According to the Washington Post, the administration thinks that the “war on terror” will go on and on. “Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.” And on Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether we should continue the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force. Spencer Ackerman reported, “Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, ‘At least 10 to 20 years.'” As Glenn Greenwald noted yesterday, “That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the ‘war on terror’ will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week’s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined.”

I don’t get any of this. Since we started the “war on terror” there have been almost no terror attacks on the United States. The vast majority of the deaths from what can credibly be call “terrorism” have been US armed forces in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, in the decade since 2001, 392,000 Americans were killed in auto accidents. There were very roughly 300,000 Americans killed with guns. Hell, roughly 400 Americans have been killed by lightning strikes and that’s more than the number of civilian terrorist casualties in the same period of time. So why exactly do we have to let the president have unlimited war powers in the name of this relatively minor threat to Americans?

It’s worse than that. The Florida Times-Union reported Tuesday, Tipping Law Enforcement to Possible Terrorist Activity Is Purpose of 13-County Program. It is very much like those old Neighborhood Crime Watch signs that read, “We immediately report all SUSPICIOUS PERSONS and activities to our Police Dept.” Note that clearly suspicious persons are much more important than suspicious actions. Translation: “Darkies stay away!”

The article refers to the iWATCH program that has a curious list of things to report. Much of it is silly. We are supposed to report “chemical smells or fumes.” I think that’s probably a good idea, but mostly because you don’t want your house to burn down or to die from poisoning. The idea that this is something we ought to look out for because of “terrorism” is ridiculous. There is also a certain obsession with “important buildings.” Report a car illegal parked in from of important buildings but not, apparently, in front of non-important buildings. I’m not sure what qualifies as an important building in Jacksonville, and the site doesn’t say. They also want people to look out for the nefarious model builder and uniform purchaser. It sounds very much like the people who made the list had watched Die Hard one too many times.

The main thing is the way that the government (and much of the media) want people to be frightened of terrorism all out of proportion to the actual threat. After all, this year, far more Americans have died because of workplace accidents—much of it criminally negligent. Far more Americans have died in shooting sprees. I don’t have the data, but it is certainly the case that more Americans have died this year because of lightning strikes than terror attacks. But we are doing nothing about workplace safety, guns, or the shocking lack of lightning rods in rural America. We are, however, turning the whole country into one big spying organization and allowing our government to practice endless war.

But at least Jacksonville, Florida will be terrorism free. Well, against white people anyway.

At the Washington Post, two writers I admire, Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein, are excited about the prospect of filibuster reform. First, Sargent broke the news that Harry Reid plans to go for the “nuclear option” in July if the Republicans filibuster three upcoming nominees: “Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Thomas Perez as secretary of labor; and Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency.” And then Bernstein argued that Reid was playing this just right by giving the Republicans a warning and an opportunity to reform themselves.

The problem, of course, is: really?! Are we really supposed to believe that (1) Republicans will respond to what they should rightly assume is an empty threat? And is it at all credible that (2) Reid will in fact do anything this time other than shake hands with Mitch McConnell? However, it is possible that I’m being unfair to the Majority Leader. According to Bernstein, Reid is constrained because (he doesn’t put it this way) he is the leader of a bunch of wimps who wouldn’t go to the bathroom without asking permission from the Republicans. And there is likely something to that. But if it is the case that Reid doesn’t have the support of his caucus, then why is he saying anything at all?

Another problem is that we really don’t know what Reid means by his test case of three nominations. The truth is that the Republicans filibuster every nominee. I know that some nominees do get through, but that is only because some Republicans vote for cloture. Let’s be really clear here: Senate Republicans require 60 votes for every nominee. Requiring 60 senators before a vote can be cast is a filibuster. If they get the 60 senators, it was an unsuccessful filibuster; but it was still a filibuster.

So the question is, will Harry Reid launch the “nuclear option” if Republicans unsuccessfully filibuster these three nominees? Because they will filibuster them. And even worse, what if only one or two of the nominees are successfully filibustered? We don’t know. But I have a hunch: Reid will declare victory and slink away. I would love to be proven wrong.

Our only hope is to put pressure on our senators. I did so myself last night, writing to both Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. I’m not sure about Boxer, but Feinstein has often been mentioned as someone who didn’t want filibuster reform. Remember: writing to your senator is really easy. Just use the Senate’s Contacting the Senate form. Or just enter your senator’s name and “contact” into Google. If not for yourself or your country, do it for me! This stuff is really important. All you need to do is to say that you would like to see a stop to Republican abuse of the filibuster regarding nominations and that the senator should support Harry Reid’s filibuster reform using the “nuclear option.” It’s easy! And most of all: it’s effective.

One thing is for sure. If Harry Reid is ever going to do something about the filibuster, he’s going to need all of our help.

Birthdays are not created equal. Yesterday, I almost gave up having a winner. Today, I have four easy winners who did not win. On this day in 1048, the great Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam was born. He’s winner number one. Another great mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was born in 1872. Unlike his colleague Wittgenstein, Russell was a decent human being. And he’s winner number two. Bauhaus founder and architect who I really don’t much like, Walter Gropius was born in 1883. Flutist, Music Man composer, and so much more, Meredith Willson was born in 1902. He’s winner number three. Singer Perry Como who underwhelms me, and director Richard Brooks who whelms me, were both born in 1912. The last dead pope, John Paul II was born in 1920. And insane cartoonist Don Martin was born in 1931. He’s winner number four.

Keyboardist Rick Wakeman is 64 today.

But let me tell you about one of my very favorite movies. It Happened One Night is the perfect Depression era film. It has a working class hero who teaches a silly rich girl important life lessons. It has good rich people (father) and bad rich people (King Westley). And it is funny as hell. This is my favorite scene, “Do you love my daughter?”

“Yes! But don’t hold that against me, I’m a little screwy myself!” I just love that.

The film was written by Robert Riskin, who I really like, and somehow missed on his birthday back on 30 March. But that was also van Gogh and Goya’s birthdays, so I think I can be forgiven. Today is the birthday of longtime Riskin collaborator, director Frank Capra who was born in 1897. And he wins the day. It is not without some reserve that I do this. Although Capra made It Happened One Night, his excesses caused him to make other films that although I don’t hate, bug me: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. But one thing is for sure, Capra had a good heart. The less said about his parochial views of sex and religion, the better. He was still a liberal by any definition. And by today’s standards a communist.

Happy birthday Frank Capra!

Last night I watched Space Cowboys, Clint Eastwood’s film about a group of old men who finally get their chance to go into space. It reminds me of something Andrea said after the very similar movie The Crew came out. “These films about old men reliving their glory days are really interesting. I wonder if we’re going to get a movie about four old women reliving their glory days of doing dishes and taking the kids to soccer practice?” It’s a good point. I do tire of seeing these old actors pretending as if they really are the hunka hunka burning love they used to be. But I still recalled the movie being fun, so I put it on. Boy was I wrong.

The problems with this film are extreme. And they start, like so many films, with the script. There are some genuinely funny lines in this movie. But without exception, the set-ups are so ham-handed that they almost kill the humor. It’s like watching an airplane land: turn the plane to be parallel to the runway, reduce speed, reduce altitude, lower landing gear, joke! But okay, most people watching are just glad to be in the company of these actors who we’ve loved in the past: Dirty Harry, Agent K, Rockford, and Hawkeye. Alas.

Although I don’t think much of three of these actors, I think that Donald Sutherland is fairly good. And the other three are rather good at being minor variations of themselves of screen. But in this film, I thought that pretty much all of their acting was awkward. I suspect this was not their faults. Rather, I think it was Clint Eastwood’s directing. He’s known for shooting very quickly. In this film, there were a lot of special effects. This no doubt slowed him down. Did that mean he rushed the non-special effects scenes more than usual? I don’t know. For whatever reason, the actors (Especially Eastwood himself!) were weaker than they usual are.

There were many other problems. It is always hard to tell, but the editing seemed choppy for the first half and then the pacing seemed ridiculously slow at the end. The science was laughable. The plot was stupid. The resolution was unfulfilling. Eastwood’s melodies are charitably called uninteresting. The whole thing is lit like it is taking place in a sports arena. But perhaps I’m nitpicking, and I certainly wouldn’t bring these things up if it weren’t for the major problems. Plus, there were things to like.

I especially liked seeing Marcia Gay Harden and Blair Brown. Despite whatever was holding back the men, they gave good performance. Plus, I’ve had a crush on Brown since I was a teenager. Actually, overall the supporting cast seemed pretty good to me, with the exception of James Cromwell who was uncharacteristically weak. Again: I’m sure it’s Eastwood’s fault.

Regardless, if you want to see one of these “old men reliving their glory days” films, skip Space Cowboys. Instead, watch The Crew, which certainly isn’t a great movie, but it’s better made and it has a fantastic comedy script.

Afterword

Speaking of bad science, twice during the film, a character makes this argument about hitting a baseball to moon. “You just need to knock it halfway there, about 100,000 miles, and the Moon’s gravity will take it from there.” Uh, no. Gravity is directly dependent upon mass. The earth’s mass is a bit more than 80 times the moon’s mass. Thus, halfway between the earth and the moon, the earth would have 80 times as much force. (BTW: I calculated that by entering (earth mass)/(moon mass) into Google and it spit back the answer “81.2800178349.” Typically, Bing provides a nice picture of the moon, but not what I actually wanted. You do know that about Bing, right? The reason that people “prefer” its search results is that they provide more images?)

I’m not going to work out the equations for you because I know that you would just skip them. The result is that the baseball would have to be 90% of the way to the moon when it runs out of energy in order for the moon to pull it home. My former (and in some ways current, because I bug him from time to time) physics professor Joe Tenn recently told me, “If you want movies to obey the laws of physics I am afraid you are going to be disappointed.” He’s right of course, but this stuff is too fun not to do.

Are you not entertained?

I have a very bad habit of reading a great book but having so many things to say about it that I put it aside for a while. And then, despite the fact that the text is now full of my comments, I have next to no idea what it was I wanted to say. Such is the case with Eric Alterman’s The Cause. It is basically a history of liberalism from the Great Depression to last year. But the real meat of it is in the end of the book when he looks at the resurgence of the Democratic Party. Just as I do, he finds the “New Democratic” movement wanting.

A good example of this is a contrast between Mario Cuomo and his son Andrew. Mario was a good old school Democrat who stood up against unpopular issues like the death penalty. His son (a prototypical New Democrat) took a similarly unpopular stand… Against the millionaire’s tax. Alterman writes:

One reason that I find Alterman so compelling is that he seems to be (like me) primarily an economic liberal. That isn’t to say that we don’t support social liberal causes. But it is the economic cause that has lately been abandoned by the liberal movement. As he writes:

If you want to know where liberalism has been in recent history, the questionable place it currently is, and where it is going, you really should read The Cause. It is largely inspiring, even if many parts will make you crazy.

According to Public Policy Polling (pdf), 74% of Republicans think that the Benghazi scandal is worse than Watergate. But I wonder: do these people even know what Watergate was about? That scandal has come to be a blanket term for a whole lot of presidential malfeasance. The Watergate break-in was just the loose thread that once pulled unraveled the whole shirt. But we can’t know what these Republicans think about Watergate because they weren’t asked. They were, however, asked if Benghazi was worse than Iran Contra and only 70% thought it was. And even more interesting, 74% think Benghazi is worse than the Teapot Dome scandal.

(Note: the worst thing about the Benghazi “scandal” is that it has forced me to learn to spell it! Look people: I have a hard enough time keeping the spelling of all the really useful words in my mind. There’s only so much space. I blame the Republicans.)

What are we to make of these numbers? I think it’s pretty simple: Republicans don’t like Obama. Because let’s face it, I doubt that 5% of Republicans have even heard of Teapot Dome and 1% know what it was. I suspect if you asked Republicans if Benghazi was worse than Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, they would say, “Yes!” I even know their argument: only one person died in Jerusalem whereas four people died in Benghazi! Okay, maybe they wouldn’t say that because most of them are Christians, but it does make as much sense as the argument, “No one died as a result of Watergate!” (Interestingly, the whole Benghazi “scandal” has been about what the White House said about Benghazi after the attack: the controversy is the “talking points.” No on died as a result of the talking points either, but that isn’t mentioned.)

If you think I am overstating the ignorance of the Republicans, just check out another part of the poll. PPP asked the “worse than Watergate” respondents where Benghazi was. Of them, 39% didn’t know. Here’s what they said:

• 10% Egypt (Close!)
• 9% Iran (Only 1,500 miles off!)
• 6% Cuba (6,000 miles!)
• 5% Syria (1,000 miles)
• 4% Iraq (1,000 miles)
• 1% North Korea (5,600 miles!)
• 1% Liberia (2,600 miles, but it does sound the same)
• 4% Didn’t know (Good answer!)

(I got the distances from this great tool: Distance From To. Check it out!)

I think the people who answered Egypt can be forgiven: it is close by and we have a similar relationship with that country. Similarly, those who thought it was Liberia: they got the first three letters right! But the rest are all, “Pick and enemy, any enemy!” It’s just silly and entirely typical of the conservative “good versus evil” mentality. They don’t need to differentiate between enemies; just like Justice Potter Stewart, they know ’em when they see ’em.

Beside the fact that Republicans don’t like Obama, this poll shows one other thing. Benghazi is a scandal for Republicans, only because they’ve been told it’s a scandal. By and large, they don’t even know what the scandal is. But it would be even bigger if they only knew that no one died in the Teapot Dome scandal either.

H/T: Eric Alterman

I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many journalists I follow went so wrong on the supposed White House Scandals this week. I think it has a lot to do with affinity bias. And that does not speak well for the state of journalism.

A lot of people wonder why, for example, conservatives often hold opinions that are just wrong. Throughout the Bush administration, Fox News viewers were systematically misinformed about important issues. Why was that? It’s quite simple: they trusted Fox News. And that is not only acceptable, it is necessary. We can’t independently become experts on every issue we hear about. So we find people who we trust as experts and believe what they say.

Of course, it pays to be selective. Anyone who gets their information from cable news is cruising for a bruising. In general, I think that MSNBC is a lot better than Fox News. But that isn’t always case. I think Fox News has done a better job under Obama than they did under Bush. It’s all been pretty bad, though. MSNBC has done better generally, but I think they were soft on Obama during the campaign. At times they act as apologists for the Obama Administration—especially certain shows. Regardless, I think that MSNBC does a better job of informing liberals than Fox News does informing conservatives. Of course, the best conservative print publications are better. Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review and Josh Barro of Bloomberg View are both fact based. I wish a lot more conservatives got their news from people like them.

There really is a difference between what liberals and conservatives think about things even when they are working off the same set of facts. And that should be enough. But instead, generally conservatives get different facts than liberals do. I think this is about 90% the fault of conservative media, but it hardly matters. My point is that we’ve got to trust someone.

I’ve worked very hard to find people who I feel I can trust—people who will not knowingly deceive me and will admit when they are wrong. I still feel very dependent on these people. But not always. For example, most of them went crazy this last week. They acted as though there was something to all these scandals. There were damned few people like me who were pushing back against this. And my question is: why?

I think there is a problem with being too plugged into the media structure—something that I cannot be accused of. And in this case, all the liberal commentators were trying to prove that they weren’t just partisans. If the Obama administration had done something wrong, they were going to hold it accountable. The problem is that this kind of thing is just as bad as blind partisanship. From Monday on, there was no information that implicated the White House. Yet much of the reporting was of the type that I saw coming from Greg Sargent: very cautious concern.

This week I wasn’t exactly kind to Obama. I blasted him about firing Steven Miller. And I’ve been very hard on him about the Associated Press, even though the scandal is systemic and not especially Obama. But I didn’t fall for the theatrics, which I correctly labeled a “perfect storm of bad sandal-like news.”

So why didn’t the others see this? I think it is the same thing as for all of us: we have people we trust. Unfortunately, many of the people I trust, themselves trust Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico. (I avoid reading them if I can.) They are the very definition of “Washington Insider.” And they create a kind of sports reporting approach to politics. Indeed, in his “nothing to see here” article yesterday, Ezra Klein wrote, “On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out.” But the evidence that became available between Tuesday and Thursday didn’t change the facts as the Monday CNN report did change Friday’s ABC “facts.” All that changed was that the commentariat had a chance to calm down.

The whole thing reminds me of The Ox-Bow Incident. The media depended upon its trusted connections to believe that something happened that the facts just didn’t support. Ezra Klein and others are always quick to note that a stunning revelation could turn any of these supposed scandals into real scandals. But that’s always true. It could turn out that Obama got an Oval Office blow job by an intern. Or that Michelle had Vince Foster killed. Or maybe they both fired the people in the travel office to give their friends a job. Any of this could be true. But barring any actual, you know, facts, it is just a big game of telephone played by journalists who really ought to be smarter than the average cable news viewer.