Afghanistan Quagmire Watch

New York Times:

"In Khogeyani, a volatile area southwest of the capital, the entire police force on duty Monday morning appears to have defected to the Taliban side. A spokesman for the Taliban said the movement’s fighters made contact with the Khogeyani’s police force, cut a deal, and then sacked and burned the station. As many as 19 officers vanished, as did their guns, trucks, uniforms and food."

We're not winning.

It's Election Day!

One of my shortcomings as a politically oriented blogger is that I find the whole horse-raciness of today rather exhausting. I'm going to go vote, but I'm going to leave the rest of it to the wisdom of the electorate. Tomorrow, we'll start to figure out what it all means for the governance of America going forward.

Fred Barnes Compares Apples and Oranges

See if you can spot the sleight of hand:

"Yes, the economy is always a factor in elections. But a wretched economy doesn't automatically doom Washington's ruling party to disaster in a midterm election. Since World War II, the average midterm loss by the president's party is 24 House and four Senate seats. In 1982, despite a deep recession and joblessness above 10%, Republicans lost only 26 House seats and none in the Senate. The difference between 1982 and today is that President Reagan's policies—cutting spending and taxes, firing striking air-traffic controllers—were popular."

Perhaps. Of course, in 1982, the president's party was already in the minority in the House -- the GOP lost 26 House seats out of 192. That was a significant blow to a party that was, frankly, already weak in the House. "Only" 26 seats is a more serious loss than Barnes portrays it. Wonder why he doesn't explain that context?

Probably because he's wrong about his central thesis, which is that voters don't really care about the economy -- they care about Obama's liberal overreach. But I'd wager my right thumb that if Obama had done everything he'd done and employment was hovering around 5 percent, we wouldn't see the Democratic losses we'll see on Tuesday. Voters care about results more than anything else.

Cliff May's Confusion About the Left

Cliff May, conservative, writes at National Review:

"Call me crazy but I like it when left-of-center editorialists agree with me."

He then goes on to cite to columns -- one by Fred Hiatt, the other by David Broder -- that make a point similar to his own. Broder, of course, is synonymous with unthinking centrism; Hiatt, of course, was one of the Iraq War's biggest cheerleaders on major mainstream op-ed pages. If these guys are "left of center," then May may not have a good idea where the center actually is.

David Carr on Jon Stewart and the Media

I agree with David Carr on this, but only a little bit:

"I enjoy Mr. Stewart in his regular seat where he is less reasonable, less interested in obvious targets and less willing to suggest that all political ideas and movements are like kindergartners, worthy of understanding and respect if only the media would get out of the way. His barrage against the news media Saturday stemmed from the fact that, on this day, attacking the message would have been bad manners, so he stuck with the messengers."

It's true the "Rally to Restore Sanity" seemed oddly lacking in a point-of-view -- something you can't usually say about "The Daily Show." But it's too easy for journalists to take the "oh he's just blaming the messengers" route in examining the state of our country's affairs. Stewart's done a first-rate job of analyzing and exposing how cable news trafficks in sensationalism and false equivalencies -- the words "breaking news" have become incredibly devalued over the last decade.

Carr knows that, but points out: "In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all Americans." No big deal, in other words. But: walk into any congressman or senator's office -- or hell, walk into the White House -- and you'll more-than-likely find a TV turned on to Fox or MSNBC or (less likely) CNN. In some cases you'll find all three. Bizarrely, it's cable TV that is shaping the elite's view of the public discourse, and the elite returns the favor by going on cable TV around the clock to yell and call names. Karl Rove isn't on Fox every week because it's unimportant.

Reducing the cable TV audience to its numbers also ignores the multiplier effect: the opinions that viewers form in response to their TVs are the opinions they share with their family, friends and neighbors. It's why Glenn Beck, whose audience isn't that large in relation to the national population, is such an outsized influence in Tea Party circles. Or think about Rick Santelli's famous "Tea Party" rant: Who the hell ever heard of Rick Santelli before that rant? Can you even measure CNBC's audience? And yet who would deny that rant had a catalyzing effect in propelling the creation of the Tea Party movement? And do you think, say, Mike Castle or Ron Wyden think that movement was negligible in their own election losses?

Carr's right: we shouldn't rush to blame the media for problems that exist independently of them. But we can blame the media -- and cable TV in particular -- for normalizing screaming polarization: It's what sells best! Carr lets the messengers off too easily.

Philly Makes Me Sad

There's about three things wrong with this headline:

Boy, 15, shot in 2:30 a.m. bar fight:

"A 15-year-old boy was shot and critically wounded early today during a dispute inside a bar in North Philadelphia, police said.

Police said the youth got into an argument with a young man about 2:30 a.m. inside the El Callejon II bar at North Second Street and West Indiana Avenue in the Fairhill section."

Assassinating Awlaki

Remember when I said the failed cargo-plane bombs would probably be an excuse to justify the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen working with Al Qaeda in Yemen? Queue the Wall Street Journal:

"The plot also underscores that the Obama Administration is right to target Awlaki and other al Qaeda leaders in Yemen with Predator drone attacks, rather than merely issuing a criminal arrest warrant. Awlaki is actively plotting to murder Americans, and stopping him is an act of self-defense. The attempt by the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights to thwart these attacks in a lawsuit could get Americans killed."

Making sure that the American government can't arbitrarily order the execution of an American citizen will get Americans killed, basically. For what it's worth, the ACLU and the CCR aren't actually asking that Awlaki's life be spared. They're asking that there be due process:

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged — without oversight, judicial process, or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists — also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

Al Qaeda is bad. Awlaki may well be a bad guy. But laws and constitutions are the ways civilized people balance the dangers of the world -- including bad guys -- against the liberties and rights of citizens. There is always risk. The government should have to have a high standard for putting one of its citizens on an assassination list.