It does now look as though there really was a chemical weapons attack in Syria on 21 August. My skepticism has always been based on the Yellow Rain incident. This involved supposed attacks by the Vietnam and Laos governments against the Hmong who live in the mountains of that region. Something bad clearly happened to those people. But it does not appear to have been a chemical attack, even though everyone was certain at the time.

The problem is that a lot of people are harmed in a lot of different ways when a modern war is underway. And it is indiscriminate. One thing I really hate is how people talk about how we never intentionally kill civilians when we bomb. There is also the ridiculous notion of our “smart bombs” and their accuracy. The truth of the matter is that we don’t actively try to kill civilians, but we don’t make any concessions for them either. I don’t consider our government particularly bad, of course; this is the nature of modern warfare and this is a big reason why we should do everything we can to avoid war.

The report stated, “[C]hemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.” And according to the Wall Street Journal, “The report also found that the weather conditions on the morning of Aug. 21 may have increased the number of victims because the temperatures had been falling.” This means that the toxins were not mixed well vertically and so hung around on the ground longer. This may explain why the attack didn’t have as high a fatality rate as usual because it was allowed to diffuse horizontally. Also, it would be particularly deadly to those hiding inside buildings—thus the high civilian casualty rate.

The UN weapons inspectors made no claims as to who did it. To me, it’s pretty clear. The rebels would have to be some very callous people to attack their own just for the sake of hopefully getting western support for their cause. Just the same, it doesn’t make sense for Syria to use chemical weapons. As it was, a UN inspection team was already in Syria on the day of the attack to investigate earlier alleged attacks. What’s more, the pro-government forces appear to be winning the war. So it makes no sense for them to use chemical weapons. And that’s why I think they did. I can imagine the rebels wanting to do something like that, but even if they have chemical weapons, they don’t have a lot. The Assad forces do. So I can well imagine some colonel calling for a strike. It didn’t have to come from on high, although it might have. The pure stupidity of such an attack does provide a certain amount of plausible deniability.

Regardless, none of this matters. I get tired of hearing about the supposed 400 children who were killed in that attack. There have doubtless been thousands of children killed by ordinary weapons since this civil war started. We should care about all of them, regardless of their ages and method of death. But it seems to be the clear action plan should involve applying our formidable diplomatic power to ending the civil war. What we’ve done instead is egg on the rebels and talk about how we would like to see “regime change” in Syria. I’m certainly not against that, but it isn’t on offer. An end to the civil war would be good for the Syrian people, and it really doesn’t matter what the United States thinks is in its long term strategic interests.

We could also do more to fight malaria.

When I saw the headline last night, I was pleased, Summers Withdraws Name for Fed Chairmanship. As I wrote about only Saturday, there are lots of reasons why Summers should not get the job. So it is good he is stepping back. Of course, I’m sure that he is only doing so because the White House counted up the votes and saw it just wasn’t going to happen.

That makes this whole thing a little less of a happy event. Now it is clear that despite Summers being at best a suboptimal pick, Obama really was committed to installing his golfing buddy as the head of the Federal Reserve. What’s more, in a statement, Obama said that Summers was “a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom, and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth.” Yeah, they faced down the economic crisis and they did a really bad job of it! For workers, this last 5 years has been an unmitigated disaster. I will allow that it’s been great for the banks, but that’s a reason to make Summers stay at Harvard, not to give him a promotion.

What’s most annoying about all of this is even with Summers stepping aside, we may still not get the best candidate to run the Fed. According to the Wall Street Journal, “One leading candidate is Janet Yellen, the Fed’s current vice chairwoman, who has garnered substantial support among Democrats in Congress and among economists. But the public lobbying on her behalf appears to have annoyed the president, say administration insiders, and may lead him to look elsewhere.” Is that really how it’s going to be? Is Obama going to nominate another member of his team that “faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”? Are we going to see Timothy Geithner nominated now?

A poorly reported aspect of the Obama administration is just how insular it is. Obama has his little boys’ club—And it is a boys’ club!—that he doesn’t like to go outside of. It seems he thinks they are all smart guys. Why would he look any further than the narrow confines of these men’s New Democrat ideology? It is shockingly reminiscent of George W Bush.

This is another test of Obama. If he can’t manage to nominate Janet Yellen to head the Federal Reserve, something is really wrong with him. There are lots of reasons he may not nominate her: he may simply be sexist, he may be unable to bring himself to support someone for a high profile position who isn’t a buddy, or it may be that he’s just spiteful and can’t deal with his constituency telling him what they want. None of these speak well of the man. My advice is to just get over all the personal pettiness and nominate the best person for the job.

Please note: I am drinking a second beer tonight. That means I am well past my comfort zone for alcohol. What am I drinking? Our own great local Lagunitas’ The Censored Rich Copper Ale. It’s a damned fine beer.

On this day in 1254, it is possible that Marco Polo was born. There is a 1 in 365 chance. But he’s got to go somewhere and Wikipedia mistakenly put him on this day, so why not? The French astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly was born in 1736. He isn’t that important, but he was executed during The Terror, and that’s pretty cool for a scientist. More cool? Evariste Galois, who will definitely win the day on 25 October.

The author of The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789. Physicist Edward Bouchet was born in 1852. He was the first African American man to earn a PhD at an American college (Yale in his case). He spent most of his life as an educator but you know her must have been an amazing intellect, or he never would have received the degree. In a fundamental way, he is a great example of how racism harms all of us. But there is no doubt that he was a very great man.

Composer Horatio Parker was born in 1863. I don’t especially like him, but he writes nice stuff. Here is the suite that he created from his opera Fairyland:

Novelist Robert Benchley was born in 1889. I mention him only because he is a good example of the fact that America is a class society. Peter (this son) is really not that good a writer. Mystery writer Agatha Christie was born in 1890.

The great filmmaker Jean Renoir was born in 1894. Until today, I had no idea that he was the son of the painter. I’ve only ever seen his movies. And if you haven’t seen his movies, you really should. The following trailer of The Grand Illusion does provide some idea of his greatness. It is, after all, a 1937 film and it looks much more modern than that. On the other hand, it gives a totally skewed idea of what the film is about; it is really about class, or at least, that is always what strikes me.

Jacques Becker was born in 1906. I mention him only because he was Renoir’s assistant director. Co-writer of “Frosty the Snowman,” Walter E. Rollins was also born in 1906.

John Mitchell was born in 1913. He was a real villain as Attorney General under Nixon. But I love everything Nixon. Have I mentioned that I’ve written a number of puppet plays that involve the Nixon administration? But I’ve never included John Mitchell. I really should. I think he would shake things up. Awful people are always improved when they are presented as puppets.

And comedian Nipsey Russell was born in 1918.

Comedian Norm Crosby is 86 today. Most of his act was a series of malapropisms. When I was kid, I thought he was hilarious. Now, not so much. Actor Tommy Lee Jones is 67 and looks 86. And the great screenwriter and director Oliver Stone is 67 and looks about that old. In addition to his art, his politics are right on:

The day, however, belongs to the great singer Bobby Short who was born on this day in 1924. He was great, but I mostly love him just because of the songs that he sings. Unfortunately, it is hard to find much video of him. But here he is doing Cab Calloway’s “She’s Tall, She’s Tan, She’s Terrific”:

Happy birthday Bobby Short!

This has been on my mind for some time. I come upon jokes now and then that are both amusing and sweet. And so I’ve been thinking that I should package them up as jokes you can tell at family gatherings. There is something else about the jokes. Most of the jokes I really like are very meta. For example, one of my favorite jokes is, “A priest, a rabbi, and a pastor walk into a bar and the bartender says, ‘What is this, a joke?'” I’m also very fond of quasi-intellectual jokes. For example, “Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?” Or the easier, “How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Fish!” These are not especially great jokes for most of my family. But more to the point, they are a little too clever for people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

So I put together the following video with three of my favorite “sweet” jokes. Will pointed out that the sound is terrible. This is true. In fact, if you turn up the sound, you can hear the camera motor running. Maybe some day I will get an external mic that will work with the damned thing. Until then, I’m afraid that the technical quality of the videos is about the same as the my onscreen acting. But if anyone wants to loan their equipment or face, I am more than willing!

Afterword

The following is Will’s kids’ favorite joke. It has long been on my list, but you can’t really do it alone:

ABC News reported this morning that Obama will not negotiate with Republicans over the Debt Ceiling. He said, “If we continue to set a precedent in which a president… is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to put—pay the bills unless you give us… what we want,’ that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely.” Good for him. The problem is that he said the same thing last November and what did he do in December? He negotiated with the Republicans on the Debt Ceiling. So I’m not convinced and I can well see why the Republicans would think that the Debt Ceiling is a good bargaining strategy.

Of course, it is one thing to ask Obama to steal money from the poor and old. After all, he’s neither poor nor old! But asking him to destroy his signature legislative accomplishment? The thing he will be remembered for? His “legacy”? I don’t think so. What’s more, what exactly does Obamacare have to do with debt and the budget? It doesn’t make sense. Stealing money from grandma at least would do something (Very little!) about the debt. Obamacare actually saves money. So this newest Republican demand really is just the conservative issue du jour.

More than anything else, they want to win something. But they aren’t reasonable about it. In the Fiscal Cliff negotiations, there were a number of things they could have gotten that they claim to want. The biggest was that they could have screwed the poor and middle class by changing over to chained-CPI. But instead, they are like children. They don’t want to just make some progress in their goals. And they certainly don’t want to have to give up anything in exchange. So it’s extortion time! As Representative Dennis Ross said, “We have the opportunity of a lifetime. We have public sentiment, we have the facts and figures on our side and we have the leverage with the debt ceiling. Let’s put it all together and make it happen…” Every single thing he said there is false.

The Hill now reports that many in the House Republican caucus are freaking out, Angry House Republicans Demand Better Communication. Conservatives and centrists (whatever that means in the context of the modern Republican Party) are upset that Boehner and Cantor have allowed the “repeal Obamacare” fantasy to grow and fester. According to them, the problem started two months ago when Ted Cruz started pressing the House to defund the healthcare reform bill as a condition for raising the Debt Ceiling. The Republicans are complaining that their leadership didn’t push back and explain why that was a crazy idea.

That is rich! I don’t think that even the most “centrist” of Republicans can think that it would have helped the situation for Boehner to go before the cameras and explain that shutting down the government and defaulting on our debt was not only bad for the country but bad for the Republican Party. Over the last three years, there has been an big rise in the Republican belief that if they are only strong and true, they can do anything. So anything Boehner said that indicated that they couldn’t bring about their preferred policies through force of will would have been taken as proof that he was part of the problem. If only we could get Republicans to believe in fairies:

I don’t doubt that there are a fair number of Republicans in the House who are now worried about what is coming. First, there is the issue that this whole thing could get out of control and that it could destroy the Republican Party. And second, there is the opportunity costs: if Republicans were acting rationally, they might actually be able to get some policy concessions they want. But I think it is a bit much to blame the situation on Boehner and the rest of the Republican leadership. The problem is much bigger—bigger even than the Republican Party.[1] If these “centrist” Republicans want to look at a major villain here, they should look in the mirror. After all, the only difference between themselves and Ted Cruz is that he wants to crash the economy to end Obamacare and they want to crash the economy to end support of the poor.

[1] I continue to believe that the Democratic Party’s move to the right on economic issues has played a big role in turning “conservative” into “crazy.”

This is a good idea, although this design may not be the way to go. Also, the economics are a little trick. That’s why the government should get involved. Perhaps I’ll talk more about that later.

Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported, For Summers, Path to Fed Job Gets Bumpier. It is primarily about an announcement yesterday from Senator Jon Tester that he will not vote for Larry Summers if Obama nominates him to head the Federal Reserve. A spokeswoman said, “Senator Tester believes we need a consensus-builder to lead the Federal Reserve. He’s concerned about Mr. Summers’s history of helping to deregulate financial markets.” This is a big deal because it brings to 4 the number of Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee who are expected to vote against Summers. (The other three are: Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren.)

There are many reasons that Summers should not be made Fed chair. The Tester statement mentions two in as many sentences. First, Summers is known for not getting along well with others. He made a mess of the job as president of Harvard. Second, his economic policies have been terrible. He was indeed a very big player in deregulating the financial markets. In addition, he has long pushed a strong dollar policy. That’s a policy that supports the rich at the cost of jobs for the poor. Just based upon this, I think he shouldn’t even be considered for the post. It is an outrage that he is one of the main people under consideration. Obama should be shamed out of the country for this.

But I think there is a more important reason for Summers to not be made chair of the Federal Reserve. I am sick to death of people in the upper echelons of power being rewarded for their incompetence. It seems that these people cannot screw up badly enough to cause them to be toxic. Imagine if after World War II, instead of being hanged, Hermann Goering had been put in charge of the West German government. That seems to be where we are today. “Oh, you were wrong about every major economic issue over the last 20 years? Well, why don’t you run the Fed?!”

By all accounts, Larry Summers is a great economist. He should just go back and be an economics professor. There’s no shame in that and he may even be able to make some contributions to science that way. But in government, he should be toxic. And the fact that he isn’t is an indictment of our current system.

The Wall Street Journal also noted that overwhelmingly, economists in academia and Wall Street think that Janet Yellen would be a better choice as Fed chair. But those on Wall Street are more fond of Summers than are those in academia. That alone should be reason enough to not pick Summers. But we will have to see how this all goes. If Obama is willing to fight for Summers, it will show that my very worst fears of Obama are true: he’s too conservative and too insular. He rarely surprises me in a good way.

Most people in the mainstream press claim a level of obtuseness that I just don’t buy. And that includes a lot liberal commentators. Imagine a German journalist in the lead-up to World War II. He writes, “The Nazis have really turned the economy around. Why do they continue to vilify the Jews and what’s all this about invading Poland?” The implication is that the Nazis really cared about the economy and that all that business of the supremacy of the Aryan race was just a side issue. The truth, of course, was just the opposite; Nazism was at its very core a racist movement and the rest was just piled on because you can’t spend all of your time killing “undesirables.”

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait wrote the modern equivalent of an article wondering why the Nazis were so all fired interested in annexing Poland, The Arguments of the Great Recession Are Over. Hooray. In it, he discusses the Republican economic platform and wonders why it hasn’t changed over the last 5 years. After all, it has been demonstrated that austerity—cutting government spending—really is bad for the economy. And all the concern that government debt was going to cause inflation has vanished. So why are the Republicans still trying to cut funding for food stamps?

I wonder! Could it be that the Republicans never cared about improving the economy? Could it be that they were only ever using the economic crisis to push for the same old things they always want? Could it be that these questions are unknown to Chait?

I was just looking at the 2012 Republican Platform. Their ideas on the economy are telling. The whole thing is filled with misinformation like, “American businesses now face the world’s highest corporate tax rate.” That’s technically true, but they do not face the world’s highest corporate tax. Taxes are not just determined by tax rates—our tax code have lots of deductions so American corporations really aren’t paying that much. But even setting all the distortions aside, their plan is not about improving the economy. Their plan is to cut taxes on the rich and cut spending on the poor. That’s it. There are some other things like getting rid of regulation, but that again is just a way of giving to the rich and taking from the poor.

Do you see the pattern here? Conservative “intellectuals” may write articles that argue that this or that conservative policy is good for the economy. And politicians will from time to time quote those articles. But that is not the reason that the Republican Party is for these policies. Their primary interest is to be Robin Hood in reverse. And the reason they are interested in that is that they are old school aristocrats. They think that the rich are simply better than the poor.

Look at voter ID laws. These are not just a tactical maneuver. They speak to the deeply held belief among conservatives that democracy is a bad thing. The people cannot be trusted to elect its leaders. So if we can stop “those people” from voting, so much the better! And this is why the rich side with the Republican Party, even though they make more money under Democratic administrations. They know that the Republicans think as highly of the rich as the rich think of themselves.

So it is galling to me when commentators pretend that the Republican Party cares about things like improving the economy and providing “equality of opportunity.” They don’t. They are like a traditional political party: constituency based. But in their case, their constituency is very very small. And pretending that the Republicans are looking out for the good of the nation only provides them with undeserved political cover.