Month: October 2011

Joe Nocera has a column in the New York Times that notes that it is the 24th anniversary of the defeat of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He uses the occasion to blame the current breakdown of comity in Washington on the Democrats’ decision to reject Bork.

I bring up Bork not only because Sunday is a convenient anniversary. His nomination battle is also a reminder that our poisoned politics is not just about Republicans behaving badly, as many Democrats and their liberal allies have convinced themselves. Democrats can be — and have been — every bit as obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair.

I’ll take it one step further. The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the “systematic demonization” of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn’t a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one.

Now, he says that rejecting Bork was “obstructionist, mean-spirited, and unfair.” The latter two adjectives are a matter of subjective opinion. Were the Democrats mean and unfair to Bork? Maybe, maybe not. But what they definitely were not is obstructionist. Robert Bork’s nomination was not filibustered. There was unanimous consent, meaning all 100 senators agreed to move to a vote on his nomination. The Senate then voted 58-42 not to confirm him, with six Republicans voting against him and two Democrats voting for him.

I’d also note one more thing. Ordinarily, when it becomes clear that a nominee is not going to be confirmed, they will withdraw from the process rather than force the issue. Remember that after Bork was voted down, Reagan’s next nominee, Donald Ginsburg, withdrew his name after it was revealed that he had smoked a lot of pot as a younger man. Bork didn’t do that. He felt defiant and so he forced the Senate to have a vote.

I suppose the reason the right was so incensed by Bork’s defeat is because he had a strong resume. He was rejected because of his right-wing ideas. Therefore, the right felt justified in the future in rejecting the judicial nominees of Democratic presidents based solely on their left-wing ideas. And that has contributed to the poisoning of the well in Washington.

Remember that the year before Bork’s nomination Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98-0. Obviously, something significant changed after Bork. But the Democrats did not obstruct his nomination. They defeated it. And let’s listen to Bob Dole. Here he is, discussing the Nuclear Option back in 2005.

When I was a leader in the Senate, a judicial filibuster was not part of my procedural playbook. Asking a senator to filibuster a judicial nomination was considered an abrogation of some 200 years of Senate tradition.

To be fair, the Democrats have previously refrained from resorting to the filibuster even when confronted with controversial judicial nominees like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Although these men were treated poorly, they were at least given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. At the time, filibustering their nominations was not considered a legitimate option by my Democratic colleagues – if it had been, Justice Thomas might not be on the Supreme Court today, since his nomination was approved with only 52 votes, eight short of the 60 votes needed to close debate.

Unlike Bork, for whom no filibuster was necessary to prevent his confirmation, Clarence Thomas’s nomination could have been defeated through procedural obstruction. Even in the face of compelling questions about his moral rectitude, the Democrats refrained from resorting to the filibuster. Perhaps if Thomas hadn’t made the Democrats regret their decision so much they wouldn’t be willing to filibuster judicial nominees today.

The truth is that the toxicity in Washington has nothing to do with Bork. He’s just a symbol of something else, which is the conservative movement’s rejection of Supreme Court rulings related to civil and woman’s rights. Because the conservatives want to roll back those rulings, they’ve essentially politicized the court. They argue the reverse, which is that the left used the Court to change the law in a way Congress never would have done. That’s true. If we had waited for Congress to act, we’d still have Jim Crow laws and women would still be getting back-alley abortions. In other words, if conservatives hadn’t been so wrong back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, we might not have a politicized judicial system today. But they were, and we do.

For the last twenty-four years both parties have used a variety of tactics to stop the judicial appointments of the other party. Only rarely does it come down to a filibuster. Judiciary Committee chairs can slow-walk nominees, or they can be defeated at the committee level. Home-state senators can veto judicial nominations. The Senate can make clear that a nominee doesn’t have the votes, causing them to withdraw.

One thing should be clear though, in case you want to cast equal blame for this situation. The Democratic nominees want to uphold the law as it stands. The Republican nominees want to overturn Roe v. Wade. Republican nominees who have been confirmed are eroding consumer rights and have already given corporations unprecedented control over our electoral system. The Republicans are the ones legislating from the bench, as Citizens United proved. Since the courts have become legislatures, they have also become political bodies. They blame us for starting it. I blame them for being unrelenting assholes who forced us to choose between Apartheid and a politicized court.

This is what our mothers and fathers, or, perhaps, our grandmothers and grandfathers read when Benito Mussolini met his end. Does it remind you of what you are reading now about Moammar Gaddafi?

Eric Cantor canceled a speech at the Wharton School of Business yesterday when he realized that it was going to be met with protests, but you can read his prepared remarks here. I want to give an excerpt to consider:

I believe that the most successful among us are positioned to use their talents to help grow our economy and give everyone a hand up the ladder and the dignity of a job. We should encourage them to extend their creativity and generosity to helping build the community infrastructure that provides a hand up and a fair shot to those less fortunate…

…These groups of innovators are the leaders of companies that create life-saving drugs for our sick parents and children. They are also the social entrepreneurs who support the charter schools, the opportunity scholarships, the private job training programs, the community centers, and other elements of community life that provide stability and constructive values to children and their families who are struggling.

They are trailblazers like Steve Jobs. A man who started with an idea in his garage and ended up providing iPhones and iPads to millions and changed the world. Job building and community building are what successful people can do. Through his example, you can see that America needs more than a jobs plan. It needs a Steve Jobs plan. In a Steve Jobs Plan, those who are successful not only create good jobs and services that make our lives better, they also give back and help everyone move just a little bit further up the ladder and everybody wins.

So, what’s the Steve Jobs Plan?

Silicon Valley is lining up behind President Obama’s reelection bid, donating more money to his campaign than to any of his Republican rivals.

Computer and Internet companies have donated more than $1.2 million to Obama’s 2012 campaign so far, among the highest totals for any industry, according to an analysis of campaign finance data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Microsoft employees are Obama’s single biggest industry contributor, followed by employees of Comcast. Google comes in at No. 4.

Silicon Valley seems to be sticking with the president after backing him strongly in 2008. The tech industry donated at least $9.3 million to Obama’s first presidential bid, according to the Center’s data.

Silicon Valley isn’t monolithic, and even Steve Jobs had some criticisms of the president. But it’s pretty clear that the innovators in the computer industry have a jobs plan, and that is to reelect the president. In fact, Eric Cantor is wrong. It’s not enough to be nice to rich people. Mr. Jobs main criticism of Obama? ‘I’m disappointed in Obama,’ he said. ‘He’s having trouble leading because he’s reluctant to offend people or piss them off.’ That doesn’t sound like Mr. Jobs wanted a president who would coddle the rich.

But that’s all the Republicans have to offer.

We’ve seen a lot of really low blows over the last decade by Republicans and conservatives against Democrats, Progressives and Liberals. We’ve Been Called Marxists, Fascists, Gun Thieves, Traitors, Lazy Dirty F***ing Hippies, Out of Touch Hollywood Liberals, Baby Killers, Marriage Destroyers, and generally anything that denotes Evil. But this statement by Former Reagan Under Secretary of Education, Former Political Candidate and Outspoken Christian Gary Bauer that Jared Lee Loughner, the man who “put a cap” through Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords’ head in an attempt to assassinate her and who did murder six other people “would fit right in with Occupy Wall Street” is in a category all its own:

As it turns out, the assassin, Jared Loughner, was an apolitical radical who would fit in well with the Occupy Wall Street movement,” Bauer wrote. “A friend told ABC that Loughner was heavily influenced by a movie called ‘Zeitgeist.’ One left-wing reviewer described the movie as containing three central points: ‘Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, are systems of social control. 9/11 was an inside job… And, finally, International Bankers … control our money and our future…’”

Bauer knows that the OWS movement has been non-violent and peaceful. He also knows that the people primarily committing the violence have committed that violence against the OWS protesters. The violence has been committed by law enforcement officials. He knows this, and yet he is so enamored of Wall Street Criminals that he has been busy painting OWS as composed of anti-semites. No surprise then that he was willing to smear the thousands of people attending and supporting the Occupy Movement protests by comparing their methods, grievances and demands to those of a deranged mass murderer who targeted a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters.

By the way, for those of you who have not visited the the OWS website here is what they say themselves about their movement:

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.

Occupy Wall Street is a horizontally organized resistance movement employing the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to restore democracy in America. We use a tool known as a “people’s assembly” to facilitate collective decision making in an open, participatory and non-binding manner. We call ours the NYC General Assembly and we welcome people from all colors, genders and beliefs to attend our daily assemblies. To learn more about how you can start a people’s assembly to organize your local community to fight back against social injustice, please read this quick guide on group dynamics in people’s assemblies.

You’ve seen the videos. No OWS protesters have been walking around with semiautomatic weapons strapped to their backs or worn in holsters strapped to their bodies like this gentlemen who was protesting the appearance of President Obama:

Nor do any of the various OWS videos show violence by OWS protesters against those who do not share their political views, such as this guy stomping the head of a liberal activist at a Rand Paul Rally last year:

No. The Occupy Movement has preached non-violent resistance. As a result they have been unlawfully arrested for attempting to close their Citibank accounts, beaten by fists and batons, run over my police motorcycles and horses, and pepper sprayed in their eyes for peacefully exercising their rights to free speech and to peaceably assemble under the First Amendment.

Mr. Bauer is — how shall I put this? — pond scum. He knows it, too. But desperate to stop the Occupy Movement at any cost, he brought up the name of a mentally disturbed man, a mass murderer and an attempted assassin and claimed this is a man representative of all the people involved in the Occupy Movement that is spreading across the United States and around the world. Mr. Bauer, if you want to know who represents the Occupy Movement, go to this website. People like this woman:

Take a look at the messages they are leaving for all to see. They have nothing in common with the actions or motives Jared Lee Loughner and for you to dare to claim that they do is a slander against all of them. Against all of us.

Mr. Bauer, you claim to be a Christian. Lying and bearing false witness is a violation of the ten commandments. Maybe you forgot that part of the Bible in your zeal to protect the people who ruined the global economy, received Trillions of dollars in bailouts from our government. People and corporations who are making obscene profits at a time of extreme misery and suffering for millions of others who lost their jobs, their homes, their health care and their savings as a result of the actions of these amoral con artists. People who continue to go unpunished for their crimes.

Mr. Bauer, you can go to Hell. I think you and Satan would get along famously.

Strangely, I both agree and disagree with Matt Yglesias at the same time. At the most fundamental level, I think that Occupy Wall Street is an irrational protest. So, I wouldn’t call it a rational response. But it is an appropriate response to our current political circumstances. It might seem like a semantic distinction, but it’s an important one. The reason people are acting irrationally is because it has become clear that all rational responses are blocked. For those of us who have sought to bring about needed changes through the ballot box, we’ve seen our hopes dashed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen’s United, which makes it impossible for the small-donor model to compete with corporate cash. Further, we’ve seen that even with healthy majorities in both houses of Congress and a progressive-minded administration, we can’t craft solutions to the left of Senators Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe. The system is rigged against us to such a degree that it’s hard to maintain hope in our strategy’s likelihood for success. And then we have to fight a rearguard action against the right’s national program of voter suppression. We know things can and will get substantially worse if the president is not reelected, but we have little reason to believe things will get better if he is. This is a byproduct of the Republicans’ unprecedented willingness to obstruct and demagogue every important issue facing the country.

Therefore, a huge portion of the left, and even the center, has given up on the electoral process, and that is why the Wall Street protests aren’t timed to the legislative calendar or coordinated with the administration or the Democratic Party. Their demands are nebulous and unformed because the moment something is made specific it becomes clear that it can’t happen.

People with an organizing background are ambivalent about these protests, which have some of the hallmarks of failed organizing efforts of the past. The effort to lead through consensus, for example, has not historically worked out very well. Yet, without an alternative to offer, it’s hard to argue against the idea that something needs to be done, some effort needs to be made, some gesture, no matter how futile, is required. And the mobilization of lots of young people will probably bear fruit in the future.

In order to be a rational protest, it would need to be more focused and have some kind of direct goal. It would need a logical path from here to somewhere better. These protests don’t have that. But that doesn’t mean that circumstances don’t call for an irrational response. The word “irrational” carries some negative connotations, among which is stupidity. These protests aren’t stupid. This isn’t a bunch of people asking the government to keep its hands off their Medicare. As frustrated as I am that the left has basically given up on the fight in Washington, given the gridlock and hopelessness of breaking it, it would be stupid to tell people we can solve our problems legislatively or electorally.

Of course, those are the only ways we can change the tax code or hold the banks accountable, but we have no hope of doing that in the near future. With no rational way forward, the irrational route is suddenly justified. It has to be better than the alternative, which is apathy.

And one key to remember here is that the protesters are not, in general, making radical demands. They’re not making irrational demands. They’re reacting to a system in which entirely modest and reasonable demands have no hope of being met.

That’s McConnell’s plan. Kill hope and thwart change, and the president will fail. As long as people keep their eye on that ball, I have no problem with the Wall Street protests.

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Saudi crown prince dies, leaving succession uncertain

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) – The heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, died undergoing treatment for illness in New York. The death of the prince, who was in his 80s, opens questions about the succession in the critical, oil-rich U.S. ally.

The most likely candidate to replace Sultan as Abdullah’s successor is Prince Nayef, the powerful interior minister in charge of internal security forces, who is said to be closer to Islamic conservatives than the king. The king gave Nayef — also his half-brother — the implicit nod in 2009 by naming him second deputy prime minister, traditionally the post of the second in line to the throne.

State TV announced that Sultan died abroad, without specifying where. Saudi official circles in Riyadh said he passed away at a hospital in New York. According to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from January 2010, Sultan had been receiving treatment for colon cancer since 2009.

His Royal Highness Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General

Kinship:
Sultan bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud bin Muqrin bin Markhan bin Ibrahim bin Musa bin Rabea’ah bin Manae bin Rabia’ah Al-Muridi. His ancestry goes back to Baker bin Wael of Asad bin Rabiaa dynasty. He is the Deputy Premier, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

His Birth and Early Life:
Prince Sultan was born in Riyadh on Moday, 16th Shaban 1349H. corresponding to 5th January 1931, he grew up under his father King Abdulaziz Al-Saud – May Allah’s mercy be upon him – the founder of the modern Saudi state. He was cared for by his father, he grew up on righteous values. The Islamic upbringing had great effect on his morals, behaviors, and consequently on his public life and relations with people.

On Sunday 21 Shaban 1402 H. corresponding to 13 June 1982, a Royal Decree issued and concluded the assignment of Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz as the Deputy Prime Minister.

Battles with the Enemy:
During H.R.H.’s posts at the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, crucial events took place, where H.R.H. played direct and major role:

In 1967 when the war broke out between Israel and neighboring Arab Countries, Saudi Armed Forces immediately called for general mobilization and the striking ground forces moved with their full support of arms occupying the front lines across the Gulf of Aqaba. They took their fixed military positions to support the Arab countries in this Arab gulf.

In 1973 when October war broke out, the resolution of general mobilization for the Saudi Armed Forces issued. On the second day, 07 October 1973 the Saudi Armed Forces moved to the Syrian Front, their deployment continued for few days and nights. On the front, they engaged in battles with the enemy immediately after their arrival and confront an attack launched by the enemy on the Saudi Forces, where the enemy believed that this part is unprotected by the Arab forces.

As soon as the Iraqi aggression took place in Kuwait in 2 August 1990, the Saudi Forces declared emergency, and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques took a historical resolution requesting the support of friendly countries of Saudi Arabia.

King of Jordan and PLO leader Yasser Arafat loyal to the Enemy  

King Abdullah names members of the Allegiance Commission – 2006 [pdf]

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz issued a royal decree on December 9, 2006 naming 35 members of the Saudi royal family to the Allegiance Commission. The Allegiance Commission was established as part of a new law of succession announced in October 2006 to formalize the royal succession and ensure a smooth transfer of power. Under the new system, the King will nominate a Crown Prince, and the Allegiance Commission will vote on the candidate. Previously, the King had the sole right to select the Crown Prince. The newly named members of the Commission are all sons and grandsons of the Kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Prince Mishaal bin Abdulaziz will serve as chairman.

Bylaws to the Allegiance Institution Law

• Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Foundation

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Yesterday, Booman asked why the Obama administration chose to announce the withdrawal of the last US forces from Iraq on a Friday, a slow news day traditionally reserved by both Obama and Bush before him for burying bad news. The answer is fairly simple: for a lot of the People Who Matter that run America’s perma-war culture, fulfilling a commitment to leave Iraq is
bad news:

This year, American military officials had said they wanted a “residual” force of as many as tens of thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq past 2011 as an insurance policy against any violence. Those numbers were scaled back, but the expectation was that at least about 3,000 to 5,000 American troops would remain.

At the end of the Bush administration, when the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, was negotiated, setting 2011 as the end of the United States’ military role, officials had said the deadline was set for political reasons, to put a symbolic end to the occupation and establish Iraq’s sovereignty. But there was an understanding, a senior official here said, that a sizable American force would stay in Iraq beyond that date.

Over the last year, in late-night meetings at the fortified compound of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and in videoconferences between Baghdad and Washington, American and Iraqi negotiators had struggled to reach an agreement. All the while, both Mr. Obama and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, gave the world a wink and nod, always saying that Iraq was ready to stand on its own but never fully closing the door on the possibility of American troops’ staying on.

Thing is, those negotiators – up to and including Obama – have given every indication that honoring the US commitment to leave at the end of the year was not their preferred position:

This month, American officials pressed the Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani’s compound to discuss the issue. This time the Americans asked them to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the most difficult hurdle. But they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Still burdened by the traumas of this and previous wars, and having watched the revolutions sweeping their region, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty.

Translation: it was the Iraqis, not the Obama administration, that were unwilling to cut a deal to keep US troops on. Whether this was an intentional outcome Obama desired depends on whether you believe the insistence on immunity for US troops – an utter nonstarter in Iraqi politics for the last several years – was an intentional poison pill in the negotiations, inserted by the White House to give political cover to the implementation of the original 2011 deadline, or a sincere request that is a standard demand for US troops operating on foreign soil. Or both.

And then there’s this, which sounds a whole lot like what Obama just said he was ending, but also a whole lot like the US military relationship with scores of other allies:

“We’re prepared to meet their training needs, we’re prepared to engage in exercises with them, we’re prepared to provide guidance and training with regard to their pilots, we’re prepared to continue to develop an ongoing relationship with them in the future,” Mr. Panetta told reporters on his plane on Friday.

Thing is, while it’s a nifty pivot to take credit for ending a US military presence you’ve just spent the last two years trying to extend, it’s hard to accrue too much public credit for an outcome that was a defeat for your public negotiating position. And on the reverse side, only people who are either utterly divorced from political reality or running for the Republican nomination for president, or both, are going to publicly chastize the commander-in-chief for ending a war that no longer has any public support at all (and say, wasn’t this war supposed to be over last year?). But behind the scenes – as evidenced by the anonymous military sources in this morning’s NYT article linked above – there’s plenty of blowback. Wanting the US to stay in Iraq is very much a minority opinion, but it’s a very, very powerful minority that’s committed, or has made, a lot of money in Iraq.

That’s why Obama announced on a Friday that he’d honor Bush’s SOFA agreement. And that’s why he won’t reap much political benefit for ending the war – either among peaceniks (who also see the “temporary” surge in a longer-running war in Afghanistan still with troop levels well above 2008 levels) or among the general public.

The only way to understand this as an intentional, desired outcome is with a wink and a nod. The question is, which winks and nods do you believe – the “we’re really going to stay” ones Obama and Maliki were giving last week, or the “we never meant to stay” ones today?

From experience, I know that it is hard to get a record of how congresspeople and senators vote in committee. The House and Senate have web sites that record votes on the floor (excepting voice votes), but there is generally nothing available for recording committee votes. If you weren’t there or watching on CSPAN, you have to get on the phone and ask someone. This might actually be a good thing because it reduces accountability and visibility at the committee level, which actually has the effect of making it easier for people to put partisanship aside for two seconds and make compromises. That’s partly why Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) were able to work together to craft a bill updating the No Child Left Behind bill. Yet, as someone who wants to understand the politics of the reform, I’m left frustrated by the New York Times’ coverage. The reporter, Sam Dillion, tells me the following:

Mr. Harkin’s committee voted 15 to 7 on Thursday to approve a bill that would greatly reduce Washington’s role in overseeing public schools. It was co-sponsored by Senator Michael B. Enzi, the Wyoming Republican who is the committee’s ranking minority member. Mr. Harkin called it “a good compromise bill” that would have bipartisan support in the full Senate.

But Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who had long criticized Congress for failing to rewrite the law, on Friday criticized the Harkin-Enzi bill, saying it compromises too much, particularly on teacher evaluations and student-achievement goals. “There are huge — significant problems with the current draft,” he said. “Though there are some things in this that I consider positive, others are quite concerning.”

The committee is Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), and it has 11 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. It’s left to my imagination to figure out who voted yes and no. I can make an educated guess, but it actually matters whether a more liberal bloc (e.g., Sens. Whitehouse, Franken, Merkley, Sanders) supported Chairman Harkin, or it was a more moderate bloc (e.g., Sens. Bingaman, Hagan, Casey, and Bennet).

Personally, I am left a little confused. Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi were motivated to act by the administration’s announced plan to grant waivers to up to 41 states, relieving them of their duty to declare many of their schools as “failed schools.” The bipartisan response is to drastically reduce the federal government’s oversight of schools. The Chamber of Commerce opposes these changes, the White House says its too much of a compromise, the teachers unions and the superintendents applaud the bill.

Civil rights and business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the legislation would so thoroughly eviscerate the federal role in school accountability that they could not support it. But powerful groups representing superintendents, principals, teachers and school boards said they were delighted.

“We couldn’t be happier,” said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators. “The current law is so toxic, and they’ve had a hard time in Congress for a long while coalescing on how to fix it.”

One thing that would clear a lot of this up would be an accurate roll call of the 15-7 committee vote. But that’s hard to get, so it isn’t included in the Times’ article.

As I said, more sunlight for committee votes would probably come at the cost of even worse gridlock in DC, which is not something I want. But a news organization with the resources of the New York Times should set a policy that articles that discuss committee votes should come with a roll call of those votes. At a minimum, the reporter needs to know that information in order to give an informed account of the proceedings. And if they have that information, they should share it.

They finally got cloture on the Agriculture appropriations bill. The usual suspects voted against it. No one much cares. The only reason I even mention it is because the cloture vote was preceded by votes on 14 amendments over four days, most of them stupid grandstanding amendments intended to make Democrats look bad rather than to fix any problems with the Agriculture bill. You can view the sad saga here. It was definitely not a high moment for the U.S. Senate. Yet, The Hill writes it up as a “nobel experiment,” and Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid say it made them feel nostalgic for the good old days when the Senate actually functioned. What a couple of dicks!!

All that happened is that Harry Reid allowed an open rule, meaning senators had the right to bring as many amendments as they wanted to. And so they brought them. Tom Coburn brought three. One of them even passed. I love how Coburn crafts his statements of purpose. I just love it. He says his amendment will “end lending schemes that force taxpayers to repay the loans of delinquent developers and bailout failed or poorly planned local projects.” Who wants to vote against that? But what’s his amendment actually do?

SA 796. Mr. COBURN submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2112, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

Sec. __. A person or entity that receives a Federal loan using amounts made available under division A, division B, or division C of this Act may not repay the loan using a Federal grant or other award funded with amounts made available under division A, division B, or division C of this Act; Provided further, a grant or other award funded with amounts made available under division A, division B, or division C of this Act may not be used to repay a Federal loan.

The jackass doesn’t even have a section in mind for this amendment. And it doesn’t do anything. Money is fungible. You can’t tell me that I can’t pay off a federal loan with a federal grant unless I’m not allowed to have both a loan and grant at the same time. But he wasted a ton of everybody’s time by introducing this ridiculous amendment, and then he scared 73 senators into voting for it.

Yeah, Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell, pat yourselves on the back. It’s just like the good old days!

David Adams, in a misguided but perhaps tongue-in-cheek piece in the Irish Times, seeks to cast the lambasting of Dana and Martin McGuinness in the Irish presidential election campaign as a reflection of the “fact” that southerners hate northerners and are just as comfortable with the partition of Ireland as his own northern Unionist and Loyalist community.

Reality is us northerners are not liked down here

It has become crystal clear during this campaign that people “down here” don’t like us northerners very much. Not in any individual sense – I’m sure lots of southerners could think of a likeable person from the North, if they tried hard enough – but in an abstract way. To the southern mind, we’re too abrasive, overly aggressive and, when it suits us, pigheadedly literal (the grating accent doesn’t help much, either). And that’s not the half of it. Ultimately, we’re seen as outsiders – if not quite foreigners – poking our noses into a polity that’s none of our business.

The shock on the faces of Dana and Martin as the harsh reality of southern partitionism sank in has been something to behold. Dana’s previous outings coincided with the tide of goodwill that swept Mary II into the Áras and, a couple of years later, herself briefly into the European parliament. Dana must feel like she’s landed on a different planet from 2004 Ireland. As for Martin (who can only be cursing himself for not being more suspicious of Gerry opting to stand in a Border county, rather than run for president), his taken-aback demeanour has, to me at least, often suggested the previously unimaginable: “Good God, these people make even the unionists seem friendly.”

So along with everything else, and contrary to some gloomy predictions, the presidential election has, in its own fashion, even helped with mutual understanding in Northern Ireland. Pity there couldn’t be one every year.

One can understand his joy, as a northern Loyalist, at northern nationalists being savaged by the “southern” media in a manner which would never have happened in Northern Ireland – in a still divided community sensitive to the risks of reopening a sectarian divide. However he provides no evidence for his assertion that ‘southerners hate northerners’. The reality is that all of the presidential candidates have been criticised almost equally, and what we are seeing is “politics-as-normal” in a maturing, functioning, democratic polity. This is a case of Dana and McGuinness being slated for being old style catholic nationalists, not northerners.

Far more interesting is the fact that the election campaign can also be understood as a “protestantisation” of Ireland.
Protestant, with a small ‘p’, to be sure, but nevertheless a seminal movement away from the catholic nationalist certainties of yore. One could also use the less controversial term of ‘secularisation’ of course, but many Catholics are no less religious in their outlook: They have just lost faith in their church hierarchy and in the conservative nationalist political forms that Catholicism has traditionally been associated with.
The separation of church and state is a more typically protestant obsession, as is the privatisation of religious practice and a “dissenting” approach to hierarchical forms of church leadership. Protestant churches in the south are actually thriving and many “mixed marriages” are opting to worship and raise their kids in protestant schools and churches in stark contrast to the historic Ne Temere decree which required that children be raised as Catholics and which devastated many small protestant parishes in the past.

This election is actually a rejection of two old style northern sectarians and an embrace of a southern protestant, David Norris, despite the absolutely disastrous campaign he has run (which would have sunk any other candidate without trace). Dana is the embodiment of old style catholic conservatism and stands at 2% in the polls; McGuinness the embodiment of militant republicanism who looks like doing no better than Sinn Fein’s party vote. Gay Mitchell will do badly because he too represents old style partitionist politics.

Sean Gallagher, another “northerner”, will do very well because he represents neither republicanism nor Catholicism. . Michael D.Higgins will do well because he represents neither a failed capitalism nor Catholicism, neither republicanism nor civil war politics.  
 

This isn’t about North vs. South. It is the protestantisation of Ireland in response to the moral corruption and bigotry of old style Catholicism and the republican project. David Adams should be glad, but it is he who has a partitionist attitude and who yearns for southerners to hate northerners. The fact is the electorate have become regionally blind and far more concerned with moving on from past antagonisms. If we do ever achieve a united Ireland, it will be one in which protestantism will have been a major influence and where regional and religious differences are of very little import.

So how has the campaign been going? The following table lists the opinion polls published since the field of candidates was formally finalised:

As I feared David Norris, the early front runner has run an absolutely disastrous campaign and has fallen rapidly in the polls. He is not alone in this, however, as Dana, Mary Davis, and Gay Mitchell have done similarly badly.  Gay Mitchell’s performance as the candidate for Fine Gael, the main government party which is currently still commanding 36% in the polls, has been particularly poor.

Michel D. Higgins has consolidated his status as front runner, but the real surprise has been Sean Gallagher, former Fianna Fail apparatchik, businessman, and TV reality show panellist.  Despite his recent Fianna Fail past and dodgy business career – he has admitted taking an illegal company loan – he has succeeded in projecting himself as a more youthful, energetic, forward looking entrepreneur: the sort of person, allegedly, that Ireland needs to dig itself out of the depression.

I have written more about the candidates here. Despite widespread cynicism and a feeling that this election for a relatively powerless office is but a distraction from the more serious issues facing Ireland and the Eurozone, I remain of the view that this election, and the wide range of candidates on offer, has been a useful exercise in democracy: It has exposed and helped clarify many of the outstanding tensions still facing us on this island. Sorting out the economic and political crisis within the Eurozone is for another day.