Not the Swiftest Porsches in the Garage

This story on Republicans who regularly get the party into trouble thanks to the less-than-intelligent comments they are often wont to make in public, is a welcome one. For one thing, it embarrasses those Republicans, and perhaps--just perhaps--forces them to either step up their game, or get off the national stage. For another, it forces party leaders to tell those Republicans to either step up their game or get off the national stage. And for a third, it highlights good work that the Republican party has done in order to enhance its image in the aftermath of two straight presidential election losses.

That having been written, it is clear that Bobby Jindal was right to urge the GOP not to be "the stupid party." To be sure, the vast majority of Republicans have not only heeded that particular call, they have practiced what Jindal has preached long before Jindal started preaching it. But there are too many Republicans who are deaf to Jindal's pleas. As the story makes clear, they have something of an incentive to be deaf; they desperately want to get on television and apparently, they are willing to make dumb statements in order to achieve that goal. Something has to be done to keep those Republicans from taking the party down with them every time they wreak havoc on their own personal reputations.

The best thing that can happen to the Republican party is for it to elect a president whose words and presence will overshadow the mentally challenged statements of a few backbenchers. But paradoxically, those backbenchers make it more difficult for the Republican party to elect one of its own as president, which is kind of a problem for the GOP, anyway that one looks at it. So in the meantime, the Republican party may have to institute a tighter form of message control. Yes, I am aware of the fact that in this day and age, an individual representative or senator is less apt to follow public relations dictates from on high. But that doesn't mean that the Republican party leadership cannot have an open and frank discussion with members about the dangers of making stupid statements, and insist that members either watch what they say and how they say it, or retreat into the shadows. Such a policy will not stop all dumb comments from being made. But it may stop a number of them, which I imagine that the GOP would welcome.

IRS Follies: More on the Supposed Non-Scandal That Actually Is a Scandal

Another blow to the theory that "rogue agents" in a local IRS office were responsible for targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny: 

An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for more than a year without action.

Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for mishandling the applications.

Ron Fournier points out that second-term Obama administration scandals are biting into the president's approval ratings:

There is a common element to the so-called Obama scandals—the IRS targeting of conservatives, the fatal attack in Benghazi, and widespread spying on U.S. journalists and ordinary Americans. It is a lack of credibility.

In each case, the Obama administration has helped make controversies worse by changing its stories, distorting facts, and lying.

The abuse of trust may be taking a toll on President Obama's reputation.

A CNN/ORC poll of 1,104 adult Americans June 11-13 shows the president's job approval rating at 45 percent, down 8 percentage points in a month.

Among young voters, only 48 percent approve of the president's performance, a 17-point decline since the last CNN/ORC poll. These are the president's most loyal supporters, and the future of American politics.

The drop in presidential approval is across the board, affecting Obama's standing on every issue measured: The economy (down 2 points); foreign affairs (down 5 points); federal budget (down 4 points); terrorism (down 13 points); and immigration (down 4 points).

Asked for the first time by CNN/ORC about the president's handling of "government surveillance of U.S. citizens," 61 percent of Americans said they disapprove.

The Iranian Presidential Elections: What Next?

Despite my disbelief  that Iran's theocrats would allow a perceived moderate to win the Iranian presidential election, a perceived moderate has gone ahead and done just that. It would appear that the turnout for the election was so significant and the votes for Hassan Rohani so overwhelming that the regime could not afford to implement the kind of post-election fraud that it tried to implement in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections.

So Rohani will become president on August 3, and the moderates have won one, right? Well, maybe not. I called Rohani "a perceived moderate" for a reason:

It’s not clear why much of the Western media continues to describe Iran’s newly elected president as a “moderate.” After all, Hassan Rouhani is a regime pillar: As an early follower of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rouhani joined him in exile in Paris, and over the last 34 years, the 64-year-old Qom-educated cleric has held key positions in the regime’s political echelons, and served in top military jobs during Iran’s decade-long war with Iraq. As Iran’s chief interlocutor with the West on the regime’s nuclear portfolio, Rouhani boasted of deceiving his negotiating partners. Domestically, he has threatened to crush protestors “mercilessly and monumentally,” and likely participated in the campaign of assassinations of the regime’s Iranian enemies at home and abroad, especially in Europe. Currently, Rouhani serves as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative on the supreme national security council.

Aside from the fact that Iran’s English-language television station Press TV calls him a moderate, what exactly, in the eyes of the West, makes him one? After all, former president Muhammad Khatami labeled his public diplomacy campaign a “dialogue of civilizations,” which played right into Western ideas of tolerance and moderation. But Rouhani has nothing similar in his past.

“I think he gets that label because he has been Rafsanjani's factotum,” says former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another regime pillar and former president of Iran, is typically referred to as a “pragmatist” in the Western press. “Compared to Khamenei's circle, these fellows seem moderate,” says Gerecht. “Rouhani ran their little think tank around which foreign-policy types, the types that Westerners meet, gathered. Also, Rouhani was party to the only temporary ‘freeze’ in Iran's nuke program. Some folks—most notably the EU's Javier Solana—made a lot out of this. They should not have.”

There is a difference between being a moderate and being clever. Rohani is certainly more clever than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerence and outrageous statements caused the international community to rally against Iran, and he may be more moderate than Ali Khamene'i, who because of his weak theological credentials is not taken seriously by much of the clergy, and who has to rely on his hardline reputation and his relationship with Iran's Revolutionary Guards in order to keep power. But all of this does not moderation make. More:

Hassan Rowhani, Iran's president-elect, said he hopes the country can reach a new agreement with the West over its nuclear programme, but ruled out a halt to its controversial uranium enrichment programme.

Mr Rowhani, a moderate cleric who was declared winner of Iran's presidential election on Saturday, also described as unfair and unjustified sanctions imposed against the Islamic republic over the nuclear issue.

The 64-year-old's victory raised hopes of an easing of strained ties with Western nations, but he used his first news conference on Monday to rule out a halt to the enrichment programme.

"This period is over," Mr Rowhani said, referring to international demands for a halt to Tehran's uranium enrichment programme.

There were "many ways to build trust" with the West, he added, as Iran would be "more transparent to show that its activities fall within the framework of international rules".

No one should be surprised that the nuclear enrichment program is not ending anytime soon. Since the days of the shah, Iran has wanted nuclear power and it is utterly unremarkable that the Iranian government is continuing work to achieve nuclear capacity. But for those who might have thought that the "moderate" Rohani will curb Iran's nuclear program, news that he is resolved to continue it must come as a shock.

Rohani makes noises  about wanting better ties with the United States, but he won't engage in direct talks with the United States in order to bring about better ties. Thomas Erdbrink does a good job in describing the limits to Rohani's sense of "moderation":

. . . Mr. Rowhani, 64, is no renegade reformist, voted in while Iran’s leaders were not paying attention. Instead, his political life has been spent at the center of Iran’s conservative establishment, from well before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution in the 1970s. And analysts say that Mr. Rowhani’s first priority will be mediating the disturbed relationship between that leadership and Iran’s citizens, not carrying out major change.

Even his nickname — “the diplomat sheik” — is testament to his role as a pragmatist seeking conciliation for the Islamic leadership. Whether in dealing with protesting students, the aftermath of devastating earthquakes or, in his stint as nuclear negotiator, working to ease international pressure as Iran moved forward with its nuclear program, Mr. Rowhani has worked to find practical ways to help advance the leadership’s goals.

To be sure, it will be interesting to see what happens next in Iran. Elections have consequences and the results of the Iranian presidential election will be sure to resonate . . . somehow. But as all Iran-watchers know, there are serious limits to the powers of the Iranian president. True power resides in the hands of Khamene'i, as the nation's supreme leader. And to the extent that Hassan Rohani has power, he may not use it in the service of moderation.

Weekly Digest: June 9, 2013-June 15, 2013

  • Wanted: Better War Planning by Better War Planners

    Who reads passages like the following from this news report   on the American decision to arm rebels in Syria, and feels comforted? “Arming the Syrian rebels is unlikely to tip the balance in their favor,” said  Shadi Hamid , director of research at the  Brookings Institution ’s Doha Center. “It might have made a difference a year ago, but, today, the Assad regime -- particularly after re-taking Qusair -- has the advantage.” Even some U.S. officials are worried that Obama’s reluctant decision…

  • More on the First Round of the Iranian Presidential Election

    In this post , I pleaded with Iranian reformists not to boycott the Iranian presidential elections in response to regime efforts to curb moderate and reformist participation in the political process. As I mentioned, "[t] he regime would like nothing less than to see moderate and reformist voters disillusioned, dispirited, apathetic and un-engaged in the upcoming elections; after all, such a state of affairs makes it easier to elect hardliners without resorting to vote-rigging, and thus without…

  • Surprising--and Unsurprising--News from the First Round of Iran's Presidential Election

    First, the surprising news: The leading moderate candidate for the presidency has emerged as the strongest of all of the candidates after the first round of voting :  Early results from Iran's presidential election put the reformist-backed candidate, Hassan Rouhani, in the lead. With 2.9m ballots counted, the cleric had 1.46m votes, or 49.87%, well ahead of Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, with 488,000 votes, or 16.65%. If no candidate wins more than 50%, a run-off will be held next Friday. It…

  • Eventually, Andrew Sullivan Deserts His Idols

    And it looks as though he has done so again . To be fair, I don't blame him .

  • A War in Syria?

    There have been a number of developments regarding the civil war in Syria. For one thing, the Obama administration has come to the conclusion that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against Syrian rebels, and now believes that it must arm the rebels against the regime .  It ought to go without saying that the use of chemical weapons is A Bad Thing, but everyone ought to understand that the arming of Syrian rebels may not represent the end of American involvement in Syria. Rather, it may only represent…

  • Here's the Thing about the “Least Truthful Answer”

    It's still not truthful .  Maybe James Clapper should have asked to go into executive session--though that would have tipped everyone off--instead of giving false testimony to Congress.

  • Excel Spreadsheets as Art

    Behold .  I am impressed.

  • Quote of the Day

    . . .  if “all successful applications of probability to describe nature can be traced to quantum origins,” as Albrecht and Phillips maintain, that means that even when we think we’re using classical probabilities, deep down, it’s really the quantum world calling the shots. We are opening the box on Schrödinger’s cat every time we flip a coin or check the weather, and countless other times during every day. -- Jennifer Ouelette . 

  • All Hail Kambiz Hosseini

    If you were an Iranian living in Iran, you would seek some sanity in the midst of all of the lunacy your own government keeps inundating you with. Thankfully, Kambiz Hosseini is dedicated to spreading sanity :  In the world of Iranian actor Kambiz Hosseini, almost everything about his country's presidential elections is side-splittingly funny. "Becoming the president of Iran is like making a James Bond movie," Hosseini said in a recent CBCRadio program. "The characters stay the same, but…

  • Behold, the Apocalypse Is Upon Us

    I actually agree with Jeffrey Toobin  on whether Edward Snowden is a hero . Therefore, we must be doomed. The asteroid will hit at any moment: Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some,  including my…

  • We Passed Health Care Reform . . .

    And now, we are finding out what is in it :  Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance  announced    that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,”…

  • Political Freedom--Or the Lack Thereof--in Iran

    I really look forward to the day when I don't have to read stories like this one .  But I fear that day won't arrive for a very long time: A senior Iranian diplomat linked to Iran's reformists, who has been detained at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison for three months, has been denied access to his attorney for the entire time, sources familiar with the case told Reuters on Monday. Bagher Asadi, who was previously a senior diplomat at Iran's U.N. mission in New York and most recently a…

    • Wanted: Better War Planning by Better War Planners

    Who reads passages like the following from this news report  on the American decision to arm rebels in Syria, and feels comforted?

    “Arming the Syrian rebels is unlikely to tip the balance in their favor,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center. “It might have made a difference a year ago, but, today, the Assad regime -- particularly after re-taking Qusair -- has the advantage.”

    Even some U.S. officials are worried that Obama’s reluctant decision to provide limited amounts of small arms and ammunition to the Syrian opposition is enough to drag the U.S. into a third Mideast war but not enough to win it.

    [. . .]

    The most perverse twist, even given the complicated politics of the     Middle East, is that the U.S. now finds itself sharing a goal with the Sunni extremist groups allied with al-Qaeda that are seeking to replace Assad’s secular regime with Islamic rule, said one of the officials. While the Islamists’ vision of a post-Assad Syria is clear, Obama’s isn’t, this official said.

    Both officials said the Obama administration has done virtually no planning for a postwar Syria, much as President     George W. Bush’s administration had no road map for Iraq after the U.S. invasion other than a dead-on-arrival plan to put Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi in power.

    This intervention has not been thought through. So why is it happening?

     

    More on the First Round of the Iranian Presidential Election

    In this post, I pleaded with Iranian reformists not to boycott the Iranian presidential elections in response to regime efforts to curb moderate and reformist participation in the political process. As I mentioned, "[t]he regime would like nothing less than to see moderate and reformist voters disillusioned, dispirited, apathetic and un-engaged in the upcoming elections; after all, such a state of affairs makes it easier to elect hardliners without resorting to vote-rigging, and thus without generating controversy."

    Apparently, this blog is rather well-read in Iran, because my calls were heeded:

    . . . many veteran Iran political watchers, who had expected a conservative winner in what had been a carefully vetted and controlled campaign, expressed surprise.

    “If the reports are true, it tells me that there was a hidden but huge reservoir of reformist energy in Iran that broke loose in a true political wave,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst for the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm in Washington. “It was unpredictable — not even tip of the iceberg visible two days or three days ago — but it seems to have happened.”

    Farideh Farhi, an Iranian scholar at the University of Hawaii, while careful not to draw conclusions until the official result was known, said it was clear that reformists and other disaffected voters in Iran had summoned energy to mobilize for a heavy turnout despite their own doubts about the system.

    “Everyone’s assumption was they would not be able to create a wave of voters in the society,” Ms. Farhi said. “This outcome was not something planned by Ayatollah Khamenei.”

    The mood in the country led to the reformist decision to participate heavily in the election:

    In surveys and interviews throughout the campaign, Iranians have consistently listed as their top priorities the economy, individual rights and the normalization of relations with the rest of the world. They also said they saw the vote as a way to send a message about their displeasure with the direction of the country, which has been hobbled by economic mismanagement and tough Western sanctions, stemming from the government’s refusal to stop enriching uranium.

    This episode should teach reformists that they have the numbers and the power to change the political process for the better if they insist on continuing to participate in that process. Hopefully, there will be no more talk of boycotts and no more arguments that reformists should abstain from politics. Yes, the hardliners will do everything within their power to prevent reformists from changing Iran for the better, but reformists shouldn't make the hardliners' job easier by deserting the political field. 

    I do have to take issue with one part of the Times story, in which we are told that Hassan Rohani's "closest competitor in the early results, Mr. Ghalibaf, is also considered a moderate, a strong manager who has improved the quality of life in Tehran in his eight years as mayor." Qalibaf is a moderate? Really?

    Is Iran’s presidential hopeful Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf a hard-liner or a moderate? It depends on his audience, apparently.

    Recordings of two starkly different accounts given by Qalibaf of his role in the crackdown against protests have emerged online.

    One recording was allegedly made     at a meeting Qalibaf is said to have held a few weeks ago with hard-line Basij students.

    In it Qalibaf, Tehran's mayor and a former Revolutionary Guards air force commander, appears to take credit for cracking down on Iran’s student movement. He says he personally beat up students with batons in the 1999 crackdown in Tehran and obtained permission from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to shoot at student protesters in 2003. The Basij forces in recent years have been accused of being actively involved in repressive measures against students.

    Yet, a few weeks later, in another meeting with students at Tehran’s Sharif University, Qalibaf had a very different account of the same 2003 event: He said he received the order to shoot at students but refused to do so.

    Qalibaf's contradictory accounts appear to be part of an attempt to appeal to voters from different sides of the political spectrum as the June 14 presidential election approaches.

    Why would any Iranian trust a presidential candidate who talks out of both sides of his mouth like this?

     

    Surprising--and Unsurprising--News from the First Round of Iran's Presidential Election

    First, the surprising news: The leading moderate candidate for the presidency has emerged as the strongest of all of the candidates after the first round of voting: 

    Early results from Iran's presidential election put the reformist-backed candidate, Hassan Rouhani, in the lead.

    With 2.9m ballots counted, the cleric had 1.46m votes, or 49.87%, well ahead of Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, with 488,000 votes, or 16.65%.

    If no candidate wins more than 50%, a run-off will be held next Friday.

    It remains to be seen if a second round can be avoided. If we end up having a second round, my fear is that at that point, the regime will work to ensure that the deck is stacked against Rohani. Unless the regime is absolutely determined to ensure that no one ever again accuses it of rigging presidential elections, I can't believe that it will allow a moderate to become president and give Ali Khamene'i yet another round of headaches.

    And now, for the unsurprising news: 

    Millions of Iranians took to the streets to demand a re-run after the last presidential election in June 2009, when the Supreme Leader dismissed claims by the three defeated candidates of widespread fraud.

    Two of them, former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi and senior cleric Mehdi Karroubi, became leaders of a nationwide opposition known as the Green Movement, after its signature colour.

    They were placed under house arrested in February 2011 when they applied to stage a protest in support of the anti-government uprisings which were sweeping the Arab world. They are still being detained.

    No foreign observers are monitored this year's election and there have also been concerns that media coverage in the run-up has been unfair.

    Many reformist newspapers have been shut down, access to the internet and foreign broadcasters restricted, and journalists detained.

    On Thursday, the BBC accused the Iranian authorities of "unprecedented levels of intimidation" of BBC employees' families.

    It said Iran had warned the families of 15 BBC Persian Service staff that they must stop working for the BBC or their lives in London would be endangered.

    Tehran has so far made no comment on the allegation.

    Proof positive that no matter who becomes president, the nature of the regime prevents the emergence of democratic discourse and the thriving of basic political/social/media freedoms.

    A War in Syria?

    There have been a number of developments regarding the civil war in Syria. For one thing, the Obama administration has come to the conclusion that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against Syrian rebels, and now believes that it must arm the rebels against the regime.  It ought to go without saying that the use of chemical weapons is A Bad Thing, but everyone ought to understand that the arming of Syrian rebels may not represent the end of American involvement in Syria. Rather, it may only represent the beginnings of that involvement, and we may not like what comes next. For the moment, as the New York Times story indicates, the Obama administration has ruled out the implementation of a no-fly zone in Syria, which itself would constitute a military action; a no-fly zone is maintained through denying the enemy the ability to fly aircraft in the zone, of course, but it is also maintained by taking out enemy anti-aircraft batteries and missiles, and enemy radar that might undermine the maintenance of a no-fly zone by aircraft flown to enforce the no-fly rule.

    The problem with arming the rebels, however, is that we may be arming elements we don't particularly like. I referenced this danger in the past. Forgive the fact that I am quoting myself immediately below, but I think it might be called for in this case:

    There are calls for the administration to send arms to the Syrian opposition, but aiding the Free Syrian Army comes with a significant set of risks. There are allegations that armed opposition groups in Syria have engaged in significant human rights abuses, and offering aid to those groups might inadvertently benefit Islamists who are hostile to the United States and to American interests. Indeed, at least one UN official believes that anti-regime forces have used chemical weapons. The United States should not be eager to jump into bed with the Syrian opposition by giving arms and aid to religious fanatics and egregious violators of the laws of warfare.

    I am sorry to report that my concerns on this score may have been justified: 

    When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

    According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

    Qatta, in refusing to serve a customer coffee – it’s not clear why – had used a phrase that the Islamist rebels took as an insult toward the Prophet Mohammed, the most important figure in Islam. That offhand comment, made by a boy, was apparently enough for these rebels to warrant a grisly execution and public warning.

    The rebels,     according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

    The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

    And more:

    A Syrian rebel group's pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda's replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group's influence is not waning and that it may take a greater role in the Western-backed fight to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

    The pledge of allegiance by Syrian Jabhat al Nusra Front chief Abou Mohamad al-Joulani to al-Qaeda leader Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri was coupled with an announcement by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, that it would work with al Nusra as well.

    Lebanese Sheik Omar Bakri, a Salafist who says states must be governed by Muslim religious law, says al-Qaeda has assisted al Nusra for some time.

    "They provided them early on with technical, military and financial support , especially when it came to setting up networks of foreign jihadis who were brought into Syria," Bakri says. "There will certainly be greater coordination between the two groups."

    The United States, which supports the overthrow of Assad, designated al Nusra a terrorist entity in December. The Obama administration has said it wants to support only those insurgent groups that are not terrorist organizations.

    As though it will be easy to ensure that money goes only to those rebel segments that the Obama administration happens to like. More:

    When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January, many of Syria’s revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government, designed to discredit those who opposed the regime of President Bashar Assad and to hide the regime’s own brutal tactics.

    Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad.

    Not only does the group still conduct suicide bombings that have killed hundreds, but they’ve proved to be critical to the rebels’ military advance. In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest frontline fighting. Groups who call themselves the Free Syrian Army and report to military councils led by defected Syrian army officers move into the captured territory afterward.

    The prominence of Nusra in the rebel cause worries U.S. and other Western officials, who say its operations rely on the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.

    Why are we giving arms to rebel elements when there is no guarantee whatsoever that those arms won't end up in the hands of terrorists who have professed hostility towards the United States and towards American interests, and who have actually carried out terrorist operations against the United States?

    Policymaking is not made any easier by the fact that former president Bill Clinton is double-dog daring the Obama administration to be tough in Syria, lest President Obama look like "a fool" or "a wuss."  I don't even pretend to understand the logic here. Surely, Bill Clinton knows that many of the Syrian rebel groups are non-fans of the United States and don't profess our moral values. Surely, he understands that our willingness to dip our toes into the waters of war in Syria might lead us to wade in those waters further in the future. Surely he realizes that there are no American national security interests at stake here--indeed, from an exceedingly cold realpolitik standpoint, if the United States really wanted to see its interests served, it would do everything within its power to ensure that the civil war in Syria goes on for as long as possible (the better to bleed Iran dry as it seeks to prop up the Assad regime and throws good money after bad in the process). And surely the former president realizes that while the human carnage in Syria is nothing short of horrific, there may be very little that the United States can do about that short of engaging in a full-scale war which would involve boots on the ground--a proposition for which there is no support whatsoever in the United States. Maybe the plan is that Hillary Clinton will eventually embrace all this tough, anti-fool/anti-wuss rhetoric in any run for the presidency, thus making her appear to be strong and resolute in the view of American voters. That may make for great politics, but it would make for a terrible foreign/military policy.

    Quote of the Day

    . . . if “all successful applications of probability to describe nature can be traced to quantum origins,” as Albrecht and Phillips maintain, that means that even when we think we’re using classical probabilities, deep down, it’s really the quantum world calling the shots. We are opening the box on Schrödinger’s cat every time we flip a coin or check the weather, and countless other times during every day.

    --Jennifer Ouelette. 

    All Hail Kambiz Hosseini

    If you were an Iranian living in Iran, you would seek some sanity in the midst of all of the lunacy your own government keeps inundating you with. Thankfully, Kambiz Hosseini is dedicated to spreading sanity: 

    In the world of Iranian actor Kambiz Hosseini, almost everything about his country's presidential elections is side-splittingly funny.

    "Becoming the president of Iran is like making a James Bond movie," Hosseini said in a recent CBCRadio program. "The characters stay the same, but they just keep changing the actors." He goes on to single out each one of the eight men selected last month by Iran's Guardian Council to contend for the presidency, leaving no one unblemished.

    Hosseini's scathing and hysterical news podcast, is an essential part of the weekly media diet of Iran's middle class. Produced by the New York-based     International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and incorporating sound bites from the week's headlines and commentary from Hosseini, the show channels the pathos of a generation desperate to intervene in a meaningful way in Iran's political charades.

    Gaining access to Hosseini's show can be a complicated affair for Iranians. In Iran's capital, Tehran, years of Internet censorship and a crackdown on independent media that intensified after the 2009 Green Movement have transformed the way Iranians consume media. In a thriving city of 12 million, unfettered access to the Internet and satellite television channels has long been out of reach. Yet with less than a week before the nation goes to the polls to elect a new president, the appetite for independent political commentary in Iran is perhaps at its highest point in the last four years, only to be met with increased government censorship of websites like Facebook, YouTube, and Google.

    It's perhaps difficult for web and media savvy Americans to imagine what its like to consume news in Iran.

    "People are sick and tired of the state-run agencies with anchors who sit in front of them and deliver news with this dry structure," Hosseini says. Full of energy and always talking at lightening speed on his weekly podcast, the Hosseini that sits before me at a Starbucks in lower Manhattan is more contemplative. Nicknames and political debauchery aside, the longer arch of Hosseini's career reflects someone genuinely interested in how acting and journalism can play out in the political arena.

    Here's hoping that more people like Hosseini speak up, make Iranians laugh, offer them some relief from their day-to-day troubles, and bring about genuine and positive sociopolitical change in the country. Iran deserves no less.

    Behold, the Apocalypse Is Upon Us

    I actually agree with Jeffrey Toobin on whether Edward Snowden is a hero. Therefore, we must be doomed. The asteroid will hit at any moment:

    Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

    Snowden provided information to the Washington     Post and the Guardian, which also posted a video interview with him. In it, he describes himself as appalled by the government he served:

    The N.S.A. has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

    I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.

    What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention. In any event, Snowden decided that he does not “want to live in a society” that intercepts private communications. His latter-day conversion is dubious.

    This is . . . actually very well put. While I am open to the possibility that the monitoring of Verizon phone calls and the PRISM program might have been necessary in order to prevent future terrorist attacks, I am uncomfortable with these programs. Very uncomfortable, in fact. That having been written, I am also uncomfortable with vigilantes inside the United States government deciding what will and will not be kept secret. Yes, I am aware of the fact that without Snowden, we might never have known about these programs, or that we may have had to learn about them from another leaker, and obviously, I struggle with the irony of decrying a leak that informed me of a government program I don't particularly like and would like to see come to an end if at all possible. But I will be the first to admit that the United States government needs to be able to keep some secrets in order to be able to do its job, and that people like Edward Snowden make it very difficult for the United States government to carry out its legitimate functions, even as they may shine a spotlight on a disturbing government activity. 

    I am not as disturbed about agreeing with David Brooks, who also makes some very good points about Snowden:

    For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

    He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths.

    He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.

    He betrayed his employers. Booz Allen and the C.I.A. took a high-school dropout and offered him positions with lavish salaries. He is violating the honor codes of all those who enabled him to rise.

    He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

    He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

    He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.

    Brooks appears to be much less disturbed about these government programs than I am. But that doesn't make his objections to Snowden's behavior any less valid.

    We Passed Health Care Reform . . .

    And now, we are finding out what is in it: 

    Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced  that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,” said Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in a statement. “Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.”

    The rates that Ohio reported are proposed rates; the Department of Insurance still has to formally approve them. “A total of 14 companies proposed rates for 214 plans to the Department. Projected costs from the companies for providing coverage for the required [by Obamacare] essential health benefits ranged from $282.51 to $577.40 for individual health insurance plans.”

    It’s called “rate shock,” but it’s not shocking to people who understand the economics of health insurance. In August 2011, Milliman, one of the nation’s leading actuarial firms,     predicted that Obamacare would increase individual-market premiums in Ohio by 55 to 85 percent. This past March, the Society of Actuaries projected that the law would increase premiums in that market by 81 percent. Like good players on “The Price is Right,” they both came in just under the Dept. of Insurance’s figure.

    I am pretty sure that the actuaries wish that they were wrong. But it would appear that they might have been all too accurate. My question is why we didn't hear more about this when Obamacare was being debated in Congress? I mean, I would hate to think that supporters of the Affordable (ha!) Care Act just decided to ram the bill through without letting the American people hear about the consequences that would fall on the country if the bill passed. That wasn't what all those honorable representatives and senators were aiming to do, was it?

    Political Freedom--Or the Lack Thereof--in Iran

    I really look forward to the day when I don't have to read stories like this one.  But I fear that day won't arrive for a very long time:

    A senior Iranian diplomat linked to Iran's reformists, who has been detained at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison for three months, has been denied access to his attorney for the entire time, sources familiar with the case told Reuters on Monday.

    Bagher Asadi, who was previously a senior diplomat at Iran's U.N. mission in New York and most recently a director at the secretariat of the so-called D8 group of developing nations in Istanbul, was arrested in mid-March in Tehran for unknown reasons, sources said last month.

    "He has a lawyer but he has been denied access to him for three months," a source familiar with the case told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "He (Asadi) has not been given the papers to sign by the authorities so he can see his lawyer. It's just a way of denying him (the lawyer) access to his client."

    Another source confirmed the remarks. Iran's U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Pants on Fire (Jim McDermott Edition)

    Politifact is not exactly known for being a propaganda organ for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but even it is forced to call shenanigans on Congressman Jim McDermott:

    At a House Ways and Means committee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., listened closely to the stories from members of groups that were snagged when the IRS cast a wide net for politically active organizations seeking tax-exempt status. All of the groups advocate for conservative causes, from opposing gay marriage to promoting a broad tea party agenda.

    While McDermott said he was sorry they had been singled out, and that "the IRS has unequivocally made a mistake here," he was more focused on the lack of clear legal rules that should guide the IRS.

    "Let’s not get lost," McDermott said. "During the Bush administration liberal groups were targeted without any concern by Mr. Issa or anyone else in this committee." (Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.)

    This caught our eye. Were liberal groups targeted when a Republican held the White House? And if so, were the circumstances back then similar to what has come to light today?

    [. . .]

    McDermott said liberal groups were targeted during the Bush administration. While some liberal groups were audited, the numbers we could find were small, largely confined to 501(c)(3) nonprofits where the rules are more strict, and stemmed from complaints levied by outsiders.

    In contrast, the current case was fueled by internal bureaucratic rules applied to a significantly larger number of organizations. A group’s name or its policy agenda triggered the IRS action, rather than a complaint or the group’s specific activities. While there is an element of truth in McDermott’s statement, the systematic nature of the IRS actions between 2010 and 2012 represents a distinctly different set of circumstances.

    We rate the statement Mostly False.

    Dare we hope that the rest of the media will pick up this pushback and force McDermott to retract? I mean, holding politicians accountable for their misstatements and fibs is a big part of the media's job. Isn't it?

    The Latest Job Numbers Are Bad. Again.

    Another story I am late to, but one worth highlighting:

    The headline numbers for the May jobs report are about what you would expect for a New Normal economy stuck in 2% growth mode: 175,000 net new jobs last month, the unemployment rate ticking up to 7.6%. No broad signs of acceleration; just the opposite, in fact. As Barclays bank points out, the three-month average increase in nonfarm payrolls through May is now 155,000 vs. a first-quarter average of 207,000. (And at May’s pace of job creation, it would take another 58 months to get back to 5% unemployment.)

    In addition, hours worked grew at a 1.9% annualized rate in April and May versus the 3.6% growth seen in the first three months of the year. This downshift reflects a slowing in GDP growth. The bank’s tracking estimate for real GDP growth in the second quarter stands at 1.2%, down from 2.4% in the first quarter.

    And what kind of jobs are being created? As economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out, job growth was again narrowly concentrated, with the restaurant sector (38,100 jobs), retail trade (27,700) and temporary employment (25,600) accounting for more than half of the job growth in May. Baker: “These are all low-paying sectors. It is worth noting that the job growth reported in these sectors is more an indication of the weakness of the labor market than the type of jobs being generated by the economy. The economy always creates bad jobs, but in a strong labor market workers don’t take them.”

    Indeed, restaurant jobs make up just under a tenth of total US nonfarm jobs, but they accounted for more than a fifth of the jobs created last month.

    Another sign of internal labor market weakness: the underemployment rate of 13.8% — which includes part-timers who would prefer full-time work — remains more than six percentage points above the “real’ unemployment rate. Before the Great Recession, that gap was typically less than four points. Indeed, 5.7% of US nonfarm workers are now “part-time for economic reasons” — either their hours were cut back or they can only find part-time gigs — vs. 3.2% precession.

    It's all very depressing. Even more depressing: We are likely to see a lot more such reports before the economy starts to pick up some real momentum. 

    Weekly Digest: June 2, 2013-June 8, 2013

  • How to Read Proust

    Having done the deed, I can appreciate Morgan Meis's advice on the subject :  Early readers of the novel can be forgiven for not immediately liking  Swann’s Way . In a recent article for   The New York Times , Edward Rothstein quotes an evaluation of  Swann’s Way  from the publishers who first rejected the book. The evaluator complains, “I cannot understand how a man can take 30 pages to describe how he turns round in his bed before he finally falls asleep.” Many readers of Proust have…

  • Nothing Is Written

    I enjoyed reading this book review   of Paul Johnson's  Darwin: Portrait of a Genius ,  by the great and good Paul Johnson. The following passage was particularly arresting: . . .  Darwin was born into a highly literate and distinguished family, some members of which are the focus of biographical studies in their own right. He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father’s side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s. It was a splendid inheritance. A successful medical doctor, Erasmus…

  • This Is Also My Brain in Heaven

    Want to live forever? Drink coffee :  For hundreds of years, coffee has been one of the two or three most popular beverages on earth. But it’s only recently that scientists are figuring out that the drink has notable health benefits. In  one large-scale epidemiological study  from last year, researchers primarily at the National Cancer Institute parsed health information from more than 400,000 volunteers, ages 50 to 71, who were free of major diseases at the study’s start in 1995. By 2008, more than…

  • Note to Self (Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth Edition)

    Dear Self:   If you are ever offered free food because of your physical attractiveness, run the other way .  After all, you don't want to be made into a product , especially given that you won't get any share of the proceeds from the use of the product. Fondly,  Pejman

  • Lame Excuses for the IRS Scandal Get Lamer and Bite More Dust

    Recall that from the outset, after it was revealed that the IRS was targeting conservatives and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, IRS-apologists came out with the claim that the unwarranted scrutiny was the result of staffers in Ohio offices who went rogue.  As such, according to the apologists, we were not supposed to think that the agency as a whole was rotten to the core; just that there were a few isolated bad apples who in no way, shape, or form were representative of the IRS as a…

  • This Post Is Dedicated to Readers Who Are Politicians

    I don't ever want to hear or read about how you supposedly have it rough because of attacks on you from 24/7 cable TV shows, or because of criticism from the blogosphere. I can guarantee you that one particular politician  who arrived on the scene long before you did had it far rougher than you ever will in terms of having to deal with criticism and carping: B y nearly any measure —personal, political, even literary—Abraham Lincoln set a standard of success that few in history can match. But how…

  • Peter Piper, P.I.

    Brilliant . 

  • The Economy Is a Disaster Case

    So sayeth the UCLA Anderson Forecast .  It is hard to disagree with its findings, which are written in admirably candid fashion: The expected U.S. "Great Recovery" hasn't materialized and the economy has fallen short of even normal growth, according to a forecast released Wednesday. The second-quarter UCLA Anderson Forecast said the growth of real gross domestic product - meaning the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services produced - is too small to help the nation climb out of its…

  • Whoops

    Well, this   was something of a disaster, now wasn't it?     Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the Navy SEAL unit that carried out the Osama bin Laden raid and named the unit’s ground commander at a 2011 ceremony attended by “Zero Dark Thirty” filmmaker Mark Boal. Panetta also discussed classified information designated as “top secret” and “secret” during his presentation at the awards ceremony, according to a draft Pentagon inspector general’s report published…

  • Another Blow Against Government Transparency

    I can understand rather easily the problems that come with an overwhelmed e-mail account--you should take a look at what my Gmail inbox has become--but secret government e-mail accounts   for "top Obama administration appointees" is a bad idea. One cannot issue a comprehensive FOIA request if one does not know which e-mail accounts those FOIA requests are supposed to cover, after all, and while it may never have been the intention of the Obama administration to frustrate FOIA requests, that is…

  • What the Chinese People (Shockingly) Don't Know

    June 4th was the 24th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre. NPR reports   that thanks to Chinese government censorship, a lot of people know very little about the history of the massacre: . . .  it's important to remember that a lot of people here have some familiarity with what happened 24 years ago, but a lot of people aren't that clear on it. For instance, I'll just give you an example. Back in 1997 when I first came to Beijing, I met a number of young women - they were in their…

  • The Sun Still Hasn't Set on the British Empire

    And here is the reason why. (Via Jacob Levy, via social media.)

  • Accountability Has Become Such an Antiquated Concept

    Gene Healy   on the president who is never there: "Hey, don't look at me -- I'm just the president!" That's the common thread in President Obama's response to his recent scandal eruptions, from IRS harassment of Tea Partiers to his Justice Department's spying on AP reporters. Like everybody else, Obama learns about these things via cable news, according to press secretary Jay Carney. Obama's flight from responsibility punctured the stratosphere in his recent speech on…

  • Bradley Manning Is No Hero

    So sayeth Josh Barro .  He is quite right: Whatever the merits of Manning's discontent with the U.S. Army, the actions he is accused of taking as a result -- leaking reams of secret diplomatic cables mostly unrelated to the Iraq War -- were not whistleblowing. They were detrimental to American security and to the cause of peace in the world. Diplomacy requires discretion, and when the ability of American diplomats to communicate discreetly is undermined, tensions rise. It's nice to see that someone…

  • Quote of the Day

    A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play. --Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

  • Heads: Iranian Hardliners Win. Tails: Iranian Reformists Lose.

    It's not enough for the Islamic regime in Iran to disqualify certain reformist candidates for the presidency; it must also punish people who attend campaign meetings for reformist candidates who are actually allowed to run for president. Stories like this one are why I have an objection to calling the regime a "theocracy." In fact, it is best to describe Iran's system of government as a theocratic mafiocracy. The regime is as corrupt as it is brutal, and its hardline faction has no…

  • In Praise of James Comey

    Benjamin Wittes discusses the reasons why we should be glad that James Comey was nominated to be the next FBI director--reasons I am fully in agreement with: Here’s the easy part: A qualified director of the FBI needs to have significant managerial experience in law enforcement. These days, you particularly want someone with a real intimacy with national security investigations and counterterrorism cases. You want someone who knows the bureau and can command the respect of its famously insular culture.…

  • Weekly Digest: May 26, 2013-June 1, 2013

    How the Creative Class Created Quite fascinating : Nikola Tesla typically worked from noon until midnight, breaking at 8:00 p.m. for dinner every night at the Waldorf-Astoria. Among the many peculiarities of this ritualized repast was his practice of not starting the meal until he had computed his dinner's cubic volume, "a compulsion he had developed in his childhood." Truman Capote, who wrote lying down in bed or on a couch, refused to let more than two cigarette butts pile up in an ashtray…

  • How the Creative Class Created

    Quite fascinating : Nikola Tesla typically worked from noon until midnight, breaking at 8:00 p.m. for dinner every night at the Waldorf-Astoria. Among the many peculiarities of this ritualized repast was his practice of not starting the meal until he had computed his dinner's cubic volume, "a compulsion he had developed in his childhood." Truman Capote, who wrote lying down in bed or on a couch, refused to let more than two cigarette butts pile up in an ashtray and "couldn't begin or…