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Credit: The Week

More "Bad Opinions" here. Open thread below....

As Chris Hayes points out in this column for The Nation, the sudden urgency over deficit reduction has no basis in reality, much like our experience with another national frenzy:

The hysteria has reached such a pitch that Republican senators (joined by Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson) have filibustered an extension of unemployment benefits because it was not offset by spending cuts. Keep in mind, the cost of the extension for people unlucky enough to be caught in the jaws of the worst recession in thirty years is $35 billion. The bill would increase the debt by less than 0.3 percent.

This all seems eerily familiar. The conversation—if it can be called that—about deficits recalls the national conversation about war in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. From one day to the next, what was once accepted by the establishment as tolerable—Saddam Hussein—became intolerable, a crisis of such pressing urgency that "serious people" were required to present their ideas about how to deal with it. Once the burden of proof shifted from those who favored war to those who opposed it, the argument was lost.

We are poised on the same tipping point with regard to the debt. Amid official unemployment of 9.5 percent and a global contraction, we shouldn't even be talking about deficits in the short run. Yet these days, entrance into the club of the "serious" requires not a plan for reducing unemployment but a plan to do battle with the invisible and as yet unmaterialized international bond traders preparing an attack on the dollar.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the selling of the Iraq War was its false pretext. It never really was about weapons of mass destruction, as Paul Wolfowitz admitted. WMDs were just "what everyone could agree on." So it is with deficits. Conservatives and their neoliberal allies don't really care about deficits; they care about austerity—about gutting the welfare state and redistributing wealth upward. That's the objective. Deficits are just what they can all agree on, the WMDs of this manufactured crisis. Senator John Kyl of Arizona, speaking on Fox, has come out and admitted as much. All new spending increases must be offset, he said, but "you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." So there you have it.

Remember that the Iraq War might have been prevented had more Congressional Democrats stood up to oppose it. Instead, many of those who privately knew the entire enterprise was a colossal disaster in the making buckled to right-wing pressure and pundit hawks and voted for it. That mistake is being repeated. Despite White House economists' full realization of the need for stimulus in the face of astronomically high unemployment, the New York Times has reported that the political minds inside the White House, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, have decided that the public has no appetite for increased spending. "It's my job to report what the public mood is," Axelrod explained. He then showed up on ABC's This Week to wave the white flag, saying that the president would continue to press to extend unemployment benefits; conspicuously omitted was any mention of aid to state governments, which had originally been included in the president's June letter to Congress asking for a new stimulus package.

There is hope, however: the public is nowhere near as obsessed with the deficit as are those in Washington. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans support "additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy," with 38 percent opposed. A Hart Research Associates poll published in June showed that two-thirds of Americans favor continuing unemployment benefits. There is also very little public appetite for "entitlement reform," a k a cutting Social Security.

The lesson of the Iraq War is that over the long haul, good politics and good policy can't be separated. If the White House is tempted to support bad policy in the short term because it seems less risky politically, it should give John Kerry a call and ask him how that worked out for him with Iraq.

The DOD's press service announced that former SecDef Rumsfeld was honored last Friday with a ceremonial portrait that will hang in the halls of the Pentagon, warning all future SecDefs about the dangers of arrogance and hubris. Okay, I made that last part up. But I couldn't help a slight reflex gag as a bit of vomit threatened to back up into my mouth as I read SecDef Gate's praise of his predecessor.

Both of his official portraits will hang in the Pentagon. The newest, painted by Steven Polson and unveiled today, shows Rumsfeld at his stand-up desk with a picture of first-responders and soldiers unfurling the flag over the still-burning Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001.

The unveiling ceremony was a veritable who’s who. Former defense secretaries William Cohen and Frank Carlucci attended. Retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers and retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace – who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff alongside Rumsfeld - were there with their wives. Former deputy secretaries Paul Wolfowitz and Gordon England, retired Air Force Gen. Joe Ralston, retired Navy Adm. Vern Clark, retired Navy Adm. Ed Giambastiani, former senior Pentagon correspondent Charlie Aldinger, and many more friends attended the event.

As one wise old man once said, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." I'll spare you my usual angy, spitting diatribe about how Rumsfeld ruined the Army's force structure, wripped apart its modernization efforts, fed its troops into the sausage machine we lovingly call "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and kept yammering about how the WMDs were "over there, north, south, west, somewhere in Iraq." History will define what a villain this man was, and make an example of his insanely poor dictatorship of US defense efforts.

But I do take exception with the poor research of Jim Garamone, writing for the American Forces Press Service. The photo of the Army soldiers and workers unfurling an American flag against the side of the Pentagon was not taken on September 12, 2001. It was unfurled in a ceremony on October 11, 2001 (see the photo in the Wiki site). I know that because I was there in the bleachers along with a few thousand others, trying to understand what just happened a month ago. I was there on September 12, 2001, also. They were still a little busy that day, searching for bodies and putting out fires, to be unfurling huge flags on the sides of the Pentagon. The failure of this DOD news service to catch this error really kind of pisses me off.

But no, we have to smile fake smiles and pretend that we honor this jackass, this "honorable man," because of the "heroic" efforts he undertook after terrorists hit the Pentagon. Enough said. I'm wasting time on this ass and I have better things to do. "The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, So let it be with Caesar."

UPDATE: I can be a real asshole sometimes. Let me apologize to Jim Garamone for failing to do the necessary research on the photo in the Rumsfeld portrait. Had I spent a few minutes more on this post, I would have found out that, yeah, they did hang the flag on Sep 12, 2001. My irrational anger at Rumsfeld blinded me to this obvious point.

American Nonsense: FISA Fight: Hoyer, Blue Dogs, and Compromise (h/t Swimgirl)

The Brad Blog: How to cast a ballot in Indiana if you don't have a state-issued ID. Disenfranchishing the poor, minorities, and the elderly makes wingmutts happy. But it's not really a big deal to some of our trivia-obsessed journamalists.

Justice League: The lawyer for vice-president Dick Cheney claimed that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behavior on the job.

Intel Dump: In his first public comments about the Iraq war since stepping down as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz decided to open with a variant of the classic "mistakes were made" Washington mea culpa.

Poverty News Blog: Yesterday, while Bubble Boy was conducting the most fatuous press conference in human history, he refused to discuss Afghanistan, where war and narcotics have contributed to surging prices on diminished food supplies.

Blue Gal: Getting to know your neighbors...

AP Via Yahoo:

Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, who resigned amid a furor over his handling of a bank pay package for his girlfriend, has joined the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, as a visiting scholar.

AEI's president, Christopher DeMuth, made the announcement Monday. Wolfowitz will work on entrepreneurship and development issues, Africa and public-private partnerships, the group said in a release.

Wolfowitz's last day as head of the World Bank, a major poverty-fighting institution, was on Saturday, ending a stormy two-year run.

He was essentially forced to step down from the World Bank after a special panel found that he broke bank rules in arranging a hefty pay raise for Shaha Riza, his girlfriend and bank employee. Wolfowitz's handling of the pay package prompted a staff revolt and calls by Europeans and others for him to resign. Read more...

ABC:

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has resigned his post, effective June 30. An internal panel tasked with investigating the lucrative pay and promotion package Wolfowitz arranged in 2005 for girlfriend Shaha Riza found him guilty of breaking bank rules...read on

AP photo: Paul Wolfowitz is in deep trouble with the World Bank, but like most of the Bushies---he refuses to step down. Instead, he does a "Cheney" on them all.

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they f*&k with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f*&k them too."--- "Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply."

A Cheney in this instance is telling someone to F*&k themselves and not shooting them in the face. As always, Bush supports his corrupt pals:

White House Spokesman Tony Snow says President Bush continues to stand by Wolfowitz."The fact is that he made mistakes. They are not in our view, firing offenses," he said.
What is a firing offense to this administration? Please, tell us! C&Ler "Liberty lover," reminds me to ask the nine US Attorney's what a firing offense is. ABC is reporting that the WH is showing signs of cracking:

On the second issue, the senior official told ABC News "it is an open question" whether Wolfowitz can remain an effective president of the World Bank.

International Herald Tribune:

Paul Wolfowitz came under renewed pressure to resign as World Bank president on Monday as a bank committee formally transmitted its findings that he was guilty of a conflict of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion in 2005 to Shaha Ali Riza, his companion.[..]

It was not clear whether the committee, consisting of 7 of the bank's 24 board members, would remove Wolfowitz from his post or, more likely, express a loss of confidence in his leadership in a manner that might persuade him to resign. Bank officials say that a majority of the bank board has concluded that he should go.

In another sign of Wolfowitz's difficulties, his top communications aide, Kevin Kellems, resigned on Monday, saying that "the current environment surrounding the leadership" at the bank made it "very difficult to be effective in helping to advance the mission of the institution."[..]

(A senior European) official said that the overwhelming sentiment in Europe, as expressed in editorials, political commentaries and even Web logs, was that European governments should never again let the United States pick the president of the World Bank all by itself.

UPDATE: More than 50,000 Avaaz.org members from more than 180 countries have signed a global petition calling for Wolfowitz to be fired. At 1 pm tomorrow--Wednesday, May 9--join us for a rally outside of the World Bank headquarters at 1818 H St NW in DC to deliver the petition. We'll have a banner reading "World to Bank - Fire Wolfowitz," and flags from around the world.

Hear the drumbeat getting louder?

UPI:

An agency that oversees the World Bank is asking for the resignation of the bank's president, former deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

In a document obtained by the Financial Times, the Independent Evaluation Group asked for Wolfowitz's immediate resignation, saying a continuation of his leadership will lead to "irreparable harm to worldwide efforts in poverty reduction and sustainable development."

The pressure for Wolfowitz to resign mounted last week, when 42 of the bank's senior former executives published an open letter urging his removal.

"There is only one way for Mr. Wolfowitz to further the mission of the bank: he must resign," the letter said.