sunday funnies (and not so funnies)

Frank Rich:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH is the perfect holiday treat for a country fighting off depression. He gift-wraps the ugliness of corruption in the mirthful garb of farce. From a safe distance outside Illinois, it's hard not to laugh at the "culture of Chicago," where even the president-elect's Senate seat is just another commodity to be bought and sold.

But the entertainment is escapist only up to a point. What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich's alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Republican partisans cheering Fitzgerald's prosecution of a Democrat have forgotten his other red-letter case in this decade, his conviction of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Libby was far bigger prey. He was part of the White House Iraq Group, the task force of propagandists that sold an entire war to America on false pretenses. Because Libby was caught lying to a grand jury and federal prosecutors as well as to the public, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. But President Bush commuted the sentence before he served a day.

Fitzgerald was not pleased. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals," he said at the time.

Not in the Bush era, man. Though the president had earlier vowed to fire anyone involved in leaking the classified identity of a C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame Wilson — the act Libby tried to cover up by committing perjury — both Libby and his collaborator in leaking, Karl Rove, remained in place.

Accountability wasn't remotely on Bush's mind. If anything, he was more likely to reward malfeasance and incompetence, as exemplified by his gifting of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, L. Paul Bremer and Gen. Tommy Franks, three of the most culpable stooges of the Iraq fiasco.

Bush had arrived in Washington vowing to inaugurate a new, post-Clinton era of "personal responsibility" in which "people are accountable for their actions." Eight years later he holds himself accountable for nothing. In his recent exit interview with Charles Gibson, he presented himself as a passive witness to disastrous events, the Forrest Gump of his own White House. He wishes "the intelligence had been different" about W.M.D. in Iraq — as if his administration hadn't hyped and manipulated that intelligence. As for the economic meltdown, he had this to say: "I'm sorry it's happening, of course."

As our outgoing president passes the buck for his failures — all that bad intelligence — so do leaders in the private and public sectors who enabled the economic debacle. Gramm has put the blame for the subprime fiasco on "predatory borrowers." Rubin has blamed a "perfect storm" of economic factors, as has Sam Zell, the magnate who bought and maimed the Tribune newspapers in a highly leveraged financial stunt that led to a bankruptcy filing last week. Donald Trump has invoked a standard "act of God" clause to avoid paying a $40 million construction loan on his huge new project in Chicago.

After a while they all start to sound like O. J. Simp son, who when at last held accountable for some of his behavior told a Las Vegas judge this month, "In no way did I mean to hurt anybody." Or perhaps they are channeling Donald Rumsfeld, whose famous excuse for his failure to secure post-invasion Iraq, "Stuff happens," could be the epitaph of our age.

Our next president, like his predecessor, is promising "a new era of responsibility and accountability." We must hope he means it. Meanwhile, we have the governor he leaves behind in Illinois to serve as our national whipping boy, the one betrayer of the public trust who could actually end up paying for his behavior. The surveillance tapes of Blagojevich are so fabulous it seems a tragedy we don't have similar audio records of the bigger fish who have wrecked the country. But in these hard times we'll take what we can get.

The NYT has obtained an internal government report that surveys the history of reconstruction efforts in Iraq

He's got good reflexes:

Josh Marshall wonders why it so long for the Secret Service to react (and is also impressed by Bush's reflexes)

Bush ≠ Truman

Newsweek says they've confirmed that the dramatic meeting between Gonzales and Comey at Ashcroft's hospital bed was about data mining.

While Bush finally caved to the Justice Dept on that issue, warrantless wiretapping went forward. Michael Isikoff profiles the guy who blew the whistle on that program.

Hilzoy:

It's fascinating, and well worth reading in its entirety. For now, I want to focus on one comment by Frances Frago Townsend:

"You can't have runoffs deciding they're going to be the white knight and running to the press," says Frances Fragos Townsend, who once headed the unit where Tamm worked and later served as President Bush's chief counterterrorism adviser. Townsend made clear that she had no knowledge of Tamm's particular case, but added: "There are legal processes in place [for whistle-blowers' complaints]. This is one where I'm a hawk. It offends me, and I find it incredibly dangerous."

In general, I agree with Townsend. It is generally better for all concerned if whistle-blowers operate within the system, and it is dangerous when people freelance. But there's one big exception to this rule: when the system has itself been corrupted. When you're operating within a system in which whistle-blowers' concerns are not addressed -- where the likelihood that any complaint you make within the system will be addressed is near zero, while the likelihood that you will be targeted for reprisals is high -- then no sane person who is motivated by a desire to have his or her concern addressed will work within that system.

That means that if, like Townsend, you want whistleblowers to work within the system, you need to ensure that that system actually works. A good manager will do this: she will recognize that in any human endeavor, things go wrong, and that it's best for all concerned if people who spot things that have gone wrong can try to do something about it. She will also recognize that those employees who are genuinely worried by the prospect of illegal or immoral conduct are employees she should value. She will therefore bend over backwards to make sure that those employees have ways of making their concerns known that are likely to be effective, and that employees who use those channels are not penalized.

In so doing, she will not only make it more likely that her organization will spot and correct genuine problems; she will also make it more likely that employees who bring what they think are problems to others' attention will accept it if those others don't think that their concerns are warranted. If something worries you and you tell your superiors, but those superiors don't think there is a problem, you are much more likely to accept what they say if you know that they are open to the idea that there are problems, and to dealing with them, but don't think that your specific concern actually indicates anything wrong. If, on the other hand, you know that their response is always to circle the wagons and deny that anything is wrong, you're much more likely to assume that if they don't think that your concern is warranted, they're just being defensive.

If an organization has a functioning system for hearing and addressing employees' concerns about illegal or immoral conduct, then I think that employees should use that system except in truly extraordinary circumstances. But if it does not have such a system, or if that system is dysfunctional, then we should not expect employees to work within it.

It's odd that Townsend doesn't bother to consider whether the "processes in place" for whistleblowers actually worked in the Bush administration's Department of Justice. Given what we know about the degree to which that department was politicized under Bush, it seems likely that they did not.

And it's even odder given that Townsend herself is not an outside observer, but someone who has considerable responsibility within the Bush administration. Saying that whistleblowers ought to work within the system without adding "if the system is in fact functional" is odd in itself. But saying that when you are one of the people who could have helped to make it functional amounts to saying: well, I and my colleagues have failed to do our jobs, but never mind that: we should expect whistle-blowers to work within the system, even if our own failure means that they have no reason to believe that doing so will actually accomplish anything other than the destruction of their careers.

That's a lot to ask.

An editorial from the Detroit Free Press on the Senate's failure to provide an emergency loan to the car companies.

funny:

The Bush Library is being built in Dallas. The "W" Presidential Library will include:

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction and will remain so for at least a decade.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you won't even have to show up.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they won't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they won't let you out.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.

The National Debt room which is huge and has no ceiling.

The 'Tax Cut' Room with entry only to the wealthy.

The 'Economy Room' which is in the toilet.

The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they'll make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes a fifth time.

The Dick Cheney Room, in a famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.

The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.

The Supreme Court's Gift Shop, where you will be able to buy an election.

The Airport Men's Room, where you'll be able meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.

The 'Decider Room' complete with dart board, Magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.

The museum will also have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments.

A big day coming up:

new name, same great flavor!

Let it be known that from this point forward, this blog shall now be known as "the riot trail." While the new title surely makes this sound more interesting than it really is, at least it's easier to remember (not to mention pronounce!).

Are you with me Dr. Chu?:

Sarah Illenberger

More importantly, is Obama with him. Fortunately, yes.


From a NYT editorial on Obama's "green team:"

Mr. Obama’s most intriguing selection may be his choice to run the Energy Department. Steven Chu is a physicist who shared a Nobel Prize in 1997 and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has a sophisticated grasp of the complexities of global warming and a strong belief in fighting it aggressively.

Mr. Chu also has refreshingly unconventional ideas of what it would take to solve the problem. Like others, he would put a price on carbon, preferably through a cap-and-trade program, and supports the various efficiency measures — cleaner cars, greener buildings and a modernized electrical grid — that Mr. Obama is likely to include as part of his economic stimulus package.

What sets him apart is his fierce conviction that innovation is just as important as regulation, and that big energy problems, like climate change and the world’s dependency on fossil fuels, will not be solved without major private and public investment in the development and deployment of nonpolluting technologies.

Ok, I'll admit that I include this partly to make the Steely Dan reference, but this guy still sounds like a great dude. (a "major dude??")

The NYT on Obama's close friends

Blagojevich:


The WaPo on Obama's "relationship" with Blagojevich


M.J. Rosenberg points out that FDR faced a remarkably similar situation

Ezra Klein is feeling optimistic about healthcare

The way out of Guantanomo may lead through Portugal


More:

Stimulus: Obama thinking big


How should the money be spent?

Obama introduces Sean Ryan:

Matt Yglesias provides a great moment in jargon

thank God these idiots won't be running the country

Credit: Barbara Kinney/The White House

Sad news: Socks, former First Cat, will not live much longer.

discarded Obama logos. (I think they chose the right one)

Poor Norm Coleman.

Digby responds to that Nation article on pragmatism I linked to the other day.

An interesting review of Soderbergh's "Che"

The orginal Keynesian:

Keynes created an economics whose starting point was that not all future events could be reduced to measurable risk. There was a residue of genuine uncertainty, and this made disaster an ever-present possibility, not a once-in-a-lifetime “shock.” Investment was more an act of faith than a scientific calculation of probabilities. And in this fact lay the possibility of huge systemic mistakes.

The basic question Keynes asked was: How do rational people behave under conditions of uncertainty? The answer he gave was profound and extends far beyond economics. People fall back on “conventions,” which give them the assurance that they are doing the right thing. The chief of these are the assumptions that the future will be like the past (witness all the financial models that assumed housing prices wouldn’t fall) and that current prices correctly sum up “future prospects.” Above all, we run with the crowd. A master of aphorism, Keynes wrote that a “sound banker” is one who, “when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way.” (Today, you might add a further convention — the belief that mathematics can conjure certainty out of uncertainty.)

But any view of the future based on what Keynes called “so flimsy a foundation” is liable to “sudden and violent changes” when the news changes. Investors do not process new information efficiently because they don’t know which information is relevant. Conventional behavior easily turns into herd behavior. Financial markets are punctuated by alternating currents of euphoria and panic.

His purpose, as he saw it, was not to destroy capitalism but to save it from itself. He thought that the work of rescue had to start with economic theory itself. Now that Greenspan’s intellectual edifice has collapsed, the moment has come to build a new structure on the foundations that Keynes laid.

James Ryerson considers David Foster Wallace's undergraduate thesis

Obama is tainted!!!

Survey the ridiculous innuendo here, here, here and here

Questions!:

Today's Must Read comes from Joseph Stiglitz

Steve Clemons argues for a more empathetic foreign policy


Matt Yglesias adds:

I think this is where the prospects for liberal/realist synthesis really come into view. At its best, realism isn’t just cynicism, it’s a recognition of the important reality that other countries have their own real and perceived interests and that effective US foreign policy needs to take that into account. And at its worst, the liberal humanitarian impulse becomes less about actually helping other than about appropriating vaguely high-minded rhetoric to mass an agenda of arrogance (see e.g., Max Boot’s paen to the virtues of imperialism). Productive synthesis between this impulses can be a guide to good policy, and the useful corrective in both cases is empathy — the idea that others’ point of view should be taken seriously.

The Energy / Environment team is shaping up well


Dr. Chu!:

Daschle was officially appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services / White House "Health-Czar" today. Ezra Klein has two interesting posts on this...

First, here's the Obama-Daschle connection (their ties run deep)

And here's his smart summary of today's press conference.

An interview with David Plouffe

Obama is tainted!!! Survey the ridiculous innuendo here, here, here and here

Rahm Emaneul's inbox:

Intersting people:

Meet Malcolm Gladwell

Meet Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly

NASA (of all places) seems to have become a problem for the Obama transition team

The Obama people are worried the economy may get much, much worse before it gets better

The Obama team wants MLK day to be a day of service:

An inspiring video on the Tuskegee Airmen

Obama wrestling with intelligence cabinet picks:

Sources say that Obama's team is having trouble finding a potential CIA director who lacks politically incriminating links to controversial Bush Administration policies and yet commands the respect of the agency's rank and file.

A sad commentary.

TPM has an intersting interview with Harprer's Scott Horton on the torture issue:

Democrats, myself included, tended to see Afghanistan as the war we should have fought, and that we should return our attention to. Now that the election is over a number of smart people are wondering if sending more troops there is really a good idea. Having recently watched this excellent Frontline piece I can understand the concern.


This TNR piece as well as this HuffPo piece suggest Afghanistan could easily turn into our next clusterfuck, and undo the Obama Presidency if he isn't careful. (Joe Klein at Time Mag also weighs in.)

Gates plans to make changes at Defense: see here and here

End of year lists time:

worst predictions

worst commentary

inane punditry

The Nation considers "pragmatism"

I can't wait to see Frost/Nixon. Here are a couple intersting articles on the film:

here

and

here.

Quote of the day:

An unnamed White House official, quoted in today's Times, describing Bush administration efforts to get home foreclosure relief: "It's become clear that if you stick your head up, it'll get cut off. We're done in two months. The next administration can try to find a way out of that maze."