What, exactly, does Jonah Goldberg want us to do in North Korea?

Eventually this dynasty of misery will end and North Koreans, starved, stunted, and beaten, will crawl back into the light of civilization. My hunch is that it will not be easy to meet their gaze, nor history’s. No one will be able to claim they didn’t know what was happening, and very few of us will be able to say we did anything at all to help.

Jonah Goldberg, via nationalreview.com

Jonah Goldberg has a really annoying -- one might even say cowardly -- way of suggesting policy choices without explicitly advocating for them. He's well-remembered for wondering out loud why nobody had killed Julian Assange, but then (implausibly, in my mind) denied that he was making the case for killing Julian Assange. He's defended torture in similarly convoluted fashion, saying that waterboarding is bad, but is it such a big deal if it only happened to three people?

Here, Goldberg seems very much to be advocating for a U.S. invasion of North Korea. He's dismissive of opposition: "After all, America, we are told again and again, is overextended. And we all know that the concept of regime change — the only conceivable remedy for North Korea’s plight — is out of favor."

But he never tells us precisely how that regime change should come about. And good thing for him! Because if it *was* an invasion, he'd have to start wrestling with questions about the likely impact on South Koreans, or about China's likely reaction if the United States acted on its own initiative to bring down one of its client states. He'd have to grapple honestly with whether the United States actually can afford the blood and treasure that would be expended in pursuit of bringing down the Communist regime.

Instead, his vagueness allows him to act as though the choices are made in a vacuum. North Koreans have it bad -- and, lordy, he's right about that one, their plight is a very real tragedy -- so somebody should do something. Fine, Jonah. What should we do? What should we do?

Christine O'Donnell, unemployment and John McCain's tarnished legacy

Christine O'Donnell on Tuesday compared the "tragedy" of extending unemployment benefits to Pearl Harbor and the death of Elizabeth Edwards. 

"Today marks a lot of tragedy," O'Donnell, the Tea Party-backed GOP Senate candidate from Delaware, said Tuesday night during an appearance in Virginia. 

"Tragedy comes in threes," O'Donnell said. "Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards's passing and Barack Obama's announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits." 

via thehill.com

You know what really bugs me about this story?

It's that The Hill is covering the opinions of Christine O'Donnell, failed Senate candidate from a small state that otherwise almost never gets press coverage. I don't know why her opinions merit continued coverage, exactly, except the press long ago decided that her O'Donnell merited coverage far in excess of her actual importance.

And if Christine O'Donnell becomes a part of our collective public and political life, saying dumb things every couple of weeks, I'm going to blame John McCain. He plucked Sarah Palin from relative obscurity to be his running mate, despite her lack of qualifications. Palin boosted O'Donnell -- whose only accomplishments seem to be running for office and losing every couple of years -- in the GOP's Senate primary, giving her the spotlight.

Which means, ultimately, that because John McCain made an awful mistake, the rest of it will pay for it in perpetuity by reading Christine O'Donnell quips in our morning paper. This makes me unhappy.

More about Obama and his willingness to fight

Asking Obama to fight for his own key campaign pledge and the desire of a majority of Americans is not mindless ideologically purity

Ari Berman, via twitter.com

I generally think Ari Berman is unrealistic in his vision of how liberals can govern in America. But I think he's right in this case.

President Obama: Visible mostly in surrender

Fascinating press conference today from Barack Obama.  His comments at the end about purists were, from my perspective, absolutely correct, substantively. 

The truth is that there are a lot of people who just don't accept that the President of the United States can want something, fight for it, fight effectively and correctly, and still not get it.  If it doesn't happen, it must have been -- in Obama's words -- a "betrayal."  Those people are wrong.

via plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com

Jonathan Bernstein's comments above made me realize that part of my problem with President Obama is, indeed, optics: the president has been very visible in compromise and surrender on liberal priorities. He's been a behind-the-scenes player when it comes to actually fighting for those priorities.

President Obama spoke with frustration about last year's fight over the "public option" and how he doesn't get credit for health reform on the left because of the lack of that option. The problem is that *I don't remember seeing him fight for the option.* For much of the yearlong healthcare debate, the president let Congress take the public lead and wrestle with the issues. When he emerged to make the case for a health reform law, he quite explicitly signaled his surrender on the option. Liberals never got the sense he fought and then compromised. All we really saw was the compromise.

Again on taxes: Obama ran for president promising to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and end them for the rich. And he made, in my view, a persuasive case for that approach. But in recent months, as the clock ticked toward midnight, the president wasn't very visible in making the case again and now. He became most prominent, at the end, when he was showing frustration and disgust with the deal he himself had signed off on.

Behind the scenes during the fight. Visible during surrender and compromise.

Combine that public face of leadership with Obama's seemingly pre-emptive concessions on offshore drilling and freezing the pay of federal workers, and the overall impression President Obama gives is that he's most comfortable in accommodation mode. If the president wants the respect of the "professional left," he's going to have to show early, persistent and visible leadership on some issue that's dear to liberals. We might even forgive him if he compromises a bit in the end. But we want to see him fight.

Slate-iest headline ever

Julian Assange's Great Luck

Why his arrest and jailing in the United Kingdom is good news for him.

via slate.com

Get Obama re-elected?

The liberal angst about Obama seems profoundly misplaced to me. Liberals should care about one thing and one thing only: Re-electing Obama. If he gets re-elected, it means Obamacare is probably never repealed. Since health care is an enormous driver of the federal budget and huge portion of the economy, keeping Obamacare in place will give the left an important foothold on the commanding heights of the debate over the size and influence of the government. With Obama as president, it’s likely that the current fight over whether government is 24 percent of GDP or 18 percent of GDP settles toward the former. What liberals don’t seem to realize is that 2009 was a historic year for them–to be able to spend and regulate so much in a basically center-right country was extraordinary. Now, all their energy should be devoted to protecting the legacy of ‘09.

via nationalreview.com

That comes from National Review's Rich Lowry, so you might want to consider the source. As for me, I'm in the midst of evaluating how much a liberal supporter of Obama could reasonably have expected to accomplish -- and to fight -- given the circumstances facing him. I suspect a lot of people on the left are doing the same thing right now.

Chait: 'The Uncertainty Canard'

So, Republicans had a choice. They could accede to certainty with Clinton-era rates on the rich, or uncertainty with Bush-era rates on the rich. They chose uncertainty. The Bush-era rates will live on for two years, after which nobody knows if they'll be extended or not.

For those still clinging to any naive notion that Republicans meant this as anything more than a slogan, the answer is now clear. They want low tax rates for the rich. They don't care about certainty.

via tnr.com

When making video of the cops is a crime

I'm not a libertarian -- yet! -- but I'm glad we have the libertarian weirdos at Reason to chase down stories like this:

As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them.

When the police have the power to be beyond public scrutiny in a public setting, we're all in trouble. Liberals might have good reason to be suspicious of The Koch Brothers, who fund a lot of political efforts we don't like. But their money also goes to fund work like this. I don't like most of what they stand for, but I don't think they're that easily demonized.

On terrorism, Mohamed Osman Mohamud and entrapment

National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy makes the case that Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the man accused of wanting to set off a bomb in Portland, wasn't "entrapped" by overzealous investigators:

No rational human being can be enticed, against his beliefs, into murdering another person, much less murdering thousands of people, as Mohamud hoped and tried very hard to do at Pioneer Courthouse Square on November 26. No amount of money, cajoling, or appeals to anti-Americanism and cultural solidarity can get a person to take such an unspeakable action.

Well, sure. Clearly Mohamud had some darkness in his heart. On the other hand, it's also worth considering this:

The FBI wormed their way into Mohamud. They read his e-mail. They gave him money. They bought the bomb components. They paid for the safe house. They built the test explosive. They pretended to detonate it. Then they built the bomb. They provided not only the cell phone that was supposed to trigger the bomb but also the number code that had to be punched in. 

That's McCarthy's sarcastic -- but accurate -- description of how the case developed. And it's worth considering the old cliché that investigators use when trying to narrow down suspects in big cases: Did the suspect have the means, the motive and the opportunity?

In Mohamud's case, at least, you can argue that he only possessed one leg of that three-legged stool. Without the FBI, he wouldn't have had the means or the opportunity to fake-commit his attack on the Portland Christmas tree lighting. Truth is, lots of people in America have murderous thoughts everyday. Sometimes it's fleeting and momentary; sometimes it's a sustained emotion born of rage or ideology or some mix of the two. The vast majority of people never act on those sparks. But what if they had a buddy egging them on and (say) providing them with a gun — well, what would happen then?

No, it's unlikely that the FBI created a murderous rage in Mohamed Osman Mohamud's heart. But the argument can be made that the FBI catalyzed that rage from impotence and inaction into something more dangerous. In America, at least, the law isn't supposed to judge us purely on the darkest conjurings of our soul; it is acting murderously, not thinking murderously, that is illegal. We know Mohamud had those thoughts. Would he have acted — or tried to do so — without the FBI's help? 

More on liberal tax anger

In the comments below, Andrew clarifies and expands my take on liberal anger about taxes:

This liberal's anger is, in part, also about the deeply unjust society that emerges when deep and abiding inequalities are enshrined by massive asymmetries in wealth. Yeah, I'm saying it: We should spread the wealth around.

Fair point. In my mind, a lot of the government programs I was mentioning -- the ones that seem more likely to take the hit when our years of national debt spending come to an end if, as I suspect, never summon the will to pay for the services we're getting -- do the job of addressing the pernicious effects of growing inequality in America. For me, at least, it's not about taking from the rich so much as it is about lifting up the poor. (Your mileage may vary on that point.) But you probably can't have one without the other. The rich can afford it. And the rich wouldn't be rich, most likely, without the infrastructure, stability and security provided by the government. They've benefitted disproportionately from that; I'm fine if they pay a few extra tax dollars in return.

Liquor Control Board employees fired

All 20-plus employees of the Liquor Control Board's warehouse store in South Philadelphia - the state's largest - were dismissed Friday over what the LCB's chief executive called "widespread financial irregularities."

Joe Conti declined Monday to specify the nature of the allegations that followed an internal audit several months ago, pending further investigation.

Sources said workers at the low-slung warehouse at 23d Street and Washington Avenue in Point Breeze - at which many of the region's bars and restaurants buy wine and spirits - were suspected of selling products to some regular customers in a fashion that was off the books.

via philly.com

I only take note of this development to mention what I periodically must mention: It's crazy that the state is in the liquor business.

Don't blame cities for rural violence

A New York Times story about the dangers of being a park ranger:

Two recent shootings of wildlife officers — one killed in Pennsylvania while confronting an illegal hunter, the other seriously wounded after a traffic stop in southern Utah — have highlighted what rangers and wildlife managers say is an increasingly unavoidable fact. As more and more people live in proximity to forests, parks and other wild-land playgrounds, the human animal, not the wild variety, is the one to watch out for.

“We’re seeing a little bit more of the urban spill into the wild spaces — city violence in the country,” said John Evans, an assistant branch chief of law enforcement operations at the National Park Service.

Cities surely have their problems with violence. But it's not Philadelphians (say) who are traipsing through the woods in the off-season, killing wildlife officers because they got caught poaching. Rural areas can -- and do -- generate their own violence. It's misleading for them to blame it on the cities.

Alan Cumming is pretty awesome

And he gives a pretty awesome interview to the AV Club

I think even though it is Shakespeare, it should be light. I always try to remember, if Shakespeare were around today, he would be writing The Good Wife, you know what I mean? He would be writing for television, he’d be writing for HBO or something. He was a populist writer, and I think people forget that.

 

Welcome back to the Cold War!

Washington and its western allies have for the first time since the end of the cold war drawn up classified military plans to defend the most vulnerable parts of eastern Europe against Russian threats, according to confidential US diplomatic cables.

The US state department ordered an information blackout when the decision was taken earlier this year. Since January the blueprint has been refined.

Nine Nato divisions – US, British, German, and Polish – have been identified for combat operations in the event of armed aggression against Poland or the three Baltic states. North Polish and German ports have been listed for the receipt of naval assault forces and British and US warships. The first Nato exercises under the plan are to take place in the Baltic next year, according to informed sources.

via guardian.co.uk

Julian Assange arrested in London

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on a Swedish warrant, London's Metropolitan Police said.

Assange was arrested at a London police station at 9:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. ET) and will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrate's Court later in the day, police said.

Swedish authorities had issued the warrant for Assange so they can talk to him about sex-crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks' recent disclosure of secret U.S. documents.

via cnn.com

I don't know what to say. The conspiracy-minded part of me wants to think this is a snow job. The feminist part of me never wants to downplay sex crime allegations. So all I'll do is note this development, and reserve judgment pending a greater knowledge of the facts.

What liberal anger on the tax cuts is all about

I remember when the first Bush tax cuts were passed back in 2001. It was a political masterstroke for Republicans because -- unlike President Obama's stimulus tax cuts -- they made damn sure everybody knew their taxes were lower. How? They had the federal government send big checks to nearly every taxpayer in the country. Lots of people tucked the money into their bank accounts or went out and bought TVs, but at the largely lefty Mennonite church I was attending at the time, there was a fair amount of hand-wringing.

It wasn't that my fellow congregants were fans of high taxes. And it's not as though they were fans of every part of government -- it was a lefty Mennonite church, after all, with a pretty strong pro-peace stance. But the churchgoers recognized that there were things that government does that they not only like, but think are necessary to the just and proper functioning of society: social services, retirement income, medical care for the poor, that kind of thing. And they believed the tax cuts were likely to diminish financial support for those very worthy efforts. As a result, some church members talked openly -- and advocated -- sending the Bush tax cut checks to various charities. The money, they suspected, was going to be needed.

And that's what the liberal anger about Obama's tax cut deal is all about. For the last 30 years, Democrats have been derided by the GOP as "tax and spend liberals." It's supposed to be slur, but in a sense it's a badge of honor: Liberals were trying to actually pay for what they were buying, instead of putting it on a credit card. They even tried to make the health reform law into a deficit reduction measure; you can argue (as conservatives do) that there' some hocus-pocus going on with that effort -- but it's notable that Dems even make the effort. Republicans certainly don't: In the last decade they've given us two wars and the Medicare drug benefit financed pretty much entirely with borrowing from China. They have been for bigger government, in other words, but they haven't been willing to pay for it. Only one of the parties has been adult about the balance between spending and resources, but somehow it's the GOP parades around as the party of fiscal conservatism. It's ... galling.

And that's what it boils down to. Liberals think there are some services that government is uniquely well-positioned to provide. Extending the Bush tax cuts more than likely hastens the day those services are cut or eliminated, because the money we use to pay for them now will probably be redirected towards debt payments instead. (It's not like the Pentagon budget ever goes down.) Extending the tax cuts -- and, like the continuing fixes to the Alternative Minimum Tax, I'm willing to bet we've entered an era of permanent temporary extensions of the Bush cuts -- plunges us more fully into becoming a debt-laden country with a shredded safety net. It's difficult to discern an upside to this.

Republicans run their own party exactly the way they've always run the country

Thanks to lackluster fundraising and bungled money management, the Republican National Committee is expected to enter the 2012 presidential election season between $20 and $25 million in debt, the Washington Times reports. In an e-mail over the weekend, RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen said that "going into 2011, the RNC should have about $20.5 million of debt carried over." But taking operating costs into account, former RNC General Counsel David Norcross estimates that this could be several million shy of the final cost.

via slatest.slate.com

I wonder how they'll blame Obama for this.

Earl Reum, RIP

Word comes that Earl Reum has passed, and it saddens me.

Most people, I hope, have a moment in their lives when all of a sudden they can glimpse the wonderful possibilities that life holds for them. For me, the moment happened 20 years ago in Emporia, Kan., at the state's annual camp for high school student council leaders. I attended because I was going to be the vice president of my school's student council -- an honor earned not because I was particularly popular, but because I got up in front of the student body and did a series of impressions based on then-popular Saturday Night Live characters. (Yes: It's possible I wouldn't be the man I am today without Dana Carvey.)

Earl was the keynote speaker at the camp that year, as he was every year for decades -- in Kansas, and at workshops around the country. And he was a force of nature -- a Patch Adams kind of guy, frankly, in an era that was already increasingly irony-saturated. (I carried around a piece of plastic he gave me in my wallet for a decade: It was printed with "Major Credit Card" on one side and "Some Other Form Of Identification" on the other. He gave these away like candy.) He played us Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection." He led the campers in rounds of making rain sounds my snapping and stamping their feet. And over the course of the week, he got hundreds of teen-agers to think seriously about leadership -- and whether the popularity contests that had brought them to this moment offered them an opportunity not only for leadership, but for service. 

For related reasons, that week was the week I realized that writing didn't make me a wimp or a weirdo: It made me somebody who could communicate with other people effectively -- could communicate ideas and visions and even, on occasion, a piece of my heart. So much about that week is hazy for me after two decades, but I do know that I am largely the man I am today because of how that week helped me see myself. And I know that Earl Reum was an integral part of that experience.

I know I'm not the only person who had that experience. Multiply me by the thousands of Kansans who experienced Earl over the decades at the student council workshops, then again by all the states where he did similar work, and you start to guess and the depth and breadth of his impact. All those student council leaders have grown up to become bankers and farmers and deacons and other types of leaders in their communities across the nation. Amazing. He will be missed.

Quick thoughts about Google's new eBookstore

The Google eBookstore is open for business, and I've downloaded the app to my iPad. Three quick observations:

• One of the best features of the Kindle on iPad is the ability to highlight book passages and take notes. As far as I can tell, that option doesn't exist at all in the new Google book-reading app.

• Neither does the ability to read a book in landscape mode -- which is kind of annoying, as that's my preferred way of book-reading on the iPad. However, as Macworld's Jason Snell points out, the Google reader does let you opt for reading the scanned pages of the original old books -- see the photo above. This does lend a certain charm to the otherwise often-sterile e-reading environment.

• Then again, the prices on the books in the Google store don't appear significantly different than other online bookstores, so I'm not sure what advantage Google possesses at the moment. The company is pitching the product as being device-agnostic -- you can read on your computer or a tablet or your phone or most e-reader devices. That's fine, except I can do that with Amazon and Barnes & Noble's e-reader offerings, too. It's one of the reasons I opted for an iPad over a Kindle, in fact. I would've expected Google to wow me out of the box. Instead, it seems a half-step behind the features I want in an e-bookstore. 

Nina Simone: Mr. Bojangles

This is what Pandora brought me this afternoon: