Community Standards

Atrios, or as we call him in real life, "Duncan," has been wandering around wondering why there's such a thing as a foreign policy community. It's a good question. The consequences of its existence don't seem to be particularly beneficial. Steve Clemons is talking at a panel on foreign policy, blogging, and activism and gives voice to something that I think a lot of us tend to suspect, saying he was one of the few members of said community to go on television and speak against the Iraq War not because he was the only one to think it was a bad idea, but "because everyone else was a coward."

"People like me," he says, "were being fed quite a bit of inside information from people who were every bit as horrified" but very few people said anything. And it's true -- alongside the famously pro-war elements of the establishment, there's a shockingly large number of people at places like Brookings, CSIS, the CFR, etc. where if you try to look up what they said about Iraq it turns out that they said . . . nothing at all.

His perspective, he says, is that Washington is "a corrupt town." From that perspective, he says that "the political-intellectual arenas is essentially a cartel" -- a cartel that's become extremely timid and risk-averse in the face of a neoconservative onslaught -- and "blogs allow smart people to break the cartel." That all seems very true to me, and I'm not sure what I have to add.

Comments

Steve's point is an important one, but there were also plenty of people who used to get on teevee who were uninvited when it was found that they'd oppose the invasion. Zinni and Webb are two examples, but I'm sure there are more.

Posted by Nell | August 3, 2007 4:27 PM

That's a pretty good analysis.

Its sad that most of the Democrats are so weak and corrupt. If they had had the courage of their convictions they could have called bullshit on the WMD Hoax in real time and destroyed the Bush Administration. Instead they made themselves complicit in the worst staretgic blunder in American history.

Posted by Junius Brutus | August 3, 2007 4:30 PM

It's a classic risk/reward problem. The risk for going with the status quo is basically nil. The reward is continued fame and riches. The risk for going against the status quo is great. Losing everything. But the reward is actually the same, if you're right. Continued fame and riches.

Even if everybody else loses their fame and riches, it's very unclear if you'll actually be ahead. You'll just have another group to compete against.

Posted by Karmakin | August 3, 2007 4:34 PM

Keep it up you all. It's nice to have a voice.

Posted by bajsa | August 3, 2007 4:39 PM

eventually I'll write something like this. Some comments: people "like us"--in the foreign policy establishment, feel that they worked on these issues and went to grad school etc to get the credibility to talk about these issues. They tend to not take well to bloggers who although have good judgement, haven't necc. written cables, policy memos, etc. Not an excuse, really, but a reality that they see themselves as a "community". Now here's my problem. This community prides itself on vibrant debate, so if you do pride yourself on vibrant debate, why the hesitance to call people out who are wrong? Why are people like Clemons and Brian Katulis the exception and not the rule?

Posted by Moira | August 3, 2007 4:46 PM

Now, now. Take it easy on 21st century Dems/Progressive/Liberals.

They just want to make sure that they send out enough nasty letters threatening to maybe start investigations that might possibly lead to another investigation about taking a vote to maybe send to the sub-committee on the sub-committee of the committee concerning the potential issue of maybe scheduling a vote about whether to set up a vote about possibly sending subpoenas, all the while keeping their powder so dry it actually turns to dust and then reconstitutes as an even more potent weapon which takes the shape of the miles and miles and miles...and miles of rope they need to give Republicans with which to hang themselves.

Got it? Good.........

NEXT!

Posted by Mark C | August 3, 2007 4:46 PM

Washington is "a corrupt town."

We kind of already knew that. The question is what form that corruption takes. Who is in bed with whom? What are the key conflicts of interest? How are the key processes broken and who is responsible?

The way you deal with corruption is you shine a light on it. You do the muckraking and air out the muck. One thing I've been interested in is how little "thinking", or at least quality thinking, goes on at places like AEI (where they did a lot of the Iraq planning). What do they really do all day there? I bet a surprising amount of what they do is figuring out how to manipulate the public (at least it would be surprising to most Americans).

Posted by JJ | August 3, 2007 4:53 PM

His perspective, he says, is that Washington is "a corrupt town." From that perspective, he says that "the political-intellectual arenas is essentially a cartel"

Not news, but nice of him to say it.

The last few years have offered lots of data for both sides, but it remains an open question as to which post-graduate degree is more pointless: IR or journalism. Maybe we'll see the two groups competing in positive territory for a while. That'd be a nice change.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 3, 2007 4:55 PM

Actually much of the blame can be laid on Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.

The Congressional Intelligence Committees can NOT do their job of oversight without the help of American citizens who work in the Intelligence Community --both as government employees or as employees of defense contractors.

Prior to 1995, BY CUSTOM, those workers could ANONYMOUSLY go to the Committees and report wrongdoing. With protection by the Congress if their identities were somehow exposed --although the more honest members of Congress acknowledged that Congress really cannot protect an exposed employee from retaliation if the Executive Branch wants to push it.

This worked well -- because appointed officials cannot do much without the help of those employees. They have even less chance of hiding questionable activities. Such things show up like a black ink blot on a Renoir.

But in 1995, Reno tried to put a stop to even to that informal process. She --and President Clinton --claimed that NO cleared employees could talk with Congress without first getting the consent of the Executive Branch.

A case of playing political warfare with TOTAL disregard for how Constitutional checks and balances work and the consequences if they're sabotaged.

My Senator, Arlen Spector, was on the Senate Intelligence Committee (he may have been Chairman at one point??) and Arlen proposed a law that would enshrine the existing arrangement. Clinton balked and the compromise worked out by House Intel Committee Chairman Porter Goss was to allow employees to go to Congress provided they FIRST told the Executive Branch 30 days in advance that they were going to snitch.

Anyone doing that , of course, is dooming their career and condemming their families to poverty. So its no wonder that what little we have found out re Bush's manipulation of intelligence has largely been exposed by recently RETIRED employees with strong political friends to protect them. Richard Clarke,etc.

I worked on intelligence programs in the 1990s --not Humint however -- and had 4 SCI clearances.
I KNOW that Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch is a crock of shit. A danger to this country if the programs we have to deal with external enemies are ever abused and turned against the our citizens.

Posted by Don Williams | August 3, 2007 4:56 PM

a cartel that's become extremely timid and risk-averse... That all seems very true to me, and I'm not sure what I have to add.

Weird post coming from a guy so eager to get laid that he would give up his vote when his girl friend asks him to.

Weird post coming from a guy that can't say anything insightful or critical about feminism apart from "my girlfriend Sarah Mead tells me...."

Please remember this post when you put the down payment on your Brownstone.

Posted by jerry | August 3, 2007 5:02 PM

"The way you deal with corruption is you shine a light on it."

Ah, if only it were that simple. The problem with shining a light on corruption is that it makes all the cockroaches run away. You might catch one or two of the little buggers, but the rest will always find some new place to hide. At the very best, you can get the true measure of the problem by listening to the scuttling noises as the hoards of the corrupt sprint off, but all that will do is make you a little sick to your stomach. To get rid of the problem, you'd have to burn the whole damn house down.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 3, 2007 5:10 PM

Without a community, you would have chaos and dilletantism.

Perhaps there should be a union for foreign policy analysts, as there is for electricians in McCormick center. If you want to have any kind of analysis, you have to call a union foreman and explain what you want.

Very recently, certain Babbitt was hawking his new book at Jon Stewart show and sagely said that as of now, Iran is the most dangerous country. A dilletantte like me would conclude that we live in truly blessed times (the danger seems easy to handle, unlike Cold War dangers). Curiously to me, Venezuela was the runner up. They are not even that far! Perhaps, some parts of USA should develop evacuation plans, and perhaps invest in shelters for the civilian population, to cope with Venezuelan menace.

If I can have any misgiving to the foreign policy establishment is that they do not explain things like the seriousness of Venezuelan menace, while we hoi polloi genuinely do not understand.

Posted by piotr | August 3, 2007 5:13 PM

Were you being "timid and risk-averse" when you were an Iraq War hawk? Are you being "timid and risk-averse" in calling for a prompt and complete withdrawal now?

Posted by Fred | August 3, 2007 5:19 PM

Piotr: there is no Venezuelan menace.

Don: thanks for finding a way to blame Clinton. It must be getting harder and harder, 6 1/2 years after he left office. Kudos for putting in the extra effort.

I really don't "get it" when it comes to these people in Washington who know that the neocons are an ongoing train wreck, but who refuse to say anything against them. What are they afraid of, losing their job?

Is unemployment really so terrifying to people?

Posted by RickD | August 3, 2007 5:20 PM

Wow. That last comment is so toxic, so randomly, unnecessarily personal and vitriolic it makes me wonder what tragic act of neglect and/or abuse this person suffered as a child. But then I remember that most of the time, douchebags are born, not made and that his poor parents probably had to sit and watch as their hateful little brat morphed into a utterly worthless waste of Earth's real estate.

Posted by josephchilders | August 3, 2007 5:24 PM

Wow. Jerry's comment is so toxic, so randomly, unnecessarily personal and vitriolic it makes me wonder what tragic act of neglect and/or abuse this person suffered as a child. But then I remember that most of the time, douchebags are born, not made and that his poor parents probably had to sit and watch as their hateful little brat morphed into a utterly worthless waste of Earth's real estate.

Posted by josephchilders | August 3, 2007 5:25 PM

The problem with shining a light on corruption is that it makes all the cockroaches run away.

You gotta just keep doing it. If we got enough Ken Silversteins wouldn't that at least give people outside the beltway a sense of the scope of the problem?

But burning the house down is a good idea, or at least fumigation. I guess we have to figure out the right electoral pesticides...

Posted by JJ | August 3, 2007 5:26 PM

During a bloggingheads dialog with Eric Alterman, a young journalist/blogger more or less suggested the reason so many young journalist/bloggers supported the war was they were worried they would never be able to go out again.

It was the sort of trendy position in Washington among a certain young group of people and if you had a dissenting viewpoint there was no social support for that dissenting viewpoint except among people who were about twice your age and who had been socially marginalized in Washington

I hope they enjoy their evenings out.

Posted by ndm | August 3, 2007 5:26 PM

That's why a skeptical media is so critical. Unfortunately, during the lead up to the Iraq war, too many were either AWOL, or worse, in the tank with the Administration.

Posted by Rich | August 3, 2007 5:31 PM

I'd say at least part of the problem lies in the atrophy of critical thought.

Another, related, issue is the dumbing down of various news-reporting agencies (especially when opinion is substituted for analysis --or worse, fact). I read Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, for example, and think many articles in those publications present a good jumping point for a lot of topics...although they often seem insufficiently developed or horribly biased.

And on top of that, the truckloads of agenda-driven dishonest bullshit masquerading as insight.

"the political-intellectual arenas is essentially a cartel"

True enough; but no reason why any reasonably intelligent, honest, well-informed person should be excluded from discussing foreign policy with this self-described and rarely-challenged gang of "experts." Especially given their track record (or, in many cases, lack thereof).

On the other hand, there's C-Span's 'Washington Journal.' Jesus F Christ. Shouldn't callers be required to pass some sort of test before phoning in?

Posted by Monty | August 3, 2007 5:43 PM

As much as I wish there had been journalists back in 2003 who were asking more insightful questions than "when do I get embedded?" the fundamental issue remains that we thought we could go to war on the basis of a certain set of premises, right? We thought, hey, we have this intelligence, it says Saddam is doing some whacky shit, possibly with nukes, we can't be absolutely sure, because intel is never absolutely sure about anything (your pal Gordy knows this because, and you may be surprised to hear this, he spent a little time in the intelligence community in between cutting albums), but Saddam is an evil bastard, surely he's up to something. Really, that was the argument that led us into this war. It was a bad argument, because, as frequently is the case with intel, we didn't know what we were talking about, and instead of toppling a regime constructing a giant arsenal of WMD's and a terrorist network for distributing them, we toppled and impotent dictator so afraid of assassination that he hid from his own people sometimes for weeks at a time, and didn't have a chance in hell of succeeding at an endeavor this ambitious even if he had wanted to.

Basically, what I'm saying here is that conducting a war on the basis of this kind of conjecture is simply unwise, and it seems like a pretty good policy that we shouldn't invade other countries when there is a chance that our justification for doing so is not veridical.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 3, 2007 5:44 PM

To make it clear to the wilting flower, Matt has never shown himself to be a rebel, and in many ways seems to be seeking the classic career of washington pundit, including the pretty inevitable selling out for cocktail parties and brownstones.

I am amused that my comment was seen as so toxic and vitriolic by you that you would commiserate with my parents as they sadly watched me grow up into such a douchebag and utterly worthless waste of Earth's real estate. Very nice example of how to dehumanize your enemy. I am a worthless waste of earth's real estate, so let's follow this to its logical conclusion. Since I am such an utter waste, you propose....

Yes, my comments do mark me as a dirty fucking hippie. Perhaps what you may want to do is examine not my life but your own.

Posted by jerry | August 3, 2007 5:53 PM

Thanks Gordy. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was great.

Funny thing. Here I am 2,000 miles from DC and I guessed right that this stuff has something to do with with the weird-assed "think" tank infrastructure in DC. This is from Steve Clemons' blog (which I've never read):

My friend Doug Bandow (note that the Cato Institute has already made him a "former senior fellow") has recently admitted to taking payment from Jack Abramoff to write favorably about Abramoff's clients. Doug has resigned from the Cato Institute and been forthright that this whole thing was a "lapse of judgement."

Truth in advertising. Doug Bandow has been a guest-blogger at The Washington Note in the past, and he wrote one of the more compelling but still wrong-headed pro-John Bolton articles in National Review this year. Those that have been reading TWN for a while know that I was diametrically positioned to Bandow on the Bolton battle.

For the record, I would ask Bandow to guest blog again.** I regret that he is involved with Abramoff, but when a town like Washington, D.C. has become systemically corrupt, where does one start focusing the blame? Bandow has paid a price by resigning from Cato.

But what of think tanks and the growing undisguised advocacy role that they play on behalf of funders' objectives?

What of the media at home and abroad in which the U.S. government has paid pundits, ghost writers, and opinion leaders to help shape opinion via op-eds and other articles in the U.S. press and even Iraq's press?

What of Tom DeLay's efforts to punish corporate trade associations and NGOs for hiring Democrats, choking off political access to all -- inside and outside the Congress -- who didn't do his bidding?

All of these depict a corruption of institutions that should not rest on the revelations about one guy who has a great mind and made a mistake -- particularly when the rest of the institutions in this town are engaged in dramatically worse behaviors.

(If you read his post, his commenters convince him not to have Bandow as a guest blogger again.)

Posted by JJ | August 3, 2007 6:02 PM

Karmakin has it. The risk/reward problem in going along with the status quo is a problem in any field.

I have a close family member who has worked in financial management for years. During the dotcom boom, I heard a lot of frustration and worry. "These prices just don't make any sense! But everyone else is getting rich, and I'm getting much lower returns by sticking with everything I've read, seen, and known about it in my career!"

Sure, he looks good now, but at the time, you looked stupid, your peers were laughing at you, and you risked losing your job. It's easier to be wrong and popular, for your job, and for the fun of people to pal around with. Being right and unpopular takes guts. As a species, it turns out, lots of us don't have that.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 3, 2007 6:03 PM

Jerry,
Douchebag accusations aside, the main point really is that mentioning someone's girlfriend to make a point is really the stuff of junior high (or music blog) arguments. You embarrass yourself when you trot it out here. Save it for your never-recommended Kos diaries. And by the way, you also shame the name of Atrios by stealing his "dirty fucking hippies" theme for your own lame uses.

Posted by josephchilders | August 3, 2007 6:08 PM

Oh Mr. Elvis, no need to be so defeatist. All it takes to get there is a little training. I maintain a strict regimen of contrarianism. At least once a week, I go around and tell everyone I meet that they are wrong about everything. And sure, I'm not popular. No one invites me to cocktail parties anymore. But then it's no stretch, when the teeming masses are crying out for what is self-evidently incorrect, for me to scream back YOU ARE ALL A BUNCH OF STUPIDHEADS! Unfortunately, no one listens then, either, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I was right.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 3, 2007 6:14 PM

A different aspect of the problem is that, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, there's this idea out there (and I'm sure not just in the US) that thinking about foreign policy is some kind of deep intellectual exercise. But it's not. And while there might be a long history to particular foreign policy dispute or issue that many people aren't familiar with, reading up on the background is still not rocket science.

The effect is that people who don't have f.p. "experience," "knowledge," or "training" can be dismissed with ad hominem arguments about their lack of appropriate credentials.

Posted by liberal | August 3, 2007 6:17 PM

Reminds me of a brilliant op-ed written in the Financial Times early this year:

The best opinion journalism has a clarity and readability that far surpasses most academic papers or diplomatic telegrams. But opinion journalism also has its characteristic vices. An editor of The Economist in the 1950s once advised his journalists to “simplify, then exaggerate”. This formula is almost second nature for newspaper columnists and can make for excellent reading. But it is a lousy guide to the making of foreign policy.

The fingerprints of simplifying and exaggerating journalists are all over the Iraq debacle.
...
The neo-cons that mattered most in shaping the “war on terror” served in the Pentagon and the White House. But the journalists are a vital part of a neo-con network that formulated and sold the ideas that took the US to war in Iraq and that is now pressing for confrontation with Iran. The links between journalists, think-tanks and decision-makers in the neo-con world are tight and there is plenty of movement from one area to the other.

Posted by JJ | August 3, 2007 6:25 PM

It is a real corruption, though not of the type that is easily exposed by hidden cameras and clever sources. The corruption is well illustrated by the Iraq war.

We can't be sure that we're safe, Bush said, and everyone nodded wisely. In spite of the fact that for all of human history everyone has lived with that uncertainty. And that we, being a very large country surrounded by wide oceans, were, by nature, and always had been, much safer than almost anywhere else in the world.

Because it really wasn't about safety at all- it was about our being very large, and Iraq being very small, and the idea that we could get a bunch of sweetheart contracts for oil companies that sweeten the Washington pot.

And this is an element of decency that people inside the Beltway just don't get- that it's not right for big guys to beat up little guys.

And a lot of the people doing this are in a sense really nice guys. They have just rationalized their own gangsterism so long that they are totally divorced from reality.

Ok, maybe that makes them not really nice guys. In a sense, the whole country is nuts.

It shows, though, when they support Uribe, who we now know scored his electoral wins with a little help from paramilitary death squads, and call Chavez, who won 60% of the vote in rigorously overseen elections, a thug.

One of the best days of my life was when I realized that, as a draft resister, I would never ever get a security clearance. All of a sudden a lot of careers I really didn't want to have were out the window. It was like the last day of school in the spring. And in spite of the occasional poverty that followed, the rest of my life has been a summer vacation.

Posted by serial catowner | August 3, 2007 7:19 PM

Touching (and condescending) how you want to defend his girlfriend, but as she is a former Clintonite, I think she can defend herself.

Anyway, nice strawwoman, since no one is attacking his girlfriend, but if Matt wants to make a habit of his Sara Mead series, "Sara says yes, and conveniently enough, I agree!" in which he links to something he said, agrees, and doesn't give us any of his big brained harvard reasoning for this, and all in the name of feminism, he opens himself up to charges that he is pandering.

Just like the pundits he complains about.

You make me laugh childress, "Douchebag accusations aside?" So it's okay for you to be an asshole, but not anyone else?

I steal from Atrios? There are 3/4 million google hits for dirty fucking hippy or hippies and that's not counting f'n. I don't think Atrios typed all of them in himself.

Besides which twit, Atrios' long long policy is that we are all free to steal his stuff, he likes to see it out there. But I know you knew that, right?

Anyway, I think Atrios can handle himself too. As I said Mr. Douchebag wilting flower, perhaps you should worry more about your own life and why you are arguing on the Intarweb with some fucktard like me. What's that gaining you?

Posted by jerry | August 3, 2007 7:47 PM

I have to note how funny it is for childress to be going around calling out misogyny all the while using a very misogynistic word like "douchebag"

Heh. Indeed. Fucktard.

Posted by jerry | August 3, 2007 8:02 PM

Yes. Just like when I call you, jerry, a colostomy bag, I am insulting old people everywhere. Or like, when I call you an ass wipe, I am insulting people who wipe their asses. Your logic is undeniable. Resistance is futile. I passively await my incorporation into the collective.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 3, 2007 8:11 PM

JJ -

Thanx for the heads-up on the FT article.

================================================

BTW, Thomas Ricks in FIASCO points out that there was a lot of dissent and warnings about Iraq in professional military journals before the war.

Somehow, the MSM didn't get a whiff of it.

Posted by Steve J. | August 3, 2007 10:01 PM

Good grief kids, take it outside...

Matt...you say *I'm not sure what I have to add.*

Provoking thought, allowing folks to voice their opinions is a valid and very necessary addition. One voices concern giving another and another courage to join...a chorus of public (and apparently peer) outcry makes it way into the MSM giving those with concerns courage to raise their voices.

There was little attention paid to the protesters pre-invasion...perhaps next time, more will have more courage to question.

As to DC...my view is it's feeding on itself...it's insular, cut off from the broad scope of thought out here with the rest of us. It happens when any entity gets too big, to dependent on itself. K Street is a cabal. The rest, I believe, are for the most part good hearted folks caught at the trough with no clear way of breaking free.

Publically finance elections. Free what are probably good people to prove themselves for what they are. Voters exercise their displeasure or pleasure.

Dissolve media conglomerates. Few entities control the majority of what the majority gets fed. Not good for democracy. Free up good journalism to be the treasure it is to good democracy.

It's all fixable. We just got to bite the proverbial bullet and start somewhere.

Posted by G Davis | August 3, 2007 10:21 PM

What's terrifying is that the timid and risk adverse are the pro-war people. Wars entered into casually have a way of spirally out of control. Look at French/English Hundred years war, the American Civil War, WWI, or the Iraq/Iran war, all of which were started rather casually, and went on for years and years and cost millions of lives.

Posted by sab | August 3, 2007 10:25 PM

What Monty said.

Posted by cal1942 | August 3, 2007 10:48 PM

Just for the record, nearly 60% of the Congressional Democrats voted against the Iraq AUMF. Three-fifths of the Representatives did not give Bush authorization to even threaten to use force to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq; two-fifths of the Senators voted the same way (although none of those Senators seem to be on our plate of selections even with the current wide field).

I know everybody loooves to laugh at Dennis Kucinich because he's a short, funny-looking guy, but this is part of a statement he made a week after the Iraq document dump on 6 December 2002:

Thus far, the Administration has failed to show any evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs to the U.S. Congress, to the inspectors at the United Nations (UN), or to the American people. Any information the Administration has that counters the Iraqi disclosure should be provided to the United Nations immediately. Iraq has made its disclosure and now is the appropriate time for the Administration to present its evidence.

That was only one of a series of statements he made before the AUMF vote, after the AUMF vote, and after the beginning of the war more than four years ago.

They're far more equivocal and measured than those of any of the other currently-announced candidates:

http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=738

Laugh yourselves silly.

Posted by darrelplant | August 3, 2007 10:54 PM

I have a hard time seeing one one can add to this post, though Nell does add something. It's not just that people were individually cowardly; lots of management types made conscious decisions towards institutional cowardice.

Don Williams has a good point, too, though perhaps I misread it through the static on his shoe phone.

In the end, however, I think we need to seriously confront the idea that DC is a cowardly, insular, professionally-driven culture that works very, very hard to defend itself against the "extreme", "partisan" views from, you know, America, without ever considering that their defensive stance is, in itself, a very, very extreme partisan viewpoint- though their party maps to neither the GOP nor the Dems.

Until the Harry Reids of the world accept this as a given, neither party in DC can do the work of the people who put them there...

Posted by JT | August 3, 2007 11:15 PM

I just hope all the bloggers who came to Chicago are out getting loaded somewhere reasonably cool right now, and not sitting at the hotel looking at the laptop (like me, ok, but I just got back in from being out at a couple bars).

Posted by dude | August 4, 2007 12:16 AM

Lmao, a Venezuelan mennace. That's just retarded. Chavez is not a threat to us, and doesn't even really appear to be a threat to his own people. He has always abided by democratic decisions, and has only sought extra powers to deal with his own nation's endemic corruption. He shut down a TV station that was involved in a coup, as we would do if CNN allowed it's Atlanta headquarters to be used to state a Republican coup.

Why don't you say what you really mean: Hugo Chavez won't allow American companies to steal his nations resources. He won't allow the rich to treat the poor like indentured servants, and that pisses you off. You think people like you are special, and deserve special treatment because deep down, people like you are fascists. You think the rules are for other, lesser peoples and you believe the government exists to help corporations loot public treasuries. You are, basically, a sick bastard who doesn't believe in democracy.

Posted by soullite | August 4, 2007 8:24 AM

Heh, the last time I was in Chicago I had a police scanner with me and by the time I finished the evening I was glad I'd decided to rest after the trip instead of going out.

But I'm sure it's really not as dangerous as it sounded.

Posted by serial catowner | August 4, 2007 8:29 AM

This was another edition of open secrets. Everyone who has half a brain knows that a Palestinian state is an impossibility. There is nothing controversial about it, unless you happen to say so outloud in public. We are ruled by open secrets.

For instance the biggest financial crisis since 1929 is starting to unfold as the Credit Bubble starts to deflate. Since the ignition of the bubbles final desperate chapter by Greenspan et. al, with the mortgage mania the end has always been a certainty. All the players knew it on a gut level but were polite enough not to mention it, till now.

Douglas M. Peta, chief market strategist at J. & W. Seligman & Company, an investment firm based in New York.

“It seems to me things got every bit as silly in the credit markets in the last few years as they did in tech stocks in the late 1990s,

Thank for mentioning it now Doug. So it goes. The biggest story of our lifetimes is there for all to see and almost nobody knows what they are looking at. You will be hearing soon how the financial markets are separate from the real economy. Don't believe it. Capitalist economies start with finance. Finance is the ground, the 'real' economy is the field.

If my chicken little act is all wet then never mind. If I am right then Bush's problems have just increased a million fold, The thing is nothing positive will accrue to the Democrats since they are just as clueless.

Posted by rapier | August 4, 2007 10:17 AM