WaPo to Frum: Go Ahead, Hack Off All Over Our Outlook Section

Hope you don't mind the new verb form: to hack off is to spout a bunch of nonsense that is so far from objective truth that nobody besides a party hack would be caught dead saying stuff like that.

Which brings us to GOP hack David Frum's lengthy piece in today's Outlook section.

The first half is an unobjectionable argument for the GOP letting McCain sink or swim on his own, and putting all its resources into close Senate races. I've got no dog in that fight.

The second half of the piece is about what the GOP should say to the voters to win those races, and that's where the hackery comes in.

That's especially true because of two unique dangers posed by the impending Democratic victory.

First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation's financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends -- to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government's position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power -- and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.

If you're going to talk about the dangers of one-party government rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies, then remind me, David, of your opposition to: Tom DeLay's K Street Project, the steering of Iraq contracts to GOP-friendly firms who were never held accountable when billions just plain disappeared, the use of the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel, the staffing of the Coalition Provisional Authority with Heritage Foundation interns, and so forth.

And also remind me of how the current GOP minority has used its filibuster power to rein in Dem power grabs, such as SCHIP expansion and a minimum wage hike.

I have no doubt that if the Dems are in power for long enough, they'll abuse it. But this is nothing but projection - Frum knows what his side did, and automatically assumes the Dems will approach government the same way.

Eventially, maybe. But now? Gimme a break. There's nothing in what we've seen in the past two years to suggest that Pelosi and Reid are iron-fisted rulers, pushing unpopular legislation through Congress. Quite the opposite: they've pushed legislation favored by large majorities of the public, but have lacked the ruthlessness to turn it into law.

There's just no connection between reality and the dangers Frum describes.

Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC's evening line-up -- and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.

Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game.

And what color is the sky in this world?

It's not that there aren't angry people on the left; of course there are. It's just that we tend to get angry about things like the thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead in a needless, senseless war; the fact that the U.S., by far the richest country in the world, is the only advanced democracy that doesn't provide health care for all of its citizens; the giveaway of hundreds of billions of dollars to the people in our society who already have the most; and acts of torture committed in the name of the United States of America.

The GOP gets angry about trivia, and often fictitious trivia at that: lapel pins, Bill Ayers, Obama being a Muslim or a terrorist or a socialist or a Nazi.

There's a big difference about being angry about major injustices, and being angry for the sake of being angry.

I don't blame Frum for taking advantage of the forum the WaPo gives him to push his hackery. He's a party hack; hackery what he does. The problem here is the WaPo giving him an acre of space in its Outlook section to spread bullshit memes like this. Frum is entitled to his opinions, but not every opinion deserves the assist it gets by being put in the WaPo opinion pages. It's the WaPo Outlook editors who've dropped the ball here.

I'll Give Up My Car When They Pry My Cold, Dead Hands From the Steering Wheel

Terry Box had one of those sorts of pieces in the Sunday Outlook section. Ain't enough rolleyes in the world.

I think Matt Yglesias said it best:

And, look, fine. If Terry Box wants to drive a gas-guzzling car, he should be free to do so. But what he shouldn’t be free to do is to expect large explicit and implicit subsidies. If we prices carbon emissions correctly, balanced funding between highways and transit, and regulated land use sensibly I bet people would drive a bunch less than they currently do.

Yeppers. We don't want to take your car, Terry. I live in an exurb, myself, and it looks like there's a lot of driving in my future. But it's only reasonable that you and I pay for the extra carbon we pump into the atmosphere, if we choose to keep doing so. It's only fair.

Some Worthwhile Stuff in the Sunday WaPo

And some stuff to dump on, as always. But there's a time to give credit where credit is due. I'll do a summary here, then say some more as time allows.

Front page: "Hovering Above Poverty, Grasping for Middle Class" is the top headline in the print edition. The WaPo surveyed "1,350 randomly selected people between ages 18 and 64 who work at least 30 hours a week and earned no more than $27,000 last year" which is the bottom 40% of the workforce in terms of income. One quick take:

[T]he vast majority of those surveyed are having trouble paying for gas, saving for retirement or for their children's educations. Most find it difficult to afford health care and housing, and nearly half struggle to pay for food....Three in 10 work for companies that do not offer them health insurance or paid vacations. About 4 in 10 get no sick days or retirement benefits.

To cut expenses, most said they are trying to minimize their use of electricity and heat, and more than half said they have postponed needed medical or dental care.

What the Dems could offer this group: universal health care, two weeks' paid vacation and one week of sick leave per year, and a promise to stand behind Social Security. The Broders of the world are always trying to cut back on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, because It's Important To Be Responsible, unless of course you're figuring out how to pay for a war. Then you can just borrow like crazy, and cut taxes on the rich.

Outlook section:

1) Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not by Joel Achenbach. A surprisingly insightful piece by a guy who usually writes fluff pieces. Some quick points he makes:

a) While global warming is real, there's no way to say a particular weather disaster (e.g. Katrina, this year's Iowa floods) are caused by climate change. All you can say is that global warming ups the odds of floods, severe hurricanes, and the like.

b) We're trashing the environment and putting ourselves at risk in plenty of other ways. If we live in low-lying areas or in arid but wooded areas, drain wetlands, straighten out streams, and the like, then we're asking for trouble - climate change or no.

c) The takeaway: we should definitely worry about global warming. But we're acting crazy in plenty of other ways, too.

2) "McCain's Problem Isn't His Tactics. It's GOP Ideas," by Greg Anrig. Short version: being against taxes, regulations, effective government, and pretty much any Federal program that would actually help ordinary people, has proved to be catastrophic (see Iraq, Katrina, lead on kids' toys from China, salmonella on jalapenos). Since Katrina, everyone's pretty much figured this out. But there's nothing in the conservative tool chest but more of the same, which doesn't give McCain much to work with.

Op-Ed Page:

1) Shorter George Will: Obama's too full of himself, and too 'cosmopolitan' (whatever that means, and it's essentially what they used to call Jews), and besides, he wants to bring about change, which is never good. Issues? What issues? Atmospherics are more important.

2) Shorter David Broder: filibusters, schmilibusters - what the Dems need to break partisan gridlock is centrist Senators who are willing to work with Republicans. Like Mark Warner, Mark Begich, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom and Mark Udall. Oh, and Ted Stevens' record of steering pork back to Alaska was all about helping the needy back home. (The 'bridge to nowhere' would have put how many meals on struggling families' tables? Not to mention, Alaska has the sixth-highest median family income of any U.S. state. Yeppers, making sure Federal money went to Alaska rather than somewhere else was all about helping the needy.)

3) Heather Lende (guest columnist, Alaska resident): We Alaskans like Ted Stevens. He's our pal, our uncle. And besides, the bribes he took weren't ginormous or anything.

4) David Ignatius takes dictation from a Senior Administration Official: we're not gonna bomb Iran this year - even Cheney is OK with that.

One part that wasn't dictation: "By late 2009, the Israelis warn, the Iranians could produce the 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium that could quickly be converted to the 25 kilos of highly enriched fuel needed for a bomb." I'm no expert on nuclear enrichment, but my understanding is that uranium for a nuclear power plant (i.e. low-enriched) needs to be on the order of 5% U-235, but bomb-grade (highly enriched) is more like 95%. The purpose of the centrifuges is to separate the U-235 from the much less fissile U-238. I'd gladly accept clarification from anyone more knowledgable about these things, but it sure would seem like it should take a good bit longer to get from 5% pure to 95% pure than it did to get from yellowcake to 5%.

5) Jim Hoagland has a column about China, the Olympics, and human rights, and I'm sure it's important, but my eyelids always get heavy when reading Hoagland. You're on your own.