Kerry Places Conditions on Troop Surge in Afghanistan, Blasts Cheney For Partisan Attacks

John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the person responsible for brokering the deal to have a run-off election in Afghanistan, questions General  Stanley McChrystal’s request for a surge in Afghanistan:

“I am convinced from my conversations with Gen. Stanley McChrystal that he understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area,” Kerry said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast.”

Kerry has not ruled out supporting a surge in the future if  three conditions are met:

“First, are there enough reliable Afghan forces to partner with American troops—and eventually to take over responsibility for security? The quickest way out of Afghanistan for our troops is to speed up the training and mentoring of the Afghan National Army and police so that they can defend their own country.”

“The second question to ask is, are there local leaders we can partner with? We must be able to identify and cooperate with tribal, district and provincial leaders who command the authority to help deliver services and restore Afghans’ faith in their own government.”

“Third, is the civilian side ready to follow swiftly with development aid that brings tangible benefits to the local population? When they support our troops, Afghans need to see their lives improve.”

Kerry’s conditions should be considered seriously. After all, it was Kerry who insisted that we should not go to war in Iraq unless it could be demonstrated that we were truly threatened by weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately George Bush did not listen to several pre-war speeches by Kerry advising against his course of action. Barack Obama is more likely to consider Kerry’s views on Afghanistan.

Kerry also criticized Dick Cheney for accusing President Barack Obama of “dithering” on the troop decisions.

“After eight years of neglecting Afghanistan as vice president, Dick Cheney has now come out of retirement to criticize President Obama for taking time to examine assumptions before sending troops into war,” Kerry said.

“Make no mistake,” he continued:

“Because of the gross mishandling of this war by past civilian leadership, there are no great options for its handling today. One American officer captured well our lack of a strategy when he said, ‘We haven’t been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years. We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for one year eight times in a row.’ That is our inheritance.”

Harry Reid Announces Plan For Public Option With Opt-Out Provision

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the inclusion of a public health insurance option in the Senate's healthcare legislation on Monday.

The public option has probably received more attention than any other aspect of health care reform even though it will only affect a minority of people who are eligible to select it. Harry Reid announced today the Senate bill will include a public option with an opt-out provision for states.

The public option would be a government-run health insurance plan similar to the Medicare program except that it would be paid out of premiums from those who choose the plan. Different proposals under consideration would either have the public option pay health care providers at five percent above the Medicare fee schedule or would have the public plan negotiate payment as other insurance companies do. Those receiving insurance coverage from their employers would not be eligible to choose the plan. The opt-out provision would allow individual states to choose not to have the public option offered in their state. They would have until 2014 to exercise this option.

Considering the politics of the situation this probably makes the most sense. Reid does not currently have the votes for including a public option. A public option with trigger, as Olympia Snowe as well as some conservative Democrats want, would not be satisfactory. Including the opt-out option might make conservative Democrats who oppose the public option more willing to vote for it, or least refrain from joining a filibuster. The majority of voters support a public option (even if many do not understand it), but if Senators from conservative states fear opposition from their constituents they would have a better shot of not antagonizing opponents if they can offer the ability to opt out. If worse comes to worse and there are still not enough votes for the public option, putting this out for a vote will result in those voting against the public option, as opposed to Harry Reid, feeling the wrath from he left.

If the public option passes with an opt-out option it is far more likely that most states will actually have the public option compared to the more conservative alternative of a public option which only comes into existence if certain triggers are met. If the default situation is to have the public option, most states will go along as opposed to taking action to block it.

The need to actively opt out of the public option creates an interesting political situation. The red states, where politicians might be most vocal against a public option, tend to have the highest percentages of uninsured. Uninsured voters in the red states might not go along with being denied this choice, especially if they see it being offered in other states.

Starting out with the public option in place and requiring action to opt out could also lessen opposition from those who now oppose it based upon misconceptions as to what the public option really means. They will have less reason to protest the public option once they see that this is just one more choice and not a step towards socialized medicine. Finding that they can avoid the public option simply by signing up for a different plan if they choose, right wingers might be less concerned about this and could go back to questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship or exposing fluoridation of water as a Communist plot.

SciFi Weekend: Dollhouse Faces Moral Issues; FlashForward Provides Possibly Contradictory Views of the Future; Wil Wheaton is a Dick (On Big Bang Theory); and See The Aliens Arrive on V

Dollhouse beloning

Belonging, this week’s episode of Dollhouse, was one of the best of the series.  (Major spoilers included). The episode both provided information on the back stories of characters and gave hints as to how this will ultimately lead to the world shown in Epitaph One. The episode primarily centers around how Sierra wound up at the Dollhouse, but also has briefer hints about the history of other characters. We  saw last season that Sierra, originally Priya, had her mind wiped after turning down the advances of Nolan Kinnard.  Kinnard repeatedly hired her and had her programmed to love him.

Belonging provided far more detail. We found that  Kinnard had drugged Priya to make it appear she was schizophrenic, and then called in the Dollhouse to wipe her memory to treat her. Apparently Adelle and Topher did not realize they had previously encountered Priya when she had rejected Kinnard in a scenario where Victor and Echo had been involved, and thought they were helping her.

Echo, becoming increasingly self-aware, tipped of Topher that something was wrong. With Adelle and Topher finding the real reason Sierre/Priya was in the Dollhouse we see the moral issues raised by the technology, along with moral development of the views of the major characters. Adelle protested but gave in when the powers behind the doll houses warned her that if she did not obey she would not like their early retirement plan.

Adelle noted that while most people were hired by the Dollhouse because they had compromised their morals, Topher  was hired because he had no morals at all. He showed that he was developing morals in this episode (along with also working on the remote wipes of Epitaph One.) Instead of delivering a programmed Sierra to Kinnard, Topher restored Priya’s original memories, cured of the mental illness now that the drugs were out of her system. Priya/Sierra wound up killing Kinnard, with Boyd and Topher arriving to clean up that mess.

The logical conclusion would be for Priya to now leave the Dollhouse as she was brought there under false pretenses and no longer appeared mentally ill. I’m sure Whedon didn’t want to lose the character (having just lost Whiskey for most of the season), so they contrived reasons for her to want to remain. This included both not wanting to live with the memory of killing Kinnard and feeling (even if not remembering) her love for Victor.While last season everyone was worried when Victor had an erection, this year they don’t seem to be concerned about the relationship which the two should not be able to feel with their minds, but apparently not libido, wiped.

The episode was unusual in not centering around Echo, but there was also an advance in her storyline as we found she was taking steps to remember what was happening to her. As Adelle and Topher had to make ethical choices with regards to Sierre, Boyd discovered what Echo was doing and chose to help her.

After having one of the best episodes of the series, Dollhouse goes on hiatus for the November sweeps. To make up for it, there will be two episodes per week in December, including the episodes with Summer Glau. I09 has the schedule:

Friday, Dec. 4 – Episode 205 & 206 (Summer Glau episodes 8PM-10PM et/pt)
Friday, Dec. 11 – Episodes 207 & 208 (8PM-10PM et/pt)
Friday, Dec. 18 – Episodes 209 & 210 (8PM-10PM et/pt)

This leaves three episodes to run later in December or January. I’m not very optimistic that Fox will order more after the initial thirteen episode run. Joss Whedon’s response to the change in schedule:

“Howzabout that schedule? Well, I’m not as depressed as everyone else. We weren’t about to rock sweeps anyway, and though there’s a chilly November, December is CRAZY. It’s like an Advent calendar of episodes! We get November to try to spread the word (which I’ll be leaning on Fox to do, though it’s hard to imagine them doing as good a job as the WhyIWatch guy) and then December is pure gluttony. Plus the episodes line up extremely well in these pairs, and we’ll have an absurdly appropriate lead-in,” Whedon wrote over at Whedonesque. “Back to breaking Tim’s [Minear] episode. Keep the faith, peeps. I’ll bring you news (and hopefully a little humor, I mean would it kill me to punch these up a little?) when I can. -j joss.”

flashforward_091022

FlashForward moved to Washington, D.C. for last week’s episode where the president looks far more like John Kerry than Barack Obama. Once again we have possibly contradictory visions which raise questions as to whether the visions of the future are inevitable, or whether it is the accounts we are seeing which are sometimes unreliable. In a previous episode, Zoey said that she saw Demetri at their wedding. This contradicts Demitri’s belief that he will be dead both due to not having a flash forward and because of  a phone call from a woman saying she saw a report of his murder. This could be explained as Zoey saw her finance from a distance at the wedding and it could have been someone else–if we accept that she would be marrying someone else so shortly after Demitri’s murder.

This week we saw the president’s vision of some type of crisis (which I suspect plays into the actual cause of the flash forwards). Senator Joyce Clemente claimed she had a vision of being president, which would not fit in with the vision of the actual president. Clemente is ultimately chosen to be vice president, replacing the VP who died during the flash forward. This makes her claims of being president in less than six months more plausible if not for the contradiction with the president still being alive. Perhaps she was not being honest about her vision, or perhaps she mistook a quick view of being VP for being president. This also raises the question of whether there could be alternative futures.

There is yet another mystery raised when Agent Janis Hawk, who is pregnant in her flash forward, is shot at the end of the episode. This could mean that she is fated to survive, or it could also suggest that the future can be changed. We also learn that she is gay, making her events which lead to her becoming pregnant potentially  even more interesting.

There was a lot of political intrigue in the episode. I found it most amusing to learn that the CIA thought China was behind the flash forwards because of their distrust of China and the fact that the United States suffered far more damage than China. Of course the flash forwards occurred during the afternoon in the United States and during the middle of the night in China.  As we saw a suggestion of a more limited flash forward having occurred in the past, my suspicion is that if China had really used this as a weapon they wouldn’t have made it world wide, despite the less severe damage to their country.

I did find it unrealistic that the mosaic project, which puts together a picture of the world in six months, had to be justified based upon whether it could explain why the flash forwards occurred. I would think that the government would be interested in details of the world in six months for a variety of other reasons.

From the previews it appears that the storyline for Dominic Monaghan (of Lost) will really be starting in the next episode. It appears he had a major role in the flash forwards.

Wil Wheaton Big Bang

Wil Wheaton’s motto on his blog is “Don’t be a dick.” The actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation had a guest role on The Big Bang Theory. While playing “himself,” the version of  Wil Wheaton on the show did not follow this motto. He played a “Johnny Fairplay” trick on Sheldon. Maybe this was the evil Mirror version of Wil Wheaton.

The appearance by Wheaton resulted in a fifteen percent increase in the ratings for The Big Bang Theory compared to the previous week.  The next major guest planned is Katee Sackhoff, who will play herself in a cameo on the November 23 episode. Sackhoff , who played Starbuck on Battlestar Gallactica, will also have an appearance on Two And A Half Men and will be regular on the upcoming season of 24.

[Video removed from You Tube]

Just as ABC did with FlashForward, they have posted the first eight minutes of V on line (video above). Also like FlashForward, the key event leads to plane crashes. I love the big screen television screens on the bottom of their space ships. Is it LED, plasma, or a technology unknown on earth?

Dan Rather on Fox

The goal in taking on Fox is not to prevent them from airing propaganda shows but to ensure that people realize that Fox is pure propaganda and does not air true news shows. The best thing to do is probably to mock them, and perhaps Democrats should refuse to appear on some of their shows. Some on the right have responded to criticism of Fox with unsubstantiated comparisons to Nixon’s enemies list or to claim First Amendment issues are in play here. The reality is that nobody support taking the types of actions against Fox which Richard Nixon took against members of the press. Dan Rather is one of many examples of liberal critics of Fox who do not support any restriction of their right to air their views. From The Dallas Morning News:

At a journalism awards luncheon at the Headliners Club in Austin, Rather was asked about cable news programs that have devolved into shows where hosts quiz opinionists about other opinionists (The question posed a Fox News trifecta: Glenn Beck quizzing Ann Coulter about Rush Limbaugh). Said Rather:

“One entertainer interviewing a second entertainer about a third entertainer isn’t my definition of news.”

Rather called the press “the red beating heart of freedom and democracy” and lamented that consolidation and corporate influence have encroached on journalism. He said four or six corporate entities control much of American journalism today – a trend that militates against its fundamental responsibility of holding powerful institutions accountable.

Rather said he’s confident Americans know the difference between the news and the infotainment on some cable news shows. And he said he would oppose any effort to curtail Fox News or any other opinion outlet on radio or TV. He said even if there were a cable station of pure propaganda – “and we may be near that now” – he would oppose censoring it in any way. Sounds like Fox News and talk radio – who warn the Obama administration wants to do them in – has a First Amendment friend in Dan Rather.

I generally agree but he might be over estimating the ability of some Americans to differentiate from real news and the propaganda presented on outlets such as Fox. We have seen too many examples which show that the more someone watches Fox, the more poorly informed they are about the issues. This even extends to Dan Rather himself. I’ve seen many blog comments from conservatives who believe that Dan Rather himself make fake documents about George Bush’s avoidance of his National Guard obligations–which is quite a distortion of the actual controversy.

Keith Olbermann Responds To Conservative Attacks Comparing MSNBC to Fox

Above is the video of Keith Olbermann’s response to the attempts by the right to create a false equivalency between MSNBC and Fox. I previously commented on this yesterday. Among the points he makes is the absurdity of conservatives seeing a conspiracy in Obama meeting with liberal commentator such as Olbermann considering that Obama has also met with conservative commentators, such as when he met with conservative commentators at George Will’s home in January.

Republicans At New Low While Obama’s Approval Rising

Polls taken when there is not an upcoming election are of limited value, but conservatives have loved to cite selective findings to claim that support for Obama and the Democratic Party are falling. Wherever they are at this point can change dramatically when we are actually having an election campaign. The reality is that support for the Republican Party has fallen to a new low while support for Barack Obama has increased since the election. Public Policy Polling noted an interesting finding:

Barack Obama’s approval rating with people who didn’t vote for him is 14%.

Barack Obama’s disapproval rating with people who voted for him is 6%.

So he’s won over twice as many people as he’s lost since he got elected. Who in the national media is going to write that story? Not bad for someone whose support is supposedly falling apart.

This is despite Obama being faced with gross distortions of what his health care reform proposals actually consist of.

Update: There are clearly limitations to this data (with some noted in the comments). It is simply a matter of interest which, like pretty much all the polls taken at this point, provides no real predictive value of how the Democratic Party or Obama will do in future elections

One key point missed in many polls is geography as they treat elections as national elections. When I’ve seen polls break results down by state, it often appears that we are just seeing more support for Republicans and opposition to Obama in the red states as opposed to changes which are likely to affect elections.

For the most part we are seeing the south and Mormon belt of the west becoming even more Republican while GOP support drops elsewhere. Still history suggests some Republican pick ups in 2010. The biggest problems the Democrats have now is 1) Republican voters at the moment have greater intensity and 2) many Democrats are in the position of defending House seats in 2010 which have traditionally been in Republican hands (and without the benefit of Obama on the ballot).

Conservative Attempts to Defend Fox and Create a False Equivalency With MSNBC

Along with many other liberal bloggers, I’ve had numerous posts regarding how Fox not only gets the facts wrong on their news shows but outright makes things up to promote their beliefs. In response to members of the Obama administration  pointing out the truth about Fox, conservatives have tried to create a false equivalency between Fox and MSNBC.

To a limited degree the comparison is accurate. The evening shows on MSNBC such as those anchored by Kieth Olbermann and Rachel Maddow should be classified as opinion shows and not objective news shows. It is worth noting that, while which facts to concentrate on are influenced by their political views, the facts presented by Olbermann and Maddow are considerably more accurate than the falsehoods frequently stated by the hosts of the Fox opinion shows. In addition, MSNBC  balances this with a show hosted by conservative Joe Scarborough. Another significant difference is that MSNBC has actual news shows on during the daytime, while the “news” shows on Fox are biased and promote the same falsehoods as on their opinion shows.

Conservatives have come up with a number of absurd arguments to counter the criticism of Fox. Some act as if it is the Obama White House who initiated the attack when it  is Fox which is responsible for this conflict. Fox has even fabricated a story that they were denied the ability to interview an Obama administration official. Conservatives who ignored real violations of civil liberties, and generally ignore everything in the Bill of Rights other than the Second Amendment, make absurd claims of violations of the First Amendment. In reality members of the Obama administration are expressing their own freedom of speech to make observations which are as obvious as that the sky is blue, and are taking no action to limit Fox’s right to express their views. Fox’s viewership has even gone up, showing they are not being harmed. Some have even compared this to Nixon’s enemies list, perhaps oblivious to the differences such as the Nixon administration’s use of tactics such as wire taps and tax audits against their perceived enemies.

With all the false information being spread by Fox, conservatives would love to be able to build a case that Olbermann and Maddow are as inaccurate in their stories as the Fox talking heads. This certainly cannot be done, but conservatives are still trying. Via Memeorandum I found this ridiculous attempt.

There are at least two major problems with the argument against Maddow. First, rather than being wrong in her facts, the same post which attacks Maddow shows that Maddow had a guest on her show which presented the facts. They might not understand why a failure such as George Bush might be mocked for being a motivational speaker, regardless of how many former presidents have done the same, but there is no justification for saying that viewers of Maddow’s show were given false information after she completed her coverage of the story.

It is also rather ridiculous that they would cite something so trivial to falsely question Rachel Maddow’s accuracy considering how Fox has been wrong in their facts on so many major issues in recent years. This includes their falsehoods on what is contained in the health reform bills, their false claims that WMD was present in Iraq at the onset of the war, and their false claims of a connection between Saddam and al Quada.

Update: Keith Olbermann’s response

Right Wing Caught Attributing Views in Fake Thesis to Obama

The conservative movement has become so intellectually and morally bankrupt that they they only way they can get followers is to invent facts and lie about the views of others. Fortunately for conservative pundits, fact checking is a very rare thing among conservatives, allowing them to  generally get away with making up whatever they wish. When they were caught yesterday they still tried to deny reality.

Steve Benen describes how, “Right-wing pundit Michael Ledeen published an item this week on Barack Obama’s “college thesis,” which Obama allegedly wrote as a student at Columbia 25 years ago.” Apparently the right wingers forgot that they already expressed outrage towards Obama’s thesis on nuclear disarmament, ignoring the fact that he was expressing views similar to those of Ronald Reagan.

The imaginary new thesis fit into their absurd claims that Obama is a socialist with fabricated lines such as:

“…the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

Rush Limbaugh jumped aboard this hoax. Alex Koppelman reports:

Limbaugh was, naturally, up in arms about this, calling the college-aged Obama a “little boy,” and saying, “he still shares those same feelings.”

Actually reading Obama’s views on the economy would make it clear that the views they attribute to Obama are radically different from Obama’s actual views, but the right wing never worries about the facts.

There were many ways to determine with even minimal fact checking that this claim was a fake. This includes following the link to the web site which Ledeen used as a source. The source information is tagged “satire.”

Joe Klein was also cited as a source. Klein wrote that “It is completely false.” After receiving an apology he commented:

Michael Ledeen now has apologized to me on his blog, claiming that he, Limbaugh and others were punked by a satire. I appreciate the apology…but I wonder about what the willingness to take this cheesy crap as gospel says about Ledeen’s–and Boss Rush’s–sensibility. Actually, on second thought, I don’t wonder all that much.

The right wing will continue to attack Obama and all other liberals based not upon their actual beliefs but based upon a set of beliefs they have invented and falsely attributed to Obama and other liberals. They know that nobody in their right mind, and certainly nobody without a very depraved set of values, would chose their views over the actual views of liberals.

Who Would Have Guessed It–Fox Lied About Being Excluded From Interview

Fox and the right wing blogs have been pushing a claim that the White House tried to restrict Fox’s ability to interview the pay czar. If true, this might have been a real issue. It is easy to laugh at the Fox apologists when they compare people in the Obama administration simply telling the truth about Fox to Nixon’s enemy’s list. After all, the Obama administration is not practicing the dirty tricks of the Nixon administration such as auditing the tax returns of journalists who investigate wrong doing. People in the Obama administration, just like everyone else in the country, are entitled to freedom of speech–including the freedom to honestly describe how Fox is far more a propaganda organ of the Republican Party than a true news organization.

Fox, like many on the far right, loves to portray themselves as victims. I guess we are supposed to feel sorry for the right wingers who can’t get away with imposing all their reactionary views on the rest of the country. If it was really true that Fox was being restricted when they are engaged in the pretense of reporting news they might have a legitimate complaint (or ate least the appearance of a legitimate complaint). As with most claims coming from Fox, this turned out to be a lie. Christina Bellantoni looked into the story:

Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).

But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who’d asked for the interview.

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn’t on the list, was told that they hadn’t asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox’s Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

Simple as that, we’re told, and the networks don’t want to be seen as heroes for Fox.

TPMDC spoke with a network bureau chief this afternoon familiar with the situation who was surprised that Fox was portraying the news as networks coming to its rescue.

“If any member had been excluded it would have been same thing, it has nothing to do with Fox or the White House or the substance of the issues,” the bureau chief said. “It’s all for one and one for all.”

A Treasury spokesperson added: “There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.”

David Brooks Praises Obama on Education

Praise for Barack Obama’s education plans comes from an unexpected source–David Brooks. A portion of his column:

The news is good. In fact, it’s very good. Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform.

Over the summer, the Department of Education indicated that most states would not qualify for Race to the Top money. Now states across the country are changing their laws: California, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee, among others.

It’s not only the promise of money that is motivating change. There seems to be some sort of status contest as states compete to prove they, too, can meet the criteria. Governors who have been bragging about how great their schools are don’t want to be left off the list.

These changes mean that states are raising their caps on the number of charter schools. When charters got going, there was a “let a thousand flowers bloom” mentality that sometimes led to bad schools. Now reformers know more about how to build charters and the research is showing solid results. Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University recently concluded a rigorous study of New York’s charter schools and found that they substantially narrowed the achievement gap between suburban and inner-city students.

The changes also will mean student performance will increasingly be a factor in how much teachers get paid and whether they keep their jobs. There is no consensus on exactly how to do this, but there is clear evidence that good teachers produce consistently better student test scores, and that teachers who do not need to be identified and counseled. Cracking the barrier that has been erected between student outcomes and teacher pay would be a huge gain.

Duncan even seems to have made some progress in persuading the unions that they can’t just stonewall, they have to get involved in the reform process. The American Federation of Teachers recently announced innovation grants for performance pay ideas. The New Haven school district has just completed a new teacher contract, with union support, that includes many of the best reform ideas.