Helen Thomas: "You Never Explain Why They Want To Do Us Harm! What's Their Motivation?" (video)

MoxNewsDotCom, with video from C-SPAN (01:52).

H/t to Glenn Greenwald who elaborates: "Helen Thomas deviates from the terrorism script."

Friday Media and Counterterrorism Roundup

"Media Narratives Still Predictable" (GRITtv with video):

No matter what the news is, which country has tensions, who’s making threats, the response from TV news seems to be the same: quote Dick Cheney. We saw plenty of that this week, along with pronouncements that Democrats are doomed in 2010, complaints about progressives who’ve criticized the health care bill, and of course Tiger Woods.

Joining us to discuss the good, bad and ugly in this week’s media are Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel at FireDogLake, Liza Sabater of CultureKitchen and The Daily Gotham, the Rude Pundit Lee Papa, and Dan Gerstein, Forbes columnist and president of Gotham Ghostwriters.

"After Years in Guantanamo Prison Without Charge, Future Even More Uncertain for Yemeni Detainees" (Democracy Now!, with video/audio):

Although President Obama came into office last year promising to close down the infamous prison camp at Guantanamo, nearly 200 men are still imprisoned there. On Tuesday, Obama noted that the would-be Christmas Day airline bomber had received training in Yemen and emphasized his links to a Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. He went on to announce that he had suspended the transfer of any more Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. About half of the men remaining in Guantanamo are from Yemen.

Juan Cole, Eugene Robinson on counterterrorism (with video)

Juan Cole, with video (Informed Comment):

Obama to fix Security Flaws; but Could he Please Fix Stupid Racial Profiling?--I think two things could help fix the intelligence failure. One is just better software. If you had fields for Nigeria and Yemen it should be easy enough to have a program flag two such entries as possibly related. The other is better community sensitivity training for field officers. For Umar Mutallab to turn his son into the CIA was a big thing; families protect their own in that part of the world. If the field agent knew Hausa and more African culture he would have realized the seriousness of the situation.

The truly W.-level stupid thing Obama is doing is singling out passengers from specific countries.

The only good thing about this asinine new Obama administration order that persons from or traveling through 14 countries would be subject to extra pat-downs and inspections of carry-on luggage is that in all likelihood it mostly will not be implemented.

Eugene Robinson (WaPo):

"Connecting the dots" is a lousy metaphor that creates unrealistic expectations. The phrase suggests that the only thing our intelligence analysts have to do is draw a line from the point labeled "1" to the point labeled "2" and so on, and soon they're looking at the unmistakable outline of a terrorist plot. In reality, though, the page is so crowded with dots that they almost touch. Most are irrelevant, and not a single one is numbered.

The clues that would have alerted authorities to the Christmas Day underwear bomber were buried under mountains of intelligence data. Gathering pertinent information is a challenge, but in this case that challenge was met. What the system failed to do was manage the data well enough for the right bits and pieces to be picked out.

It seems to me that as President Obama tries to minimize the possibility that the next Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might succeed in blowing an airliner out of the sky, the focus shouldn't be on shuffling boxes around an organizational chart. It should be on finding a better way to inventory and collate what we already know.

Dan Savage talks about Brit Hume on Keith Olbermann (video)

PoliticsCentralX with video from MSNBC, (05:32):

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann & Activist Dan Savage: Brit Hume Tells Tiger Woods To Become A Christian -

H/t to Jimmy.

"Will Ed Run in North Dakota?"

Darryl Holman (Hominid Views):

Senator Ed Schultz (D-ND)? How cool would that be?

Ed confronted the issue directly today by indirectly denying he will run:

“I am flattered and I am honored and I can’t say I’m even considering it right now. I worked – as many people know – very hard to get where I am in my career, to go from Fargo to 30 Rock is a dream come true for any broadcaster. I’ve invested a lot of years, a lot of time and effort to use the microphone as an opportunity to advocate for the middle class in this country. I’m in a different place than politics right now. I think I serve things as good as I can right here, right now.

“So, we’re a long way from any consideration…we’re a long way from any kind of decision…the race is going to be an intriguing one, no doubt about that, but at this point, I’m not even considering – and we’re a long way from that.”

I’ll take that as a solid “maybe.”

If Mr. Schultz runs for Senate, it might make the difference between 59 and 60 Senators caucusing with the Democrats. You know, just like Sen. Al Franken’s Senate bid did in 2008. Schultz would be doing far more for the middle class in that scenario than he is able to do now.

If Schultz doesn’t run, North Dakota will be lost to the Democrats. And Obama’s agenda will be greatly diminished by the Republican’s greater potential for obstructionism.

Pakistan: "Over 700 killed in 44 drone strikes in 2009"

DAWN.COM (DawnNews):

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day.--PESHAWAR: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.

According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.

The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day. Most of the attacks were carried out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen, who are spying for the US-led allied forces in Afghanistan.

Of the five successful predator attacks carried out in 2009, the first one came on January 1, which reportedly killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders – Usama al-Kin and Sheikh Ahmed Salim – both wanted by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Kin was the chief operational commander of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest in 2004.

The second successful drone attack was conducted on August 5 in South Waziristan that killed the most wanted fugitive chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud along with his wife.

The US State Department had announced a $5 million head money reward for information leading to Baitullah, making him the only Pakistani fugitive with the head money separately announced by Islamabad and Washington.

Howie P.S.: Glenn Greenwald points out some other unintended consequences of the current efforts to counter "terrorism" in "The backfiring of the Surveillance State." GRITtv, video (21:52), asks "Is Yemen the New Front in the “War On Terror”?":

Suddenly the newspapers and cable news shows are talking about Yemen as the newest site for Al Qaeda. Yemeni authorities have been ramping up attacks against militants, with U.S. aid, and after the failed attempt to bring down a U.S.-bound airplane over Christmas, the rhetoric has just grown more incendiary: John McCain said, “The government of Yemen is going to need our help in combating Al-Qaeda. There needs to be significant effort made at improving their economy.”

So what’s really going on? Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani, a political analyst, spoke to us from Sana’a, Yemen, and then Michael Bronner, investigative journalist and Vanity Fair contributor, and Christoph Wilcke, Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division, join us in studio to discuss the situation further.

>

"Drone Porn: The Newest YouTube Hit" (with videos)

Keith Thomson, with videos (AlterNet):

Ranging from wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, the so-called "drone porn" has been a smash hit.---Recently, a group of high-level Al Qaeda members convened in a secret location in the Hindu Kush mountains in central Afghanistan.

"It's okay to talk," one of them said. "There are no Americans within a hundred miles."

Then...

BLAMMO.

A Hellfire missile, fired from a Predator drone, struck.

Remotely operated by pilots on the ground, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) boast a range of 454 miles and the ability to hover over a target for 40 hours. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in the mid-1990s for reconnaissance, Predators were fitted with a pair of Hellfire missiles after an American general remarked, "I can see the tank. Now I'd like to see it blown up."

The newer, bigger Reaper UAVs boast a 3,682-mile range and a relative arsenal, including Hellfires, Sidewinder missiles and 500-pound laser guided bombs -- a potent enough package that the Air Force is now training more pilots to fly aircraft from ground operations centers than from cockpits.

In researching remotely piloted aircraft, I visited the stretch of Southern Nevada desert that has become to UAVs what Silicon Valley is to the device on which you're reading this column. In 2007, Creech Air Force Base was made the home of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing, the first Air Force wing dedicated to unmanned aircraft systems. Its daily missions in Afghanistan and Iraq could provide the military version of a SportsCenter highlight reel.

With an aim of promoting UAVs domestically as well as "enlightening" our enemies, the Defense Department recently began placing the Predator and Reaper mission clips on YouTube. Ranging from relatively detached wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, the so-called "drone porn" has been a smash hit, as it were, tallying over 10 million views.

Perhaps best explaining its popularity are the thousands of YouTube commenters. Some marvel at the new technology and discuss the resulting paradigm shift in warfare. Some raise questions, including whether it's principled, dignified or otherwise in America's best interest to post drone prone in the first place. Most comments are along the lines of, "Hell yeah HOOOAH BABY!"

Below are three of the Defense Department's most popular videos on YouTube (titles theirs) as well as comparatively tranquil footage of a missile blowing up a tank. The "operational details" links go to the original YouTube pages, featuring more information and comments.

operational details


operational details


operational details


operational details

Keith Thomson played semi-professional baseball in France. He drew editorial cartoons for Newsday and now reports on national security and other matters for several publications, including Garden & Gun. He also has written movies and books, including the novel Once A Spy, which will be published by Doubleday on March 9, 2010. For more information, see keiththomsonbooks.com

Howie Kurtz: "Dreaming of Dean"

Howie Kurtz (WaPo):

I spent a couple of days with Howard Dean in the winter of 2002, watching him just beginning to develop his voice -- "We are never going to beat the Republicans if we try to be the Republicans," he told a crowd in Atlanta -- when he was an asterisk in the presidential race.

I was skeptical when Dean told me he'd be the John McCain of the campaign, but a year later he caught fire as an antiwar crusader and raised a ton of money before flaming out in Iowa. Then he became the Democratic Party chairman, was frozen out by the Obama team, and is now a CNBC pundit and high-profile critic of the Senate health-care bill.

But even as the doctor has carved up the legislation, he has been careful to say he still supports the president. That's why I find it surprising that some on the left are again dreaming of Dean in the White House. A few even want him to run in, yes, 2012.

I doubt that the former governor is going to encourage this talk -- and I'd be shocked if he ran next time -- though it hardly hurts his stature. "I don't like to engage much in the parlor game," he told me in 2002. "It's just something to write in the next year before the curtain goes up."

But more important than fantasies about Dean's political future is what is powering this talk: a palpable disappointment, in some lefty precincts, with President Obama. Who would have thought, a year after the media went nuts over his inauguration, that some party members would be pining for another Dem to challenge him in a primary?

In the end, it's not about Dean; it's about the party's struggling leader.

Matt Bai raised the issue in the NYT Magazine, saying no POTUS is going to satisfy the true believers:

"A year into Obama's presidency, it is no longer inconceivable, if still unlikely, that he could face a challenge within his own party in 2012, especially if Democrats suffer sizable losses next November. (When Howard Dean made a point of trying to scuttle health care reform altogether, was he simply trying to get a better bill, or was he setting himself up as a populist insurgent?)

"And yet, history would suggest that it is the progressive, and not his populist antagonist, who makes change palatable and, in doing so, alters the trajectory of the country. William Jennings Bryan remains something of a patron saint to the economic populists, but it was Theodore Roosevelt who channeled the popular unrest of the day into a movement away from unbridled corporatism. And it is T.R.'s distant cousin Franklin, not contemporaries like Huey Long, who is celebrated for having made the New Deal the guiding framework for 60 years of American government."

This post at Firedoglake helps explain the Howard Hype:

"Dean can publicly criticize the Obama administration as he did recently when he said the health care bill being advanced in the Senate is not worth voting for. He's not tied in any way to this administration which is looking more and more like the S.S. Titanic-Obama.

"That's why the Obama administration and its various spin-meisters immediately struck back hard at Howard Dean after his comments on the senate bill. Note that press secretary Gibbs and others in the administration even went so far as to invoke the Dean-is-crazy theme that the mainstream media made up after the so-called 'Dean Scream.' Dean's having a 'temper tantrum' they have complained in language that calls up the images that were played on in 2004 of an unstable Dean. . . .

"Why has the Obama administration treated Howard Dean so differently than it has Joe Lieberman? Because the Obama-Rahm team has never ever, even remotely had any common cause with progressivism or with progressives. . . .

"Dean, of course, is a progressive. The Obama White House also recognizes that Dean, should he want to, could be a political threat to their sand castle presidency. Think about it. If Howard Dean wants to (and I don't know that he does, I have no insider information), he could primary Obama in 2012.

"He'd have lots of advantages. Dean has national name recognition. He can crank up a campaign quickly and attract the best people. He's a Washington, D.C. outsider since Obama-Rahm did him the favor of not letting him in on their gig. He has the backing of most progressives and liberals, the very people who worked hard to win the primaries and the general election for Obama."

Things would have to go real sour for Obama for a failed presidential candidate and former small-state governor to represent a serious threat to his renomination.

Politico surfs the same wave:

"After four relatively low-profile years pushing the official party line as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dean is once again the tribune of frustrated liberals. And after he called out President Barack Obama and his congressional allies over their concessions on health care, those close to him predict he's just getting warmed up.

"Dean's health care stand has infuriated party leaders, who have alternately tried to marginalize him and to bring him on board. Yet at the same time, his provocative approach has re-energized the political group he founded and thrilled legions of progressive activists, many of whom were drawn to politics by Dean's insurgent 2004 presidential campaign, then deflated when he didn't land an Obama Cabinet post.

"They have grown increasingly disenchanted with Obama's presidency and are urging Dean to keep up the drumbeat as the health care debate heads to conference this month; to push Obama to stand more firmly with liberals on other issues; and, if the administration continues to disappoint, to consider challenging Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries (a far-fetched scenario for which one liberal blogger recently posited Dean was 'perfectly positioned') or -- if nothing else -- to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2016, when Obama could be finishing his second term."

Far-fetched, yes, but here's an interesting quote from Joe Trippi, who ran Dean's 2004 effort before quitting amidst the turmoil: "A lot of establishment people might laugh at that, but there's angst in the progressive wing of the party, and it matters that Howard Dean is emerging as the leading voice of that angst. It could matter on a number of other issues, and it could lead to another Howard Dean campaign for president."

Part of the disaffection with Obama turns on what MoDo calls his Spock style. I thought we'd see a flash of anger after the attempted Christmas Day bombing, but as Kathleen Parker observes:

"The cool detachment that was so attractive when political opponents were trying to rile Obama is suddenly becoming annoying. Preternaturally unflappable, his demeanor in these circumstances borders on inappropriate.

"What does it take to get a rise out of Barack Obama? Not that we need bombast and flared nostrils. Calm in the face of potential disaster is laudable, but it's a fine line between executive tranquillity and passive nonchalance. Like a tone-deaf disc jockey, Obama plays elevator music when the crowd wants John Philip Sousa."

But no one should have expected rhetorical symphonies, says Tina Brown:

"It's all the rage at the moment to denounce the president's cool and his 'inability to connect.' Where did the inspiring Obama of the campaign go, that Facebook pied piper who friended the whole world with this update: Change you can believe in. What happened to him?

"Nothing, as it turns out. . . . Obama was always this guy. When I met him in 2007 along with a small group of New York donors, he was just the same as he is as president. A bit wordy, a bit aloof, a bit theoretical. There was a hint of truculence when challenged to be specific on policy. The gaggle of demanding Park Avenue big shots who shared the elevator with me on the way down were underwhelmed. They also felt vaguely dissed. He had failed to make a fuss of any of them.

"Was there a contradiction between that cool customer and the orator who brought out and turned on huge crowds on the campaign trail? Not really. Obama's gift for delivering set-piece oratorical tours de force had special resonance to Americans fed up with a president who could hardly string two words together without a collision of syntax and whose idea of clever was the single entendre. . . .

"The president has a writer's temperament more than he has a politician's. He prefers his public utterances to be informed by fully formed thoughts that come to him after he has pondered. In contrast to the Twitter generation that flocked to his campaign, he doesn't believe his first thought is his best thought. He has a lawyerly preference for caution. . . .

"But hey, you go to war with the president you have, to paraphrase our old friend Donald Rumsfeld. Would we prefer Obama to snatch up his bullhorn and start hollering 'bring it on!' when the latest jock-strap jihadist is apprehended at the airport? I thought we hated all that bellicose Bush-era posturing."

Well, sure, but. . . . how 'bout just a scowl or two?

Howie P.S.: Dean is a convenient straw man for pundits, comedians, you name it. But let's set the record straight (again):"Howard Dean Now Supports Passage of Health Reform Bill After Winning Improvements." His opposition was always qualified with "if the bill stays in its present form." Will somebody please tell Karen Finney to straighten this out. BTW, two Howies and one Howard, all in one post. I don't think I've ever heard Dr. Dean referred to as "Howie."

Hendrik Hertzberg on the health care bill

Hendrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker):

“All violent feelings have the same effect,” John Ruskin wrote, in one of his most famous essays. “They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ‘Pathetic Fallacy.’ ” Ruskin published “Of the Pathetic Fallacy” in 1856, as a chapter of “Modern Painters.” His subject, in this chapter, was poetry, not painting, and it was certainly not politics. But his insight may help explain the American political atmosphere at the beginning of the year 2010, especially the subdued, sometimes even angry, mood among many of President Obama’s wavering, if not quite erstwhile, supporters.

When Congress reconvenes a few days from now, it will be on the cusp of enacting a sweeping reform of American health insurance and health care that could be, as the President put it on Christmas Eve, just after the Senate passed its version of the bill, “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the nineteen-thirties and the most important reform of our health-care system since Medicare passed in the nineteen-sixties.” Perhaps he was exaggerating, but not by much. Jonathan Cohn, the New Republic’s health-care correspondent, calls the bill “the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation in a generation—a bill that will extend insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans, strengthen insurance for many more, and start refashioning American medicine so that it is more efficient.” Paul Krugman, the Times’ resident Nobel laureate (and a frequent Obama critic), calls the bill “a great achievement” that “establishes the principle—even if it falls somewhat short in practice—that all Americans are entitled to essential health care.” Princeton’s Paul Starr, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,” calls it “the single biggest measure on behalf of low-income Americans in more than forty years.” How big? The University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack has done the sums. By the time the reforms are fully implemented, “the Senate bill would provide about $196 billion per year down the income scale in subsidies to low-income and working Americans.” That’s more, Pollack notes, than the federal government spends on the earned-income tax credit, Head Start, assistance to single mothers and their children, nutrition programs like food stamps, and the National Institutes of Health combined.

None of these people, from Obama on down the wonk scale, deceive themselves that the Senate bill, which now must be merged with its (marginally stronger) House equivalent, comes within hailing distance of perfection. All of them recognize that the final bill, in the now overwhelmingly likely event that it surmounts the remaining hurdles, will be flawed and messy. All of them also understand that, compared with the status quo—and the status quo, not perfection or anything like it, is the alternative—it will constitute a moral and material advance of historic proportions.

Nevertheless, a nontrivial portion (though far from a majority) of the Democratic left, particularly its Internet cohort, feels alienated and disappointed, with the bill and with the President. As the Senate vote neared, Markos Moulitsas, the chief of Daily Kos, sent his followers a tweet: “Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.” MoveOn.org called on “progressives” to “block this bill.” Arianna Huffington dismissed it as “reform in name only.” Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s Savonarola, lectured the President that he was about to consign his countrymen to a “Chicago stockyards of insurance” that would be “immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you.” Even Dr. Dean himself—Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, Presidential candidate, and Democratic Party chairman—wrote that the Senate should defeat the bill, claiming that it “would do more harm than good to the future of America.” And in the nether reaches of the left blogosphere the epithets flew. Obama is a “sellout.” He’s a “liar.” He’s a “Judas,” a “fraud,” a “corrupt fool.” He’s a “Liebermanite.” (Ouch!) He’s “an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations that are running our country.” (This last not from some anonymous blog commenter but from Ralph Nader, without whose efforts Joe Lieberman would be just another former Vice-President.)

The pathetic fallacy is a category mistake. It’s the false attribution of human feelings, thoughts, or intentions to inanimate objects, or to living entities that cannot possibly have such feelings, thoughts, or intentions—cruel seas, dancing leaves, hot air that “wants” to rise. The American government has its human aspects—it is staffed by human beings, mostly—but its atomized, at-odds-with-itself legislative structure (House and Senate, each with its arcane rules, its semi-feudal committee chairs, and its independently elected members, none of whom are accountable or fully responsible for outcomes) makes it more like an inanimate object. In our sclerotic lawmaking process, it is not enough that the President, a majority of both Houses of Congress, and a majority of the voters at the last election favor extending health care to all citizens.

The left-wing critics are right about the conspicuous flaws of the pending health-care reform—its lack of even a weak “public option,” its too meagre subsidies, its windfalls for Big Pharma, its capitulation on abortion coverage, its reliance on private insurance. And there are surely senators and representatives whose motives are base or, broadly speaking, corrupt. But it is nonsense to attribute the less than fully satisfactory result to the alleged perfidy of the President or “the Democrats.” The critics’ indignation would be better directed at what an earlier generation of malcontents called “the system”—starting, perhaps, with the Senate’s filibuster rule, an inanimate object if there ever was one.

On May 20, 1962, at Madison Square Garden, John F. Kennedy spoke to some twenty thousand people at a rally in support of a bill to provide hospital care for the aged, one of forty-five such rallies around the country. In his speech, President Kennedy acknowledged that his bill would fall short of meeting every need. “We’ve got great unfinished business in this country,” he said, “and while this bill does not solve our problems in this area, I do not believe it is a valid argument to say, ‘This bill isn’t going to do the job.’ It will not, but it will do part of it.”

Two months later, Kennedy’s bill was defeated in the Senate. It took his assassination, a huge Democratic victory in 1964, and the legislative talents of President Lyndon Johnson to get Medicare enacted. The health-care bill now being kicked and prodded and bribed toward passage will not “do the job,” either—only part of it. Are Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress doing enough? No. But they are doing what’s possible. That may be pathetic, but it’s no fallacy.

Howie P.S.: I would have thought my old friend Mr. Hertzberg was able to keep up with things a little better: "Howard Dean Now Supports Passage of Health Reform Bill After Winning Improvements." I won't use any rhetorical flourishes to correct the record, but I hope Rick will, with or without.

Meet Mayor McGinn (with video)

PublicolaTV, video (07:43).

Howie P.S.: Chris Grygiel (seattlepi.com) has more details on McGinn's first day actions. Emily Heffter (Seattle Times) highlights "some behind-the-scenes uncertainty on the part of the City Council" on the new mayor's first day. She notes that he "was sworn in by two of his children: Miyo, 12, and Cian, 10."
(KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

"Afghan tensions rise amid civilian and CIA deaths" (with video)

AlJazeeraEnglish, with video (02:44):

Afghanistan's government has stepped up its criticism over the number of Afghan civilians killed by Nato strikes.

In the latest incident, eight people died in Helmand province and the government has demanded that foreign troops responsible for civilian deaths be handed over to Afghan authorities.

The civilian deaths and political fallout come amid confirmation by the CIA that seven of its agents were killed in a suicide attack at a US base in Afghanistan the agency's worst one-day loss of life in eight years.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bomber was an Afghan army officer who volunteered for the operation.

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports.

Howie P.S.: H/t to Juan Cole who has more details.

Chris Matthews: "Politico is a news conduit for Dick Cheney" (video)

fshakir1, video (01:52).

Howie P.S.: Every once in a while Tweety is on the money. More video from Countdown, video(11:24) pushing back on Cheney:

"Phillips Reportedly To Join R’s in Vote for Drago" (Updated)

Jan Drago joins KC Council/Photo by Erica C. Barnett.

UPDATE: Erica C. Barnett (Publicola) confirms the earlier "report."

Josh Feit (Publicola):

I’m heading down momentarily to the county courthouse, where King County Council members are reportedly close to breaking the deadlock on appointing a replacement for Dow Constantine, who left the council to take his new position as King County Executive last year.

Multiple sources say Larry Phillips, a Democrat, now plans to switch his vote and side with Republicans, who want to appoint former Seattle City Council member Jan Drago as a “placeholder” until an election can be held in November. Drago lives in Pioneer Square; Constantine lives in West Seattle.

Phillips has not returned a call for comment.

Howie P.S.: I don't want to cynical or anything, but may there be some deal in the works here between Jan and Larry?

Patrick Cockburn: "Threats to Yemen Prove America Hasn’t Learned the Lesson of History" (with audio/video)

Democracy Now! with audio/video:

The United States and Britain have closed their embassies in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a, citing security threats from an Al Qaeda group. On Sunday Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan told NBC’s Meet The Press that “there are indications that al-Qaeda is planning an attack against a target in Sanaa.” When asked whether U.S. military action was possible in Yemen, Brennan said, “everything is possible.”

On Saturday President Obama connected the foiled Christmas day attack on the Detroit-bound flight to Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described Yemen as a “regional and global threat” and is calling for an emergency high-level international meeting on Yemen at the end of this month. He spoke to Andrew Marr of the BBC Sunday.

Well for more on Yemen and American and British reactions to the alleged terror threat from there, I’m joined now on the line from the UK by veteran journalist and author Patrick Cockburn. He’s the Middle East Correspondent for the Independent newspaper who has reported from Yemen and is covering the latest news. We are also joined on the line from Sana’a by Michael Horton, a freelance journalist based in Yemen.

Joel Connelly: "Cantwell takes on Wall Street fat cats"

Joel Connelly (seattlepi.com):

The U.S. Senate often moves with the speed of a three-toed sloth, its taboos equal to those of a New Guinea tribe. In this venue, fraught with frustration, Sen. Maria Cantwell tries to get stuff done.

After the health care marathon that ended with a 7 a.m. vote on Christmas Eve, I expected whiffs of impatience at a sit down with the "Gentle Lady from Washington" last week.

Instead, from Cantwell came lessons in patience and perseverance, rather like hearing a cool-headed explorer talk about negotiating paths through the New Guinea jungle.

Cantwell has just introduced, with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a bill that would restore the Depression-era Glass-Steagal law, which erected a barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.

A cause of America's recent travails, argues Cantwell, is that financial institutions entrusted with safely holding the public's savings have taken wanton risks with the money.

An amused Cantwell noted, however, that financial institutions control purse strings on political contributions, and carry much clout on Capitol Hill. Reinstating Glass-Steagal is, politically, as much an uphill grind as climbing out of the Tsangpo River gorge in Tibet.

Still, the Cantwell-McCain initiative has its up side(s). Its boldness, and banks' fears, might clear a path to other reforms. Cantwell has pursued reckless deregulation since 2001, when Enron traders created artificial shortages and drove up West Coast electrical rates.

Another aim of the legislation goes unstated: Colleagues see it as a way of coaxing a grumpy, increasingly strident McCain back into his former role as an architect of bold, bipartisan reforms.

Want to talk seriously with Sen. Cantwell? Master the term "derivative," defined by Wikipedia as "a financial instrument that is derived from some other asset, index, event, value or condition (known as the 'underlying asset')." Investors have used derivatives to speculate, to hedge, and to bring down companies that were pillars of Wall Street.

Cantwell mimics the Dixie drawl of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi), who loved to tell her, "We're not going to start regulating derivatives. Nobody here knows what they are."

Influence in the Senate is derived from committee assignments, in Cantwell's case by a phone call fielded in Beijing three years ago.

Re-elected just four days earlier, Cantwell was in China to launch a bid to have two superpowers collaborate in creating new, non-polluting energy technologies and find a way to sequester greenhouse gases released by coal plants. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid came on the line and asked Cantwell to take a post on the Senate Finance Committee. No Washington senator had served on the tax-writing panel for more than half a century.

The new committee posting -- she kept seats on the Commerce and Energy committees --thrust Cantwell into the middle of health care reform.

She has campaigned to let states enact their own Washington-style basic health plans to care for the working poor. She has included provisions designed to promote care that promotes wellness rather than maximizing unneeded tests.

Reformers run into obstacles. Senators from states specializing in health innovation -- e.g. Washington and Minnesota -- run into suspicion from colleagues that don't have the Mayo Clinic for a model, or a new health care delivery system being tested by the Swedish Medical System and Premiera Blue Cross.

Obstacles in our nation's capital can come from all directions.

Cantwell is a longtime champion of wind energy: One of America's biggest wind "farms" has sprouted near Walla Walla on the Washington-Oregon border. Yet, towers and turbines come mainly from Europe.

Cantwell wants a manufacturing tax credit so towers and turbines will be built here. But lack of enthusiasm Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, has prevented a tailwind from developing behind the proposal.

Since her Beijing trip, Cantwell has watched China become the world's greatest greenhouse gas emitter, but also embark on huge wind and solar developments. The Middle Kingdom needs to mollify its wheezing citizens, but also wants to get a corner on the marketplace.

"The organizers at the Shanghai Expo are touting clean energy as a way out of the world's recession," Cantwell argued.

The underlying message: We ought to wake up and move. In an effort to get climate legislation moving, Cantwell is again crossing the aisle, cosponsoring legislation with GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

You can watch Washington, D.C., show horses strut across the screens of Cable TV news. It's pleasing to know that a work horse who lifts the heavy end represents this Washington.

Howie P.S.: This relentless adoration from Joel takes a little getting used to, but hey, what's not to like about Maria's current incarnation?

"The resurrection of Howard Dean"

Ken Vogel (Politico):

After four relatively low-profile years pushing the official party line as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dean is once again the tribune of frustrated liberals. And after he called out President Barack Obama and his congressional allies over their concessions on health care, those close to him predict he’s just getting warmed up.

Dean’s health care stand has infuriated party leaders, who have alternately tried to marginalize him and to bring him on board. Yet at the same time, his provocative approach has re-energized the political group he founded and thrilled legions of progressive activists, many of whom were drawn to politics by Dean's insurgent 2004 presidential campaign, then deflated when he didn’t land an Obama Cabinet post.

They have grown increasingly disenchanted with Obama’s presidency and are urging Dean to keep up the drumbeat as the health care debate heads to conference this month; to push Obama to stand more firmly with liberals on other issues; and, if the administration continues to disappoint, to consider challenging Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries (a far-fetched scenario for which one liberal blogger recently posited Dean was “perfectly positioned”) or — if nothing else — to seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, when Obama could be finishing his second term.

“It’s almost like the circle has come all the way around again, and Howard Dean’s voice is leading the same charge that he started to lead in 2003,” said Joe Trippi, who ran Dean’s 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In fact, Dean’s resurgence in some ways resembles his meteoric rise to national prominence as a dark-horse presidential candidate whose strident anti-war rhetoric set the left ablaze even as it made Washington Democrats uneasy. This time around, his supporters and allies say, he is even better positioned to channel liberal frustrations, given his health care bona fides. A medical doctor, Dean as governor of Vermont oversaw the creation of a universal health care program for children and pregnant women in that state. But — policy specifics aside — for many supporters, Dean’s harsh December allegations that Obama and Senate Democrats caved to big insurance companies by shelving both a public health insurance option and the Medicare expansion that replaced it – and his much-criticized assertion that “the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House and start the reconciliation process” – brought to mind his 2004 campaign pledge “to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

Dean did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But sources close to him said that when the health care debate concludes, he’ll likely continue pushing the White House and congressional Democrats to take liberal stances on other issues, including alternative energy, and also will stay involved with Democracy for America (DFA), the political action committee he founded and recently reconnected with.

“He is going to keep pushing the envelope on health care and some other issues,” said Dean’s brother, Jim Dean, chairman of DFA, which was created from the remnants of his brother’s presidential campaign. “Someone’s got to do it, because a lot of Obama’s core constituencies don’t feel like they’re getting paid attention to right now.”

Howard Dean “certainly subjugated a lot of stuff because he was the DNC chair,” his brother said. “But when he realized he wasn’t going to be in the administration, he was going to speak out about something, and he’s been committed to health care ever since he first ran for office.”

After Obama last January tapped close ally Tim Kaine to replace Dean at the DNC, Dean hired former DNC communications director Karen Finney as his spokeswoman and signed on as a contributor at CNBC, a strategic advisor with McKenna Long & Aldridge (a major lobbying firm for which he specializes in healthcare and alternative energy issues) and a consultant at DFA, where he participates in regular strategy sessions.

The group, which had previously focused primarily on grass-roots organizing and campaigns, mobilized in support of the public option more than it had around any other policy issue, Jim Dean said. It saw a corresponding spike in both its membership and donations and is planning to continue taking on the administration over policy issues, said Dean, explaining, “I see us constantly having to make sure that this party doesn’t fall back on its heels the way it did in the 1990s. And this health care thing wasn’t exactly a confidence builder.”

After top White House aide David Axelrod last month set into Howard Dean for trashing the latest iteration of the health care bill, DFA blasted an e-mail to its 1.2 million members declaring “Governor Dean speaks for me” and urging donations to DFA “right now to get Howard’s back and fuel our campaign for real reform.”

On a Florida progressive listserv, one poster urged readers to donate to DFA instead of the DNC, which in the days before the Senate’s pre-Christmas vote to pass health reform, urged the 13 million subscribers on Obama’s campaign e-mail list to call their senators in support of the Senate bill.

After unsubscribing from OFA and pledging to turn his efforts to DFA and another liberal PAC that supports the public option called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, former Obama volunteer and donor Michael Hermann, a Los Angeles musician, told POLITICO: “I find the administration's hubris in thinking they will never lose their liberal base astounding.”

Wendy Sejour, a DFA leader in Homestead, Fla., who is also active in her local Democratic Party, said “what the administration does not understand is that when they try to marginalized Dean and DFA, they insult us and dismiss our hard work. We are the foot soldiers.”

Another DFA volunteer, Patrick Briggs of Pasadena, Calif., said he scrapped plans to become more involved in OFA over what he saw as its health care capitulation. He said Dean’s salvos “reminded some of us in the movement that at least there’s someone out there in the progressive community who’s looking out for our interest.”

Dean and his supporters even seem to be relishing the broadsides he’s absorbed from liberals eager to pass some form of health care reform.

After MSNBC host Joe Scarborough late last month cited a Washington Post columnist’s suggestion that Dean had “lost his mind,” Dean shot back, “Those are also the same people who said I didn’t know what I was talking about when I said we shouldn’t get into Iraq, when our party caved in on that issue six years ago.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month, Dean said that the left has “been very disappointed” by the Senate’s shelving proposals for a government-run health insurance plan. “We don't think that there has been much fight in the White House for that,” Dean charged, asserting that the Senate bill falls well short of the type of reform Obama promised during his campaign and could make an already difficult Democratic 2010 election cycle even harder.

DFA could help make the 2010 election cycle a bloody one for Democrats, since it plans to support primary challenges to Democratic incumbents it deems insufficiently supportive of the public option, said Jim Dean, adding, “I’m not going to name names right now, but there are some actors in this who the Party and the country would be better off without.”

Additionally, Trippi said DFA could serve as a vehicle to help launch a future Howard Dean campaign by paying for staff and travel. Though he rejected the Netroots-stoked speculation that Dean would challenge Obama in a 2012 Democratic primary, Trippi asserted a 2016 Dean presidential run is not all that far-fetched.

Dean would turn 68 just after election day in 2016.

“A lot of establishment people might laugh at that, but there’s angst in the progressive wing of the party, and it matters that Howard Dean is emerging as the leading voice of that angst,” said Trippi. “It could matter on a number of other issues, and it could lead to another Howard Dean campaign for president,” said Trippi, who had a falling out with his old boss toward the end of the campaign but would not rule out signing on to a Dean 2016 campaign.

“There’s a real chance that if progressives feel at the end of the Obama era that there wasn’t enough movement on issues they care about, then somebody will emerge out of the progressive wing of the Party as a leading contender. If you follow that logic, then you have to conclude that it could be Howard Dean.”

Howie P.S.: Mr. Vogel's Google must be broken. He overlooked some recent news: "Howard Dean Now Supports Passage of Health Reform Bill After Winning Improvements." Perhaps he got Dean confused with Glenn Greenwald, who called the Senate health bill "an extremely immoral and destructive scheme" during an interview looking back on 2009 on Democracy Now!

Seattle music in progressive American music history (video)

lee57, video (02:59).

Howie P.S.: Many are familiar with "Black and White" the rock "classic" by Three Dog Night from 1972. Less known facts about the song:

1. The words are by Dave Arkin, father of actor Alan Arkin.
2. The music is by (West) Seattle native son Earl Robinson, who also wrote the music to the American labor and organizing anthem "Joe Hill." Joan Baez sang "Joe Hill" @ Woodstock '69, video (05:11).

Greenwald on Fear Nation: "The degrading effects of terrorism fears"

Glenn Greenwald:

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens.

Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.
This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved. John Adams, in his 1776 Thoughts on Government, put it this way:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

As Adams noted, political leaders possess an inherent interest in maximizing fear levels, as that is what maximizes their power. For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don't do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."

What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That's because certain values -- privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power -- were more important than mere survival and safety. A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death. And, of course, the Revolutionary War against the then-greatest empire on earth was waged by people who risked their lives and their fortunes in pursuit of liberty, precisely because there are other values that outweigh mere survival and safety.

These are the calculations that are now virtually impossible to find in our political discourse. It is fear, and only fear, that predominates. No other competing values are recognized. We have Chris Matthews running around shrieking that he's scared of kung-fu-wielding Terrorists. Michael Chertoff is demanding that we stop listening to "privacy ideologues" -- i.e., that there should be no limits on Government's power to invade and monitor and scrutinize. Republican leaders have spent the decade preaching that only Government-provided Safety, not the Constitution, matters. All in response to this week's single failed terrorist attack, there are -- as always -- hysterical calls that we start more wars, initiate racial profiling, imprison innocent people indefinitely, and torture even more indiscriminately. These are the by-products of the weakness and panic and paralyzing fear that Americans have been fed in the name of Terrorism, continuously for a full decade now.

Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which Brooks focused yesterday is the one I've thought most important. What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result. Policies can always be changed. What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States. Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws. Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism: the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection. This is what I wrote about that back in early 2006 in How Would a Patriot Act?:

The president's embrace of radical theories of presidential power threatens to change the system of government we have. But worse still, his administration's relentless, never-ending attempts to keep the nation in a state of fear can also change the kind of nation we are.

This isn't exactly new: many of America's most serious historical transgressions -- the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyite witch hunts, World War I censorship laws, the Alien and Sedition Act -- have been the result of fear-driven, over-reaction to extrenal threats, not under-reaction. Fear is a degrading toxin, and there's no doubt that it has been the primary fuel over the last decade. As the events of the last week demonstrate, it continues to spread rapidly, and it produces exactly the kind of citizenry about which John Adams long ago warned.

UPDATE: Talking to one's friends and co-workers is not a reliable way of gauging public opinion on an issue. Those who want to claim that the media's hysteria over this incident is not matched by the general public's are going to have to explain this:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. . . . Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

Does that sound like a calm and sober citizenry?

Howie P.S.: Every time I return to America after visiting other countries I am struck by the "fog of fear" across the land. I am reminded of the rich family that lives behind gates and bars, expecting the inevitable hostile intrusion.

"Obama Indicates Escalating US Military Involvement in Yemen" (with video)

Maya Schenwar (truthout) with video (04:50):

This morning, President Barack Obama for the first time attributed the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound plane to al Qaeda. In his weekly radio address, Obama painted the bombing attempt as an act of war. He reiterated his intent to continue fighting the US's "war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred," indicating that Yemen could be the next major site of US military involvement.

According to Obama, the Christmas bombing suspect is specifically linked with a Yemen-based affiliate of al Qaeda.

"We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies," Obama said in this morning's address. "It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group - al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America."

The Yemeni al Qaeda group has been linked to the 2008 bombing of the American embassy in Yemen, as well as attacks on Western hotels and Yemeni government buildings.

Since this most recent bombing attempt, according to Obama, the US has stepped up its "partnership" with Yemen, "training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al Qaeda terrorists."

Obama's statements indicate that the US military involvement in Yemen is on the rise - raising questions about the development of another major front in the "war on terror."

The president described a series of recent US-supported military actions in Yemen, undertaken in response to the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

"Training camps have been struck; leaders eliminated; plots disrupted," Obama said.

US military actions in the weeks before the failed Christmas bombing also show a mounting engagement in Yemen. On December 17, the US launched missiles against two suspected al Qaeda sites in that country, according to ABC News.

Yemeni officials estimated that the strikes killed up to 120 people, many of whom were civilians.

Today's radio address provided no further information about the airport security failures that allowed the Christmas bombing suspect to board the plane with explosives in his underpants.

In this first address of the new decade, Obama signaled that peace is a long way off.

"The hard work of protecting our nation is never done," he said.

Read the full transcript of Obama's speech here.

"Urban Warfare"

Image credit: http://hattemharvest.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/downtown-newark-3a.jpg

GROUNDED GIRL (Cream in My Coffee):

I've started following the Mayor of Newark, NJ on Twitter and his director of communications. They have a mantra: "All eyes on Newark...". You get the sense that they close every meeting with that chant, like the football team on "Friday Night Lights": clear eyes full hearts can't lose.

I wrote this morning that I wondered what would happen if Seattle had the same approach-- all eyes, people, all eyes. The director of communications replied: "hmmm not the same".

She's absolutely right.

It's not.

Newark is battling a decades-long decline, caught in the shadow of New York on the wrong side of the tracks. Gangs, drugs, corners, lack of economic opportunity, flight, socio-economic chasms, welfare generations-- all the accumulated challenges of an East Coast urban center suffering the fall-out from the end of the industrial revolution.

Seattle is a bastion of new economy buzz. Comfy fleece, coffee elitism, and global warming chic. Nobody is judging our every move. We are not an underdog. Our racial history isn't the same as the east coast. It is white privilege central around here. Nobody is watching us except when we fuck up and shut down for two weeks in a snow storm or change our mind about naming a city park after a city where one of our citizens was recently convicted of murder. It's not life and death here.

Newark is struggling to stay afloat, engaged in the desperately hard work of urban transformation and salvation. "Of the top ten most important American fights, this is it. People don't realize that the soul of our nation is in jeopardy unless we come to grips with what's happening in our cities. And of all the cities -- I don't think America understands how much it needs Newark," said Mayor Booker in a 2008 Esquire magazine article. If Newark goes under, it takes a lot of lives with it. Our civic identities could not be more different.

It's the difference between private schools and public inner city schools. Are private school students in crisis? Not in the same way as kids whose families and schools don't have the cushion of resources to protect them. But the way those kids grow and develop matters, too. The questions of institutions versus individual still exist.

I went through the white-guilt phase in college, feeling like the only way to make a difference was to work in marginalized communities but wondering what value I, as a middle class intellectual white woman, could bring. I struggled with the cultural imperialism and unintentional racism factors. Until I realized that there was also work to be done within the communities where I had a leadership voice. I could bring awareness and expand pathways so it wouldn't be such a battle to breach the walls. I could advocate for diverse viewpoints and make connections. I could work to change the policies.

Seattle has problems. White privilege / economic security blinds you. We don't have the awareness, in general, to ask the questions because we haven't been forced to. Our new mayor and his coterie of idealistic young enviros certainly won't challenge that. (I wouldn't have an issue if their environmentalism also addressed issues of racism and classism but they're too fucking concerned with getting people to ride bikes & "micro-listening sessions" to ensure the "process" is "inclusive". Their agenda assumes and propagates an ethos of white privilege. It's the worst kind of navel-gazing.)

Wouldn't be amazing to have the perspective to ask the questions before it became a crisis? To make the connections between economic opportunity and civic engagement. To acknowledge the stress of limited opportunity and seek ways to broaden the life avenues for all instead of throwing bones of non-profit vendor programs that read well in magazines but don't actively work to lift people up. Wouldn't it be good to create a beloved community, a civic consciousness before we had to pick up pieces of a broken society? Could we use this civic space as a laboratory for success instead of waiting until we are coming from behind? And is that not also legitimate work?

"I care about how we live together in cities", says David Simon, the creator of "The Wire" in a Vice article (which may be the most thought-provoking piece I've read on urban America). I do, too. Seattle may not be crawling back from the abyss, but we are far from being our best. We live without an awareness. We act like we're still a pioneer town on the edge of the world. We do stupid shit like spend ten years arguing about a highway replacement and we make incomprehensible zoning decisions that seem more driven at forcing a utopian ideal rather than acknowledging human & economic realities. We have Rotary meetings about reducing gun violence instead of addressing the roots of gun violence, which have nothing (and in a way everything) to do with Rotary meetings. We are locked into at-large city council representation in a city that prides itself on its unique "neighborhood character". We have a Department of Neighborhoods that, in recent years, has become a funnel for grant money to non-profit organizations rather than actively working to build bridges and connections. I often wonder if anyone's heard of the concept of "best practices benchmarking" or maybe we're so convinced of our own special snowflakeness that we never look beyond our borders for inspiration. It's not earth shattering but it's impacting the world all the same. And what would happen if our civil servants and our citizens started behaving with an awareness of that? Is that not civil consciousness?

So, no, Newark & Seattle don't have a lot in common. In Newark, they're battling urban decay, people worn down by years of marginalization and neglect, by a lack of opportunity. In Seattle we need to start by admitting that we're an urban area. We harbor a smug overconfidence in our numbing perception of homogeneity. We eschew diversity, whether political or socio-economic, even though that diversity certainly exists. I love what Mayor Booker and his team and Newark's residents are working to accomplish in Newark, but Newark isn't my battle (yet?). I'm digging where I stand. Seattle has things to learn from Newark-- like having a civic consciousness. Newark could learn some things from Seattle. We may have radically different demographics but we're engaged in the same task-- making systems work for the improvement rather than the frustration of civil society.

Howie P.S.: More on Mayor Cory Booker here.

"Howard Dean Now Supports Passage of Health Reform Bill After Winning Improvements"

Blog for Iowa:

Howard Dean, who many consider to be the most trustworthy authority on health care reform, has a lot to say about the most recent version of the health care [insurance expansion] bill. When he came out publicly last week against passage of the Senate version, it ended a long period for Dean of championing the bill. Saying that health reform is his "life's work," Dean underlined the fact that he really does know what he's talking about. BFIA agrees.

Last night (12/22) on the Rachel Maddow show, Howard Dean didn't, but could have, taken credit for the changes that have made the health care reform bill a better bill he can now support (see Howard Dean Still Fighting for Real Health Care Reform (and Winning).
Here is BFIA's audio transcript of Dean's appearance on last night's Rachel Maddow show.

Rachel: You were saying the senate bill should be killed, and now you're no longer saying that. Why have you changed your feelings about that?

Dean: Well, there are two reasons. The first is, the bill was improved. What the President and the Congress have essentially done is to expand the existing system, rather than reform the system. There are a lot of things that have been changed, there are some faults, as we talked about last week.

In the intervening weeks,they tightened up the cost controls, money was added for community health centers, for wellness and prevention, and they increased doctor reimbursements for rural physicians. So they have done a number of things that will make this approach more likely to work, and it also is going to conference committee with a body that did vote for a public option, and in my view, in order to have any reform you gotta have a public option. You've got to give Americans a choice between different kinds of systems, and not just require them to be in a system we already have. That may or may not happen in the House.

The second thing is, honestly, to see the Republicans carrying on the way they are, I've basically concluded that maybe we should just pass this thing...if the Republicans hate it, there must be some good in it.

Rachel: In terms of the process, it seems like we are coming to the end of the process...it looks like it will pass at 8:00 am on Christmas Eve, but then as you say, it does go on to the conference committee, and a lot of people are looking at this bill and think that it got worse over time, and they are looking to the conference committee to hopefully, make the bill better, and then there's going to be another vote. What's going to be your bottom line at that point... what do you need to see as improvements in order to support people voting for it?

Dean: I would like to see a public option, but that is unlikely. Most of the House bill is better than the Senate bill. For example the so-called pre-existing condition - in the Senate bill you can charge three times as much to an older customer; in the house it's twice as much. In Vermont, it's only 20% more, so a whole lot less. I'd like to seem them lower that number substantially, to make the bill more affordable.

Secondly, I'd like to see the biggest expansion Medicaid could possibly have, using federal funds to do it the way Ben Nelson cut the deal for Nebraska. That should be applied to all 50 states. When we went to universal health care for kids under 18 in my state 15 years ago, we used Medicaid as a vehicle. You do have to increase reimbursements to physicians, but that would be significant help. So, if this is the bill that's going to pass, and if we're going to have these fights for the next 30 years with the insurance companies, you might as well give us a head start.

Rachel: Senator Harkin of Iowa said this week that in his mind, the public option is not totally dead. He says he plans to revisit the idea of the public option in the near future. If this bill passes, does it actually provide an appropriate foundation for a public option to be introduced as a separate matter after it passes?

Dean: Actually, it does. The Senate idea originally was actually better than the House's - the so-called Medicare compromise. In the public option there will be something called an exchange, that's where you're going to go to buy your health insurance. All you've got to do is put in that exchange a public option. There isn't one now, it's some kind of non-profit hocus pocus, that's run by the private sector and governed by the office of personell management.

If you could give people the choice of enrolling in Medicare, if they're under 65, or give them the choice of another public option, I think Medicare is a much smarter way to go, because you've already got the bureaucracy set up and ready to go, they already do a billion claims a year, and you could put that choice into the exchanges. Once you have the exchanges set up, which is something that also came out very well in the House and the Senate - a little stronger in the Senate now, you could modify this - Tom Harkin is right you could modify this at a later date. I wish that weren't necessary, I wish we had that change now, but you could do it later if this doesn't work out. I think this 30 year battle with the insurance companies over regulation is going to be tough to make work properly.

"Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin" (video)

Werebull, video (10:00).

Howie P.S.: A much younger Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin.