Muslim/Black nationalist/elitist. Anyway the lesson is, going negative works, and I hope to see plenty more of it between now and November.

It's On!

The Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado kicks off tonight. Right now I'm watching Michelle Obama speak and although she's not the exciting of speakers, she seems very sincere and earnest and likeable. As near as I can tell it's on all networks and cable channels right now, but if you want some really in-depth coverage be sure to check out C-SPAN as well as some of our Texas Progressive Alliance bloggers, fellow Dallas-site Shawn Williams at Dallas South Blog and the fellas at Burnt Orange Report.

Obama picks Joe Biden for VP

Read about it here.

UPDATE: (Xanthippas) And nobody cares.

Chet Edwards for VP?

The sound and fury over who will be Obama's pick for VP has heated up over the last week. But now a story from the AP lists Texas Congressman Chet Edwards as one of the finalist, which is news to me. As always this speculation may be completely and utterly baseless, but it sure does give us something to chat about.

The Future of Our Mission in Iraq

The U.S. and Iraq have come to terms on a security agreement that would permit the withdrawal of American combat forces by 2011, after the Bush administration dropped it's insistence on immunity for contractors from Iraqi law, and agreed to a timetable for withdrawal. While this is no doubt good news as far as our involvement in Iraq is concerned, one has to to troubled by the manner in which the Iraqi government arrived at such an agreement, especially when the agreement comes at a time when security forces have turned their attentions to Sunni Awakenings forces:

The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation.

In restive Diyala Province, United States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say.

West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders contend that the Iraqi military is going after 650 Awakening members, many of whom have fled the once-violent area they had kept safe. While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely.

?The state cannot accept the Awakening,? said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. ?Their days are numbered.?

It is the agreement of a majority of Sunni fighters to cease their attacks on the Iraqi government and American troops, and agree to enter the political process, that has produced the dramatic decline in violence in Iraq over the last year. However, the Shiite-dominated national government appears to be hardening its stance on their political participation, and it's beginning to appear that they will be unwilling to permit the Sunnis to participate in the political process to any meaningful extent. What does the mean for the future of our mission in Iraq?

Two and a half years ago, Stephen Biddle wrote an article in Foreign Affairs in which he argued that the United States must be willing to manipulate the balance of forces between the warring parties in Iraq, to ensure that none felt they had the advantage over the other. This advice presaged the surge, and Biddle has been supporter of the surge largely because it followed behind and was aimed at enforcing the development of the Awakenings movement. At the time that he wrote the article though, the Iraqi government was weak, their security forces were incapable of serious action, and they were seemingly besieged by Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda even as Shiite militias roamed the streets of major cities hunting for Sunnis. The situation is far different now. A dramatic relocation of Sunnis from Shiite areas has occurred, the security forces of the Iraqi government are better trained and more powerful, and Al Qaeda has largely been beaten into submission. These developments, while positive in the near-term for Iraq, have emboldened the Shiite dominated government, which now appears to be interested only in securing their power against both Sunni and Shiite rivals and which does not appear to be interested in compromise to any meaningful extent. The balance of power that existed at the beginning of the Awakenings movement appears to have evaporated, at least in the mind of Shiite leaders like Nouri al-Maliki and Jalaladeen al-Sagheer. Surely they realize that if they block Sunni efforts to participate in the government, those Sunnis will eventually resume their fight against the government. They do not appear to care, as they also appear to believe that their forces are now more than capable of dealing with the Sunni.

What does this mean for our withdrawal? It's hard to say. I'm unsure if the Bush administration fully understands or accepts what appears to be happening in Iraq, or if they do understand and accept it and are willing to turn a blind eye to the government's moves against Awakenings fighters as long as it doesn't threaten the domestic political success that is the security agreement. But you have to wonder how long this can go on. While it's easy for the Bush administration and right-wing pundits to claim victory in Iraq while stories like the one above stay under the radar, how long would such proclamations last if the situation in Iraq gradually begins to resemble the one that predated the surge and the Awakenings movement? What sort of withdrawal can possibly occur if violence flares again? It seems clear to me that the Iraqi government is in fact more powerful than they were only two years ago, but it does not seem assured that they could largely defeat a Sunni insurgency without American support. I can only imagine that there would be immense pressure for our forces to stay, but would the government want us to stay? If open war breaks out again and the Shiite government faces stiffer fighting than they expected, would they ask us to stay? What would an Obama administration and/or a Democratic Congress have to say about that (I think we can safely assume McCain's answer.)

Quite frankly, I'm willing to leave Iraq even if violence flares. A two or three year lull in violence wouldn't change the fundamental situation as it existed in Iraq before the Awakenings movement and the surge, which is and has always been that the Shiite majority desire to rule Iraq and they have no interest in sharing power with the Sunnis who oppressed them for decades. And our window to influence the Shiites to share power by threatening the withdrawal of our military support has long passed; clearly, the Shiites now WANT us to leave, and it's beginning to appear that this is so they can resume their subjugation of the Sunnis. Some might go so far as to argue that our forces should further support a balancing of power in Iraq by then supporting the Sunnis against the Shiites to one extent or another. But cleary this implies a decades-long occupation of Iraq by our combat forces, because that is how long it would take to convince all the ethnic groups in Iraq that they should share power with each other, and such a goal is probably unattainable regardless.

Clearly, withdrawal should be in the future for our troops, in one fashion or another. But what will Iraq look like in another year or two? And what will we do about it?

Senator Stevens will be tried in Washington

Corruption scandals are always so fun. Read the story here.

Georgia to NATO

Despite reports that the Bush administration has softened its stance on Georgia's NATO membership, other NATO members are apparently still willing to admit the country into the alliance, at least according to British Foreign Secretary David Milband. For its part, NATO has agreed to suspend diplmatic talks with Russia, which continues to maintain troops in Georgia despite their promise to withdraw.

UPDATE: And now the Russians admit they have no intention of withdrawing from Georgia at all (via Kevin Drum):

A ranking Russian military official today said Moscow plans to establish 18 long-term checkpoints inside Georgian territory, including at least eight within undisputed Georgian territory outside the pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia.

The checkpoints will be staffed by hundreds of Russian troops, with those in Georgia proper needing supplies that would be ferried to them from South Ossetia.

If implemented, the plan would effectively put under Russian control the border between Georgia and its South Ossetia region, which is seeking independence with Moscow's backing, as well as a small chunk of Georgia proper.

"This is the essence of it," Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the army general staff, told reporters at a briefing. He showed maps detailing the proposed Russian positions, one just outside the key city of Gori.

"The president ordered us to stop where we were," he said. "We are not pulling out and pulling back troops behind this administrative border into the territory of South Ossetia."

I imagine the resposne from NATO and the Bush administration will be somewhat less than receptive.

Blackwater Personnel to be Indicted

Given the amount of time that's passed with little news, you might've forgotten the shooting in Nisour square by Blackwater security personnel that resulted in the deaths of seventeen Iraqis. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the Department of Justice hasn't, and is likely to indict several Blackwater contractors for their roles in the incident. Their jurisdiction is premised on the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and as such is not a foregone conclusion, though that premise may soon be tested in a court of law.

Attacks in Afghanistan

In another sign of the growing power of the resurgent Taliban, militants ambushed French paratroopers just outside of Kabul, killing ten, and attempted to overrun another American military outpost, Camp Salerno, in the province of Khost near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Russia Squeezes Georgia

Despite a (second) cease-fire agreed to by both Russia and Georgia, Russian troops appear intent on wringing as much life out of Georgia as they possibly can before they withdraw (though who can say at this point when that will be?) Although Russian authorities insist that a withdrawal is underway, Russian troops continue to occupy the Georgian town of Gori, are destroying key parts of the Georgian infrastructure, are blockading Georgia's key east-west highway cutting off parts of Georgia from the capital of Tblisi, and have detained Georgian soldiers in the port city of Poti, which they also have occupied since the outset of the war. Russia is also stationing short-range ballistic missiles in South Ossetia that can hit any critical part of Georgia. It seems that Russia is intent on extracting as much flesh from Georgia as possible, and undermining the nation's ability to govern itself and it's territories, before it will withdraw. Secretary of State Rice is meeting with NATO officials in an emergency session today to formulate some sort of response to the continued Russian occupation of Georgia, though options remain limited. The Bush administration has already abandoned efforts it's long pushed to convince NATO allies to fast-track Georgia for membership, a necessary concession to a new reality. For their part Russia does not appear interested in compromise and has only further been angered by the United States' recent agreement with Poland to station a (completely useless) missile defense system in the country. Though Russia resumed bomber patrols off of Alaska in August 2007, Rice chose yesterday to remind the Russians that such a move was a "dangerous game" and not "cost free" a sign that the Bush administration is also interested in escalating the rhetoric. What effect such comments will have is unknown.

Developments in Diyala

At the end of July, Iraqi security forces mounted an operation to clear Diyala province, north of Baghdad, of the remnants of Al Qaeda and anti-government insurgency forces. The operation has largely been a success, but it now appears that Iraqi forces have expanded their aims and are now moving against some Sunni fighters allied American troops (via Abu Muqawama):

The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens of men and banning them from manning checkpoints except alongside official security forces.

The moves in Diyala province reflect mixed views on a movement that began in 2007 among Sunni tribes in western Iraq who revolted against al-Qaida in Iraq and joined the Americans in the fight against the terrorist network.

U.S. officials credit the rise of such groups, known variously as Awakening Councils, Sons of Iraq and Popular Committees, with helping rout al-Qaida.

But Iraq's government is suspicious of such groups, fearing their decision to break with the insurgency was a short-term tactic to gain U.S. money and support. The government fears they will eventually turn their guns against Iraq's majority Shiites.

Although there has been no general crackdown on Sunni volunteers elsewhere, some leaders outside Diyala have been arrested in western Baghdad and south of the capital ? both one-time al-Qaida strongholds.

Government officials would not comment on specific claims about the push in Diyala. But aides close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said the government was not willing to tolerate the existence of armed groups with "blood on their hands."

"The continuation of the Awakening Councils as they are now is unacceptable," said Ali al-Adeeb, a close al-Maliki aide and a senior member of his Dawa Party

Dr. iRack views this as the start of the long-awaited move against former insurgents that both he and Marc Lynch have repeatedly warned about. Colin Kahl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and an advisor to Barack Obama who has just returned from a visit to Iraq, warns that confrontation is brewing (via Kevin Drum):

Kahl, who is one of Barack Obama's Iraq advisers, put the blame for the slow pace of political reconciliation on Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki, as well as on American strategy, which he believes is not properly aimed at using U.S. leverage to push Iraq's leaders toward political accommodation.

For example, Maliki has been "slow-rolling" the integration of the Sunni Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi army and police, according to Kahl. Kahl offered some startling statistics about the lack of progress on this front: Of the more than 100,000 Sunni militiamen that were much of the reason for American success over the last year in combating Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 16,000 are "in the pipeline" for integration into the Iraqi Army and police. Of these 16,000, the Iraqi government has only approved 600.

Why? According to Kahl, Maliki, overconfident in the capabilities of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army, believes he would be would be victorious in an inter-sectarian civil war, if it comes to that, and thus has no real interest in integrating these Sunnis into the Iraqi army and police forces.

"Maliki has no interest in integrating these guys -- none," Kahl said. "He thinks they're thugs; he thinks they're hooligans. . . . In fact, there's some evidence that he's trying to pick fights with them, hoping that they will start a fight that he can then turn around and finish them."

Iraq has essentially sat in a holding pattern for the better part of a year now, with violence dying down as various parties assessed their ability to secure their power. The Sunnis appear to be losing patience with the stalled pace of integration, and Maliki's government appears to have little interest in any such integration. Something has to give, but it's impossible to say what, where, or when. One can only hope that Maliki and his allies can be cajoled into permitting greater Sunni integration, at least quickly enough to prevent a return to full-blown insurgency, but it doesn't look as though that's going to happen anytime soon.

UPDATE: The NY Times has an article today about the volatile situation in Kirkuk, and how the Sunni-Shiite conflict is hardly the only flashpoint in Iraq.

How banks convinced people to go broke

I posted recently on the opacity of credit score calculation, and Xanthippas linked to an article refuting the idea that people are mainly to blame for what happened to them as a result of signing up for sub-prime mortgages. None of this is to say that people are not responsible for making their own decisions, but rather that as things currently stand, people do not have the means or information to make truly good decisions. Not only that, but according to this article from the NY Times, the banks deliberately tried to convince people that borrowing on the equity in their homes was a good idea.

?Live Richly.?

That catchy slogan, dreamed up by the Fallon Worldwide advertising agency, was pitched in 1999 to executives at Citicorp who were looking for a way to lure Americans to financial products like home equity loans. But some in the room did not like it. They worried the phrase would encourage people to live exorbitantly, says Stephen A. Cone, a top Citi marketer at the time.

Still, ?Live Richly? won out. The advertising campaign, which cost some $1 billion from 2001 to 2006, urged people to lighten up about money and helped persuade hundreds of thousands of Citi customers to take out home equity loans ? that is, to borrow against their homes. As one of the ads proclaimed: ?There?s got to be at least $25,000 hidden in your house. We can help you find it.?

Not long ago, such loans, which used to be known as second mortgages, were considered the borrowing of last resort, to be avoided by all but people in dire financial straits. Today, these loans have become universally accepted, their image transformed by ubiquitous ad campaigns from banks.

Since the early 1980s, the value of home equity loans outstanding has ballooned to more than $1 trillion from $1 billion, and nearly a quarter of Americans with first mortgages have them. That explosive growth has been a boon for banks. Banks? returns on fixed-rate home equity loans and lines of credit, which are the most popular, are 25 percent to 50 percent higher than returns on consumer loans over all, with much of that premium coming from relatively high fees.

However, what has been a highly lucrative business for banks has become a disaster for many borrowers, who are falling behind on their payments at near record levels and could lose their homes.

The portion of people who have home equity lines more than 30 days past due stands 55 percent above its average since the American Bankers Association began tracking it around 1990; delinquencies on home equity loans are 45 percent higher. Hundreds of thousands are delinquent, owing banks more than $10 billion on these loans, often on top of their first mortgages.

None of this would have been possible without a conscious effort by lenders, who have spent billions of dollars in advertising to change the language of home loans and with it Americans? attitudes toward debt.

Please read the rest of the article. This is the kind of thing that should have been known before people went out and bankrupted themselves. You can still, of course, blame people for having been convinced by these articles, but if you do that, blame yourself for being fooled by magic tricks. It's the same thing; convincing people to see what you want them to instead of what really is. It's hard not to be fooled by sophisticated marketing backed by billions of dollars. I try to be as skeptical as I can be, but no matter what we end up having to believe somebody at some point. Therefore it's not too hard to see how millions of people were taken in by the idea that they needed to borrow against the value of their home, especially given that most of these people were already feeling some economic stress in the economy we've continually been told is better than it is.

You can blame the people who were taken in by the scam, but at least realize that it was a scam and the people taken in were victims, not knowing participants. For some reason, there are still people who refuse to believe that these big "respectable" banks would deliberately rip people off. The truth is that they're trying to do it all the time. And we're all so busy working, going to school, and/or raising families we don't have the time to fact-check everything they say. That's why we rely on the government to do it. Governmental oversight is key to keeping things fair for us, which libertarians and other conservatives can't seem to grasp. The government should have been there to shut down this lending before it happened. And since they let it happen, instead of talking about bailouts for lenders, we should be hearing about bailouts for borrowers. Loan forgiveness, or allowing us to "restructure" our debts as would a business, or enforcing lower interest rates on debts, protecting us from exorbitant late fees or overage charges, etc, etc. It should be done. The American people are who this government serves, not big business. Not even billion-dollar banks.

Being a Hawk Does Not Mean You're "Experienced"

I really have no patience for the "analysis" of Obama and McCain's statements on the situation in Georgia. I don't really understand why, as a foreign affairs event is breaking that could significantly effect our future foreign policy, pundits in the media immediately being to parse statements made by both candidates...NOT to determine what either of them might actually do once in office, but merely as yet another means to judge horserace between the candidates and make ridiculous and ill-informed comments about whose statement will benefit or hurt them at the polls (honestly, do they really think that what McCain and Obama say about a conflict that 25% of Americans care about in a country that probably only 10% of Americans could find on a map, is really going to have an impact on the outcome of the election?)

Of course, it's not as if the candidates aren't eager to play this game (though they have a better excuse, since their job right now is to get themselves elected.) But unlike idiot pundits whose commentary is worse than useless, we can actually learn something from what the candidates or their proxies say about their own reactions. Here for example, is some of what McCain has had to say about the situation in Georgia:

In often-lengthy remarks about Georgia this week on the campaign trail, McCain repeatedly talked of how many times he had been to the region, let it be known that he had talked daily with Saakashvili since the crisis began and made it clear that there had been times he thought Bush's response could have been stronger.

He provided a primer for why Americans should care about the "tiny little democracy" and tried to tie the foreign crisis with a domestic one: oil. Georgia is "part of a strategic energy corridor affecting individual lives far beyond" the region, he said.

"We want to avoid any armed conflict, and we will not have armed conflict," McCain said at a fundraiser yesterday in Edwards, Colo. "That's not the solution to this problem. But we have to stand up for freedom and democracy as we did in the darkest days."

And here's what the Republican's favorite Democratic, Joe Lieberman, has to say about McCain's comments:

Lieberman, one of McCain's most ardent and vocal supporters, responded by criticizing Obama's more cautious first statement on the Georgia situation an example of "moral neutrality" that showed his "inexperience."

That of course is just stupid. Lieberman, among others, would like you to believe as they do that the more "experienced" you are in foreign policy and military affairs, the more hawkish, resolute and confrontational you will be (or vice versa...it doesn't really matter for their purposes.) But as you'll note, decades of experience do not translate into hawkishness. As only one example, there's Zbigniew Brzezinski, who-unlike McCain or Liberman-believes that the Iraq war was folly. Brzezinski has long experience in the real of foreign policy, and is by no means considered a dove of any kind. In fact he's considered a "realist", someone who believes that states do (and largely should) act out of concern for their own national interests (which may include the propping up of distasteful dictators and intereference with other nation's democratically elected governments.)

Neoconservatism is something of a foreign policy philosophy, though in truth the term serves merely to dress up the idea that America should serve as the beacon of liberty and democracy in the world and that we should reserve the right to arrange world affairs in the manner that suits that notion or our own national interests (whichever one seems paramount at the moment, at least as far as can serve as the necessary justification for action.) As we've seen, neoconservatives are less likely to question our nation's motives (or their own), are more likely to call for confrontation with nations that defy our interests, more likely to pursue military solutions to all sorts of foreign policy questions, view the world in starker terms than realists do, and believe to one extent or another that foreign policy is the only truly interesting realm of human affairs since it permits all sorts of crusades for light, goodness, liberty, democracy, freedom etc., etc., and allows them to plant themselves firmly at the center of the drama that is human history. They are less likely to be concerned with (or even understand) the limits of the usefulness of military action, are less concerned with the damage to our nation's "reputation", are sneering and dismissive of international institutions that exist to foster cooperation among states, and in general believe that no power either foreign or domestic should operate to restrain our military activity overseas. In other words, they are children. They are simple-minded, uncomfortable with nuance or complexity, they like to tell others what to do, and they don't like to be told what to do by others, and they think they are always right. They are the kind of people who-in other settings-want to be the team captain even though they are obviously least qualified, want to pick fights with people because they think it makes them look "tough" (when it actually makes them look insecure), and are dismissive of people who try to get along with others. They're the kind who, when you're sitting around the table gaming, always want to attack the bad guy even if it's likely to get their character killed, because they have no patience for any other approach. In fact, the neocon hawk is exactly like that. They always want to attack the bad guy because they don't really have anything personally to lose; it's always somebody else getting killed for their vision of the shining (and powerful and always right) city on the hill. And if the war they agitated for is lost, then it's always somebody else's fault.

This is what Lieberman, and others, tout as "experience." After decades of foreign policy awareness and activity, after personally fighting in the most disastrous war in American history, after living as a POW for years in North Vietnam, after witnessing the failure that was the invasion of Iraq that he personally called for, the conclusion that McCain has arrived at is that we need to use MORE military force in the world, that we should confront countries head-on with inflammatory language even when we don't actually have the power to make them change their behavior, and that every foreign policy crisis should be viewed through the lens of "freedom" and "liberty" even when none of the actual participants view it that way. Does this sound like someone who has learned anything from their decades of "experience"? Does this sound like the way an adult should think, or does this sound like the thinking of a child?

Billions for Home Equity

That is, banks spent billions to convince homeowners to borrow against whatever equity they owned in their homes. But of course the debt crisis can only be the fault of irresponsible borrowers who fraudalently borrowed money they could never repay. That banks wanted them to do this, and spent money to convince them to do it, is completely and utterly irrelevant.

Disgraceful

Were I to treat a dog this way, I would be sent to jail in many states. A person, and I would be guilty of negligent homicide at the last. But when Homeland Security treats an immigrant in this manner, the result is an "internal investigation." Our immigration policies and services in this nation are a disgrace, and it shouldn't take detainees dying in excruciating pain to tell us this.

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