Victor Davis Hanson: Going Against the Grain Liberates Presidents

Surprisingly, I agree with this essay by Victor Davis Hanson virtually in its entirety. If a president does something that their own side is more inclined to criticize, they can act almost with impunity. The key, though, is to have given your own side enough red meat not to rebel when you do it. Bush learned the hard way with Harriet Miers that the base will sometimes rise up. That was, though, a combination of her being an obvious crony appointment and social conservatives being an advanced state of paranoia due to having slavishly devoted themselves to the GOP for thirty years and gotten little to show for it. That's why I knew she was toast when the speech in which she sounded sympathetic to Planned Parenthood v. Casey started circulating the Internet. Twenty-four hours later she was no longer the nominee.


Adding to that, in international matters the president doesn't really need to run anything by Congress unless they want to launch a full-scale ground invasion. War is one area where the Court tends to stay out of the fray as much as possible, probably because if it didn't it would probably get nobbled in one way or another. The War Powers Act is more honored in the breach than in the observance.

Thus it's entirely possible that Obama would bomb Iran. The fallout would be severe though. I suspect we'd end up with a ground war, since Iran could retaliate by blocking the straight of Hormuz causing economic catastrophy for the world. We'd probably need to wage full-scale war to clear it and keep it clear.

People who never look in the mirror

A couple of items. First, Republicans thinking they lost the Ohio union ballot because they are too noble to stoop to dirty tactics. Hah! Talk about delusional. Of course this is the publication that defended Saxby Chambliss's Bin Laden ad. The second item is this:

The cheaply partisan contemporary Left makes me miss the old explicitly Marxist Left, at least a little bit. As the Marxists knew, the key to maintaining a paranoid, fantasy-driven worldview is maintaining a narrative that while wildly implausible is internally consistent, just as in sci-fi or horror movies.

This applies equally to modern American Right. Paranoia is rampant, preventing any compromise whatsoever. Comprehensive immigration reform can never happen because "the other side will trick us: we'll get amnesty and no border security," bipartisan deficit reduction is impossible, because "the other side will trick us: we'll get tax hikes and no spending cuts," and even banning late-term abortions is impossible, because "the other side will trick us: the health exception will mean that women who stub their toe will be able to get late term abortions." In all cases, nothing can be done without Republican political domination. In the case of the budget, it becomes an immediate threat to the nation because they inexplicably insist on threatening apocalyptic shutdowns and defaults if they don't get what they want the way they want it.

This really is bad for the country. We need two sane political parties. Hopefully if Romney becomes president, he'll reign in the crazies like Bush did. Or if Cain gets nominated and then goes down in flames because of more sex scandals and because people don't want their taxes raised to give more tax breaks to the rich, it will have a salutory effect on the Republican psyche (like a parent's spanking of their child). Unlikely, I know: they'll find some way to blame a conspiracy of "liberal racists" or whatnot. Ultimately this is what happens to you when you only pay attention to sources specifically tailored to your political perspective, dismissing pretty much the entire mainstream media as a propaganda wing for the other side.

I should note that Democrats are every bit as capable as Republicans of dirty campaigning. I also note that they have their share of paranoid members, though I can't remember the last time the paranoids almost caused massive catastrophe like Republican paranoia nearly caused a default and might still cause a shutdown.

Lifehacker: Five Best RSS Newsreaders [Hive Five]

From Lifehacker:

Five Best RSS Newsreaders [Hive Five]:

Google's changes to Google Reader this week upset a lot of people, and it got us wondering how many of you still use Google Reader as your preferred RSS newsreader when there are so many other options. This week, we're going to highlight some of those other news readers, in case you're looking for alternatives. More »

The good news is that the alternatives sync with Google Reader. The problem with any non-cloud reader is that they will only download feeds while they're open, and don't have history going back forever. Feeds typically only have 10-30 items, which means that if you only download a feed once a day you're liable to miss things. The sheer power of Reader is the enormous database of RSS items it has. That's not easily replaceable.

Note: Feedly at least seems to not take advantage of Reader's database (if the API even allows that). Thus if you link it to Reader, you'll only get the ten most recent items on most things. Reader still is the best game in town despite the redesign (which I agree was not an improvement at all--too much whitespace; they really need information density settings like they have in Gmail).

Solitary confinement as a form of torture

Sarah Shourd, one of the hikers arrested by Iran for "espionage," describes being in solitary confinement for most of fourteen months. She ends:

It’s wonderful to begin my life again, and every day I feel more free, but I can’t help thinking about the thousands of others who are alone right now. I believe the excessive use of solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment — that it is torture. The United Nations should proscribe this inhumane practice, and the United States should take the lead role in its eradication. 

The problem is that you have to qualify it with "excessive." I mean, what else do you do with a lifer who rapes, tortures, or murders other prisoners? There are two options (since adding time to their sentence is pointless): kill them or lock them up alone. Allowing them to continue to rape and torture their fellow prisoners is unacceptable. So is permitting criminal enterprises to form in prison and continue unabated.

I can absolutely believe that the US uses solitary confinement where it isn't warranted, though: we have the highest incarceration rate on the planet. Americans don't care how many people we put in jail, or what happens to them, as long as they're taken out of sight.

More shutdown danger, more yawns

The congressional Republicans have overplayed the shutdown card. It's hard to believe they're still trying to use that threat at all, let alone to undo Obamacare. Really, there's a very good chance the Supreme Court will strike it down and nothing will need to be done by them, and they will probably win the White House and the Senate next year if things don't improve and they both fail to nominate a loon and fail to obviously tank the economy through intransigence.

If they were going to go the shutdown route, they should have pulled the trigger back in Spring. Instead they punted, threatened to do far worse damage to the country with a default, chickened out at the last minute (not without drawing some Democratic blood, though), and now they want to go at it again? Frankly, the biggest selling point in a Romney presidency is that maybe he'd keep these psychos under control. Failing that, seeing the Republicans eat each other alive would be fun. I doubt Romney would roll over and let Republican inferiors in the House run the country for him.

Anyway, there won't be a shutdown. This is just apocalyptic posturing to please the Tea Party. Nothing to see here. Moving on...

Cain is Obama's best hope for reelection

The 9-9-9 proposal is a sure catastrophe in the general election if the Obama campaign has any competence at all. Raising taxes on 80% of Americans while simultaneously cutting them enormously on the richest Americans is a recipe for a landslide. Not to mention the GOP could kiss the elderly vote goodbye since 9-9-9 repeals Social Security's revenue source, the payroll tax.