Archives for August 2012

Politics is a hot topic, even during these dog days of summer. So, please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters meet. The new Longview chapter holds their inaugural meeting at 6:00pm Wednesday at the Monticello Hotel. The new South Seattle chapter holds their inaugural meeting on Wednesday, 8:00pm at Lottie’s Lounge, 4900 Rainier Avenue. The Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet this Thursday. Finally, next Monday, the Yakima and Olympia chapters of DL meet.

With 233 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

– RIP Kathi Goertzen.

– The financial impact of November’s initiatives.

– I’m not the only one who noticed that Mitt Romney’s shitty book is shitty.

– may the masses vote like their Medicare depends on it!

– Flyover Feminism

– Who needs local jobs maintaining the lines, trimming the trees, restoring the power? Just ship the profits to a struggling international bank and buy a generator set.

– Fast moving wild fire in Eastern Washington

– Denied religious freedom at Chick-fil-A.

The shootings at Texas A&M today come after a long line of this shit. Auorra, Cafe Racer. The list goes on and on. And those are only the ones that gain large scale attention. There are plenty of other acts of gun violence that don’t get reported, or don’t get reported outside the region where they happen.

Of course there are other reasons that these sorts of things happen. And we should work to deal with all of them. But one of those reasons, that we never deal with, that we’re going in the wrong direction on, is the country is awash in guns.

People will point to the Second Amendment when any attempt at gun control no matter how minimum is raised. Now, I think the Second Amendment was intended to be about well regulated militias, hence the first clause. But even if you think it’s about private ownership of all firearms, surely this wasn’t what Madison intended when he wrote it. Surely they didn’t mean that these sorts of shootings should be inevitable as they are common. I don’t know what the solution is, but I can’t imagine the Constitution makes it intractable.

– Koster and DelBene should really listen closely to what the Seattle Times says the district’s voters want. And then do the opposite.

– Phyllis Schlafly lies about Obama as night remains dark.

– Support the Sisters

– I’d have mentioned this last week if I wasn’t on vacation, but my endorsements went 2 for 2 in the primary.

– Oh, Romney has a VP selection.

– In a twist, Ryan isn’t the deficit hawk he claims to be.

– The fact that Democrats have oppo research on him proves he’s great.

– Shaun has a good question about the vetting process.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Dunkerton, Iowa.

This week’s contest is related to a TV show or a movie. Good luck!

Genesis 5:1-3
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth.

Discuss.

Stephen: Gingrich is a baby-eating werewolf (via Crooks and Liars).

Roy Zimmerman: Iowa Edition of Vote Republican.

Mark Fiore: Dark Matters.

Sam Seder and Glenn Greenwald: The normalization of extremism.

Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, Colorado edition:

SlateTV: Missouri “Right to Pray” amendment lets kids opt out of evolution .

Attack!!!!!

• SlateTV: The gloves are off!
• Young Turks: Romney attacks Obama with welfare ad.
• Bill Press: DNC says Romney Campaign is ‘hitting below the belt’
• Maddow: Welfare ad “dog-whistle” racism from Mitt Romney.
• Young Turks: ‘Son Of Boss’ Ad
• Newsy: Rep. Allen West fights ad.
• Sam Seder: Tasteless fear-mongering anti-Obama ad asks America “Are we safer?”
• Jon on Mitt’s flailing ‘Romneycare’ defense (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Newsy: Obama ad questions whether Obama has paid income tax.
• Buzz60: New Romney ad aims at Catholic swing state voters.
• Maddow: The SuperPAC political week
• Jon: mocks conservative freakout over ‘Priorities USA Action’ ad.
• Young Turks: Alan West punches woman in face in new ad.

Sam Seder: Mississippi church refuses a Black couple’s wedding.

Pap: Welcome to the era of Super PACs.

Roy Zimmerman: Montana Edition of Vote Republican.

NPR: Special Disaster Edition of It’s All Politics

Ann Telnaes: SuperPACs and their handlers put on a silly show.

Willard:

• Newsy: Rep. Ryan will be named Romney Running mate on Saturday Morning.
• SlateTV: Obama’s new nickname for his opponent.
• Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, New York edition.
• Bill Press: Mitt’s tax problem.
• Ed and Pap: Harry Reid is right about Mitt’s taxes
• The Spin Room: Romney’s running mate.
• Jenn with UW Prof. Matt Barreto: Can Romney make a dent in the Latino vote?
• Stephanie and Markos: Was Jon Huntsman Sr. Sen. Reid’s source?
• Young Turks: How you can stop paying so much in taxes—just like Mitt Romney
• Newsy: Can Romney recover from a very bad month?
• SlateTV: Some high profile endorsements for Romeny.
• Sam Seder: Mitt Romney doesn’t know anything about dressage? YEAH, RIGHT!
• Jenn with Democratic strategist Kiki McLean: Mitt’s running mate.

ONN: Onion Week in Review.

SlateTV: Will Ted Cruz’s prime time GOP convention speaking spot appease the Tea Party?

Stephen looks back on Obama’s war on pizza.

White House: West Wing Week.

This Week in GOP Voter Suppression:

• Pap: The Pennsylvania effort to suppress the vote.
• Maddow: New ID laws.
• Jon on GOP exaggerated voter fraud claims (via Crooks and Liars).
• Sam Seder: PA is the new FL in voter suppression.
• Sharpton: Republicans ramp up voter suppression effort.
• Sen. Scott Brown is disturbed by push to register welfare recipients to vote (via Crooks and Liars).
• Rep. Allen West defends disenfranchising Ohio voters (via Crooks and Liars).

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]

Another short one today. Just to let you know that the Chinese and British Empires fell. Since the last one was just called “The Ottomans” these two subchapters are simply a summary in a few words. Consistency is the hobgoblin of good writing, someone must have told him.

The subchapter “The Great Wall” has the advantage of just being about China and not some random collection of China like empires as the Ottoman section was. Of course since the unofficial name of this chapter is Mitt Romney paraphrases the Wikipedia Entries on the Printing Press and since that’s actually a legit thing to write for China, it gets several mentions in this short but still rambling section.

Advances in astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, seismology, engineering, and mathematics came to the West from China. In the first century, China was the first to manufacture paper–a huge improvement over papyrus or and parchment. They published the first book, and they invented moveable type around 1041–four hundred years before a German named Johannes Gutenberg developed similar technology.

Several more paragraphs about how China was number one a thousand years ago. They had the best weapons and the best ships. “And then China declined” is a paragraph in itself. Useful. Useful information. Very specific. But is there more information about printing presses* is what I’d like to know.

The Chinese rejected not only all things foreign but even technology that they had devised themselves. For the Ottomans the Qur’an contained everything that life required; for the Chinese, it was their ancient culture that was to be revered and sustained, even at the cost of abandoning innovations like the printing press.

So, like, when Romney says in the intro how we need to go back to how the founding generation left America for us, I guess he’s imitating the Chinese who failed. I don’t know. The point is people getting stuck on something from the past will get them in trouble. Now we’re at The Sun Sets on the British Empire.

“England is just a small island.” Well, England is part of an island that also has Scotland and Wales. It’s not that small of an island. The UK also has part of another island, and some other possessions around the globe. It’s complex. You know what it doesn’t matter.

“With few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy.” I really like their fruit and nut bars. The ones Cadbury sell in the US are fine, but it’s not the same. Seriously, if you’re ever in the UK or Ireland, bring me back some. I’m not kidding about this, people who know me and are reading this. Also, they have a thriving culture. Some of the best comedy and drama get exported all around the globe.

“And if it hadn’t been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler’s ambitions.” Yeah, I’m sure they would have planned their defenses the exact same way if there was a land bridge between Portsmouth and Normandy. Also, would history have been the same up to the war? Would this land have a lot of people on it? Would it be fertile land? I guess what I’m saying is the British Channel was kind of part of their defenses, and both sides in that war would have acted differently if it hadn’t been there.

“Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth’s land and a quarter of the earth’s population.” And now they’re still a great country. Their empire pushed many of my ancestors here. People were boarded up and sent to Canada or Australia. And nonwhite people fared much worse. While the British Empire eventually went to the right side of things like the slave trade and moved toward democracy, it was still brutal for the people who lived under it.

So Romney says the British had the industrial revolution and it paid for the best navy in ever. “But maintaining leadership proved more difficult than achieving it” because they have a class system. They weren’t able to go beyond the status quo. No mention on how come their class system didn’t stop the industrial revolution in the first place. Then they had to pay for World War Two, so now they aren’t an empire. No mention if life is better for the average Briton now that they don’t have to pay to maintain an empire. Personally, I’d rather have the BBC and universal health care than know that the queen was also in charge of India. But that’s not my decision to make.

That’s the decline of the British Empire for you. I’m not sure who this book is written for. I doubt that Romney knows either. These brief overviews don’t tell us enough to learn anything. Anyone who picks up the book of a presidential candidate surely knows the barest outlines of past empires. Yet he felt the need to include three (or 5 if you include Spain and Portugal). Is it just he thinks nobody will actually read it, and it seems more presidential to have written something so he pulled an all nighter and wrote the damn thing once?

We’ve got half of this chapter to go, and I’m not writing for the weekends. So I think I’ll just do it sometime next week. I had fun writing these, so I’ll probably continue even after that. Not every day, because that’s brutal if I’m writing other things. Would you guys be interested in a half a chapter a week or so? Maybe make it a Wednesday thing?

[Read more…]

For months now, there has been low-level speculation about Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-5) being selected to be Mitt Romey’s VP (e.g. here).

It makes sense in that it doesn’t defy the laws of physics or anything (well…not that the laws of physics would hold back Republicans from attempting something). Rep. McMorris Rogers is over 35. She is the highest ranking Republican woman in the House. It’s not like she only served 1/2 a term as Governor in some low-population state, or anything. And, McMorris Rodgers did have one of the earliest Republican VP Nominee Intrade pages.

Alas, these days, she’s a Republican VP Nominee penny stock.

Still…even if it’s a long shot, I predict Mittens will pick Cathy for VP. What do I have to lose? If he picks her, I’ll look like a genius. And if not, my prediction will be lost in a sea of unsuccessful VP predictions from the chattering classes.

These days political pundit seem all hyped-up over Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI-1). I guess it makes sense….

For Republicans, having an actor in the White House is political comfort food.

As if we couldn’t tell. After Obama was elected, what was the Senate G.O.P. plan for governance? Make a public showing of wanting to work with Obama, but then oppose everything.

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) came to Bellevue yesterday to tell Republicans he’ll blame them when McKenna loses.

The Borowitz Report interviews Mitt Romney.

Complaint filed with PDC alleging that McKenna campaign broke disclosure laws.

Guess who else Romney murdered!

Puget Sound area traffic this weekend…is going to SUCK.

[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]

Today we join Mitt Romney’s ghost writer to see Why Nations Decline. First a general commentary that nations decline and then several examples. Then he’ll have a couple annoying sections trying to tie it together. Because I’m on vacation, I’m only going to deal with the intro and the “Ottomans” section that deals with the Ottoman Empire, and somewhat surprisingly Spain and Portugal. So the intro.

America is the best, and it looks like we’ll never decline but other countries used to think that about themselves and “they’ve all been surpassed.” Of course since Romney talking about nations, what we need here is a corporate metaphor.

This kind of collapse is not unique to nations. We’ve witnessed business powerhouses lose their lead to upstarts. United Airlines was upstaged by Southwest.* Sears and Kmart were passed by Wal-Mart. Western Union and AT&T watched Verizon speed by. And look at General Motors: it was once the undisputed automotive heavyweight, the champion here and around the world. No More.

Romney worked for someone who had a mathematical model of why corporations with a head start have an advantage. But that didn’t work out. Then he remembers he’s writing a book about nations, so:

Why is it that the great fail? It’s a question America must ask, not only because we are the world’s leading nation, but because of the continuation of our lead has been called into question

So now we’re on the section called “The Ottomans” that’s also about Spain and Portugal (I know I say this like 50 times in this short for this series post, but it’s that strange). But at least it starts with the Ottoman Empire. Well, mostly it’s about him learning about the Ottoman empire in school.

But after that intro of Romney coloring in maps we learn that, the empire was great for centuries until “Christian Europeans won the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and decimated the Ottoman navy. Rebellion and war were overwhelming.”

First off, The Ottoman Empire lasted until the end of the First World War, so the collapse didn’t really happen in 1571. A long decline would be interesting to write about. Especially if you’re worried about America being a power in the future, but not the preeminent one. But instead it’s a paragraph of mostly meaningless cliche as to why.

Highly beneficial global trade routes that had traditionally passed through Ottoman territory had been abandoned for Ocean passages, and the empire’s revenues dropped accordingly. More important, while Europe** embarked on the early stages of manufacturing, the Ottomans did not; they were confident that their pillaged wealth would sustain them indefinitely. The Ottomans’ growing isolation from the dynamic world of manufacture and trade was reinforced by the conviction that their holy scriptures provided all the knowledge that was necessary; foreign technology was infidel technology. The Empire banned the printing press for half a century.

And that’s all you need to know about the decline, er collapse, of the Ottoman Empire. In chapter of case studies of why empires and nations fail, there’s more about coloring in maps in high school than there is about his first case study. These I’m-a-deep-thinker-make-me-president books are sure serious business when they come from Republicans.

But even though the Ottoman case study is over, the section continues with Spain and Portugal. I think the point here is that they were all closed societies based on pillage. But the title is “The Ottomans” not “Empires Based on Pillage Eventually Run Out Of Shit To Pillage” or something with less swearing. So Spain and Portugal. It’s only 2 paragraphs, so I don’t want to quote too much, but I totally am going to:

“Like the Ottomans, the Spanish and Portuguese achieved wealth through plunder, and their empires fell for remarkably similar reasons.” So they plundered the rest of the world, and took the resources but didn’t build anything with them. England, France, and Germany were making things, but Spain and Portugal were buying them. And, I think Romney just found the Wikipedia entry on when the printing press was introduced to various countries, because that comes up again.

The Protestant Reformation to the north had spawned not only dissent and skepticism but also literacy and innovation. Spain and Portugal isolated themselves from such heresy. Portugal placed strict controls on printing presses. The Spanish crown banned scientific works by Protestant authors. They banned study abroad in any non-Catholic country. Spain went so far as to impose the death penalty on anyone who imported an unauthorized foreign book. Like the Ottomans, Spanish and Portuguese isolation became complete. They eschewed the manufacture and trade of goods that was sweeping the rest of Europe, and they closed their borders to outside thought.

So the guy who exported, piece by piece, American manufacturing is saying stopping making things is a problem. Ugh this book.

OK, tomorrow China, Britain, and maybe Romney’s conclusions if I’m up for it.

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MoJo: Tea Party shoots itself in to foot again.

Connelly: The state Republican Party predicted, early this year, that it would “flip” enough Democratic-held seats to gain a majority in the 49-member Washington State Senate. The issue is now very much in doubt.

Tax experts assess how likely it is that Romney paid no taxes for a decade.

Eli Sanders attempts to interview Bruce Danielson.

Charges brought in an actual case of election fraud. Wanna guess which party?

Markos: We are winning! (Of course, HA readers have known this all along.)

Mini-essay. Which of our local papers actually wield some influence among the electorate? The Stranger endorses a third-party candidate against Frank Chopp…as a write-in, and she likely comes in second place. How did the Seattle Times do? Not so well.

The Stranger’s Eli Sanders has been on top of the Danielson-Gonzalez Supreme Court race for a long time now. In fact, I think he deserves some of the credit for raising awareness that led to an election result in which a highly qualified candidate with the Hispanic surname defeated the highly unqualified candidate with the lilly-White surname.

But even in victory, Eli has an important point to make about failure:

The results are now clear: rural voters, for the most part, pick the white guy over the Latino guy.

If Gonzalez hadn’t spent over $260,000 to combat this dynamic—and if urban Washingtonians hadn’t sounded the alarm—then we’d now have a Justice Bruce Danielson.

This is a disgracefully ignorant and dangerous way to pick our supreme court justices.

There is another point to make here as well.

The deal is this. Every single county East of the Cascades went for the white guy. Most of them did so by 60% or more, including Adams and Douglas counties that went for Danielson by over 70%.

The counties with the highest proportion of Hispanic population (from 2010 census data) are Franklin (63.8%), Adams (57.9%), Yakima (45.6%), Grant (39.5%), Chelan (27.5%), Douglas (26.7%), Walla Walla (21.4%), Okanogan (19.2%), and Benton (18.0%).

All of these counties but Benton voted for Danielson in excess of 60%. That’s right…Franklin county, with a 63.8% Hispanic population went for Danielson by 64.3%. And Adams county, with a 57.9% Hispanic population went for Danielson by 70.6%.

Now, there may be several reasons why counties with a high proportion of Hispanic individuals have voters that overwhelmingly vote Republican and vote against a highly qualified individual with a Hispanic surname running for Supreme Court.

The Hispanic population may be younger, so that many are not old enough to vote. A certain proportion may be non-citizens. A lower rate of English literacy among Hispanic voters may suppress voter turn-out. Hey, there may even be some fraction of Hispanic voters who really believe it’s in their best interest to vote Republican (yeah…right!).

What we can say is that the interests of the considerable Hispanic population in Washington state for whatever reasons are not being served by our electoral system.

I find that disgraceful!

I don’t know what the story is behind this failure. Frankly, this looks like a failure on the part of Democrats to conduct effective registration drives, voter education efforts, and put GOTV operations into the field in these counties.

Whatever the reason, it needs to change!

[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]

We’re at Mitt Romney explains the West, China, Russia and Jihad like you’re 12 and super interested in what a corporation is. It’s a subsection called “Four strategies to Achieve World Power.” So corporations pursue different strategies. Apple had to “appeal to a different segment of customers and win those buyers” than Microsoft. And guess what, it’s not just corporations that compete with each other! It’s also countries.

Countries, like businesses, need strategies to survive and prosper. A nation’s strategy should be designed to propel it beyond its competitors and to increase the security and prosperity of its citizens. While there are as many strategies as there are countries on the global map, there are four specific approaches to geopolitics that have been embraced by various major players on the world stage. We must recognize and understand these if we are to be fully aware of the challenges ahead.

So three things. First, “global map,” that’s how you want to phrase it? Second, not everything is a business metaphor. We understand that countries compete without needing to start out in the business world. Finally, countries and corporations do very different things, so the metaphor only works so well. We expect much more cooperation between countries than between corporations, for example.

I don’t know why he has written like this, but he lays out these strategies one by one instead of saying what they are and then expanding on it like a person who wasn’t used to hiding the ball all of their life might write it. I’m just going to say his 4 strategies outlined are the West with our free markets and free people, the Chinese model of freeish markets and not free people, the Russian model of “authoritarian rule … based on energy,” and the final one is jihad, like Iran has embraced.

The first is the West. He devotes all of two paragraphs to how free markets and free people work. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here that it’s because he assumes the reader knows about how those work, and not because he doesn’t know anything. But I’m going to quote the second paragraph in full here:

While the nations that pursue this “American” strategy are collectively referred to as the West, not all of them do so in a uniform manner.* Sweden and several other European nations, for example, place a far heavier governmental hand on free enterprise than does The United States. Citizens are highly taxed to provide not only a very substantial safety net but also a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Business and employment are highly regulated. Despite the differences among Western nations, economic freedom and political freedom are at the core.

So, when in the intro Obama lowered taxes (but Romney insists he raised them) and enacted a few regulations (but fewer than under the first few years of President Bush) it was because he hates free enterprise. But Sweden makes the cut as part of our Western ideals.

Anyway, we’re on to China. Their strategy is based on “free enterprise” but also “authoritarian rule.” According to Romney, “The conflict is so apparent that many Western observers have predicted that as China’s economy and trade develop, the country will trend toward democracy and freedom” as if there have never been authoritarian rulers of a country with markets before.

If you like several rambling pages, then this is the section for you. It’s not just the government, when Romney goes to China, the people “seemed much more interested in pursuing the lessons of American-style free enterprise than they were in promoting American-style freedom.” And the Olympics were a success. China saw the lesson from the fall of the Soviet Union and when “its fellow travelers like North Korea and Cuba collapsed.” Those certainly are bad regimes that do bad things to their people, but those are like the only examples of communist countries that try to remain communist and haven’t collapsed. There are so many examples, and North Korea and Cuba are examples of collapse?

And even having learned the lessons, the Chinese markets aren’t like Western markets: Businesses are state owned and operated, the rule of law hasn’t been established. The “tainted products from dog food to infant formula” get out. And intellectual property isn’t enforced. “China brazenly sells sensitive technologies to Iran and buys oil from genocidal Sudan, and it vigorously defends these nations against international sanction.” It seems like the modern GOP wouldn’t mind more crap in your dog food and infant formula if it meant the government didn’t tell people to get it out.

And there is another way in which Chinese enterprise is distinguished from other economic systems around the world: it is winning. China is fast becoming the world’s factory, successfully capturing the lion’s share of world manufacturing for a growing list of products. The country is no longer content to make only toys and trinkets.

Not discussed are things like currency manipulation and import controls. Those sorts of things are what America used to build our manufacturing base, and it’s what they’re using to build theirs now. I’m not saying we should retaliate in kind to that sort of thing, but it seems to me at least as important to their success as the fact that they sell technology to rogue states.

Anyway, on to Russia, whose strategy is to have energy resources:

Russia is pursuing a third global strategy. Like China, it favors authoritarian rule, but Russia’s economic strategy is primarily based on energy. By controlling people and energy, Russia aims to reassert itself as a global superpower.

They have oil and gas. It’s part of their economy and they manipulate the pipelines, etc. for political gain. But it’s not the entirety of their economy. And when Romney says their strategy is energy, and then he says things like “Russia also relies on the strength of its science and technology sectors” it makes me think it’s not a reliance on energy in the same way that Saudi Arabia is true of. So they have a more mixed strategy, and since they have a lot of energy resources, they were able to use them.

Romney also thinks that they’re driven by anti-Americanism: “anything that diminishes America pleases him [Putin], both because it weakens a competing power and because it gratifies his personal animus for the United States.” Mittens barely understands that they might have a foreign policy in Iran and North Korea beyond simply the opposite of what America wants. Finally Romney complains that “President Barrack Obama’s decision to walk away from our missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic was a huge concession to Putin” without noting that the technology didn’t work. It’s not much of a missile defense if it doesn’t defend against missiles.

And the final of the 4 strategies is violent jihad. “Though this strategy is formally embraced by only one country–Iran–it animates many foreign leaders and some of the most infamous names on the planet, among them Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar.”

There are only a few paragraphs about it here (don’t worry, there’s more to come in a later chapter). They all want a global caliphate, even though some just want “independence for Chechnya.”

These are the four strategies for world leadership that are in competition today. Only one is founded on freedom. Only one. Think of what that means. Only if American and the West succeed–if our economic and military strength endure–can we be confident that our children and grandchildren will be free. A strong America is good for peace, and is essential for the spread of freedom. Our superpower status and our leadership in the world, however, are not inevitable.

Then there’s a section on how freedom is great. And I agree with it for the most part. The only thing that I’ll mention because it’s strange is this: “The New Hampshire license plate reads LIVE FREE OR DIE, reminiscent of patriot Patrick Henry’s famous entreaty. There are those who insist that New Hampshire’s motto isn’t politically correct. But most Americans envy the Granite Staters their motto and believe, as I do, that this is the American resolve.”

For serous, dude: Nobody thinks they shouldn’t have that motto. I don’t even know what it means that a motto isn’t politically correct. That motto is great. Who complained to you about their license plate? “There are those”? Fuck you, there aren’t people who said that. That said, nobody is envious of a license plate. If they were, they could move to have their state change their plates.

And now we’re at the section “A Change in Foreign Policy” where he complains about Obama’s foreign policy. So he talks about the foreign policy consensus that emerged at the beginning of the Cold War. He talks about Truman remaking American foreign policy. And because it’s been like 15 pages since he mentioned a British Prime Minister, he says, “Truman and his team believed, as Winston Churchill did, that the hope of the world depended on the strength and will of the United States.”

Truman helped usher in all sorts of organizations to promote peace and to prevent another devastating war: “the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the GATT (later WTO), and NATO, among others.” Now there are many liberals who oppose some of those things, especially the ones that harm people economically. But it wasn’t Obama whose UN Ambassador wanted to take 10 stories off the UN. So if you’re asking yourself what party is against the stuff that Truman set up, well, you have to say it’s probably the GOP. Yet Romney’s contention is that Obama is the break from the post war consensus.

This sentiment manifests itself in several different ways, including President Obama’s American Apology Tour. Never before in American history has its president gone to so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined.

You’ll be SHOCKED to learn that Mitt Romney doesn’t actually quote any of the ways that Obama apologized for America. Also, the capitalizing makes it seem like that was the official name of the trip instead of some nonsense he made up. He does mention the apologies in broad outlines. “He has apologized for what he deems to be American arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision; for acting unilaterally, and for acting without regard for others; for treating other countries as mere proxies, for unjustly interfering in internal affairs of other nations, and for feeding anti-Muslim sentiments; for committing torture, for dragging our feet on global warming, and for selectively promoting democracy.”

I wish that he had actually apologized for some of those instead of just mentioning it, and saying we can do better. I wish someone high in the administration had said, “I’m sorry we waterboarded people. I’m sorry we invaded other countries.” I’m sorry is such a powerful thing. If we care about our values, we should apologize when we don’t live up to them.

Romney says we know it was bad because some bad actors said diplomatic things about being able to work with Obama. “Muammar Quaddafi, the dictator of Libya, declared that ‘we’d be content and happy if Obama can stay president for ever.” Again, I know that several years’ hindsight after Romney wrote the book is unfair. And if Romney was making an honest case, I wouldn’t point out that how’d that work out for Quaddafi? Man, if unlike his predecessors, Obama would use force when he found it necessary against bad actors like Quaddafi!

Then Romney complains that Obama isn’t taking Israel seriously enough. Obama doesn’t know what Israel has done to make peace. And Romney doesn’t know the basics of time:

To take just one example: In 2005, Israel evacuated its settlers and handed over the Gaza strip and part of the West Bank to the Palestinians. This unilateral concession on the part of Israel was met in return by thousands of rockets fired into the cities of Israel. The Palestinians, fully aware that President Obama is pressuring Israel to make even more unilateral concessions, are content to sit back and make no concessions of any kind.

I’m always wary of wading into the Israel-Palestine conflict. But, Israel left Gaza because they thought it was in their best interest. Obama didn’t really have anything to do with that. It was a conservative Israeli government decision supported by George W. Bush. And in the here and now, Obama is putting pressure on both sides in the conflict.

Anyway, more examples of how the administration is a break from the past are that he doesn’t support human rights around the world enough. I’d argue that’s true that we don’t support human rights enough, but less so than during the Bush administration or the Cold War. In fact he chose a Secretary of State who proclaimed that women’s rights are human rights around the world. And who since the book has been written has declared the same for gay rights. The administration, more militarily than I’d like, has taken an active role in helping the Arab Spring move toward democracy in many countries.

Romney doesn’t like how Obama hasn’t finished a trade deal with Columbia. This apparently proves that he didn’t mean it when he talked about multilateral relations.

And Obama has apparently been too weak on Iran and North Korea. “President Obama sends a signal that he is eager to negotiate at any time, any place, without conditions; the effect of this is to cede all of the power and leverage to our enemies. Time and again, President Obama’s open hand has been met with a clenched fist.” Maybe, but Iran’s actions have strengthened the resolve of our allies to impose further sanctions, and made multilateral sanctions stronger.

But of course, for Romney, Obama’s attempts at multilateralism are themselves signs that Obama secretly thinks America is in decline. “It has expressed itself in President Obama’s insistence that there is ‘no junior partner’ in our relations with Europe meaning that Luxembourg and Andorra carry the same weight and influence in world affairs as the United States and Great Britain (a claim that even Andorrans and citizens of Luxembourg would probably reject).” It’s tough to have a straw man when you actually quote people, isn’t it? Take 3 words and then declare what they mean, and hope that people focus on your paraphrase instead of what you quote. Has there been any indication in his actions that he thinks the Grand Duchy has the same influence as the United States? No, of course not.

Another awesome Romney argument is that one time Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism. Obama said that he did, but noted that other countries probably believed in their own country’s exceptionalism. This, to Romney, proved that Obama didn’t believe in American exceptionalism. Because what?

We’re almost done, but there are a few more things Obama should do. He should treat our allies like allies, without ever explaining how we aren’t. But if we don’t then there will be a continent wide revolution in South America lead by Hugo Chavez, Iran will have nuclear weapons, and Japan and China will become allies (?*∞). I think we can judge some of this by what has happened. And what has happened so far in foreign policy under Obama is not those things.

Romney also thinks Obama should also strengthen the economy. While there’s still a long way to go, the economy has been improving since the book came out. We were in a huge hole, and we passed a large, but not large enough, stimulus. But Romney is worried that in the future taxes will have to be raised and that will undermine capitalism. “It is an often-remaked-upon** irony that at a time when Europe is moving away from socialism and its many failures, President Obama is moving us toward that direction.”

Don’t use the word irony, Mitt. Just don’t. Also, “toward that direction”? You move in a direction or toward a thing. Finally we aren’t moving toward or in the direction of socialism, so problem solved.

Romney thinks that because of, um all the socialism, we won’t spend enough on our military and missile defense. Romney once again doesn’t seem to realize that our missile defense system won’t defend us against missiles. He doesn’t engage this point. Also, he says that our military budget should be 4% of GDP. I don’t think that throwing out a number randomly is really appropriate, but wouldn’t that mean Romney thinks we should spend less on the military when the economy is down?

We also need to remember that our ideals are the best thing about America. But for like the thousandth time, what does it say about those ideals that Romney thinks we shouldn’t apologize when we don’t live up to them? Let’s hear what Romney says:

That doesn’t mean, of course, that America is a perfect country. We have made mistakes and committed grave offenses over the centuries. Too often we have failed to live up to our ideals. But to say that is to say that we live in this fallen world rather than a perfect one, a world composed not of angels but of flawed and imperfect beings. And, crucially, our past faults and errors have long been acknowledged and do not deserve the the repetition that suggests either that we have been reluctant to remedy them or that we are inclined to repeat them. What we should say and repeat is this: No nation has shed more blood for more noble causes than the United States. Its beneficence and benevolence are unmatched by any nation on earth, and by any nation in history.

Torture hasn’t been acknowledged. The way we fucked up in Iraq hasn’t been acknowledged by much of the country even if we believe in the abstract it was the wrong war.

But beyond suggesting that all of our problems are some ephemeral distant past, I feel like Mitt Romney has never heard a speech by President Obama. Is that possible? He continues on suggesting that “of all people, we should expect our president to understand” American greatness. Since that’s in every speech Obama has ever made: bar cleared. Romney — mercifully, finally — ends the chapter setting up the next one.

I reject the view that America must decline. I believe in American exceptionalism. I am convinced that we can act together to strengthen our nation, to preserve our global leadership and to protect freedom where it exists and promote it where it does not.

So we’ll start on Why Nations Decline tomorrow.

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