Photo Credit: Nicholas Rosenberg
]]>Adherents of the former group in both political parties have been firmly in control of government in recent decades. This comes out very clearly in the treatment of the foreclosure crisis.
The basic story of the foreclosure crisis is that banks made trillions of dollars of bad mortgage loans that were used to buy or refinance houses at bubble-inflated prices. With the collapse of the housing bubble, more than a fifth of all mortgages are underwater. As a result, many homeowners are struggling to pay mortgages on houses in which they have no equity and have no real prospect of ever getting equity.
]]> This is where the two competing views of government come in. If the market is allowed to run its course, millions of homeowners will default on mortgages, leaving banks and investors with large losses.The largest banks are especially vulnerable in this area since the four big banks own hundreds of billions of dollars in second mortgages. In the event of default these second mortgages will be mostly worthless since the holder of a second mortgage gets nothing from the sale of a foreclosed home until the first mortgage is paid in full. If a home is already underwater, then legal costs and sales fees are likely to eat up a large enough share of the sale price to prevent the first mortgage from being paid off, leaving nothing for the holder of the second mortgage.
Those who believe that is the role of government to redistribute income upward and help the banks want the government to get people to keep paying on underwater mortgages as long as possible. While this may make little sense for these homeowners, since they will never accumulate equity and are likely paying more in ownership costs than they would pay to rent a similar house, it does help the banks' bottom line. Each additional month that underwater homeowners stay in their homes paying the mortgage the banks are getting money they would not otherwise receive.
This explains the value of a program like the Home Affordability Modification Program (HAMP). Only a small fraction of the people who enter this program will end up with a permanent modification that will actually allow them to accumulate equity. However, the entire time that they work with the program, they keep sending a mortgage check to the bank -- and the government kicks in some taxpayer dollars as well. This is a real win-win from the standpoint of the banks as they get more checks from the homeowner than would otherwise be the case, plus the subsidy from the government for stringing homeowners along.
Those who have the competing view -- that the role of government is to foster a strong economy and help the bulk of the population -- instead support measures that would directly help homeowners. For example, bankruptcy cram-down would make it easier for homeowners to declare bankruptcy and hold onto their homes.
Even better, the government could pass "right to rent" legislation as proposed by Representatives Raul Grijalva and Marcy Kaptur. This bill (HR 5028) would allow homeowners to stay in their home as renters for up to 5 years following a foreclosure. During this period, they would pay the market rent for their house as determined by an independent appraisal.
This bill would provide real housing security to homeowners facing foreclosure. It would also prevent a glut of vacant foreclosed homes from driving down property values and destroying neighborhoods. In addition, it would give banks more incentive to negotiate meaningful modifications with homeowners, since it would make the foreclosure route much less attractive. The Grijalva-Kaptur bill also would require no new government bureaucracy and would cost the taxpayers nothing.
But right-to-rent legislation would require a different view of government -- one that believes the government is responsible for helping ordinary people. As we know, the government is controlled by those who believe in redistributing money to the rich. So look for more plans to "help homeowners" by giving money to banks.
]]>I wondered how Lally Weymouth, the Post heir, became such a right-wing Zionist. (She tends only to write about Israel, usually penning love notes to right-wing Israeli leaders). True, her mother was half-Jewish (the modern Post was founded by Eugene Meyer) but any Judaism she imbibed at home was of the most assimilationist kind.
So I Googled her. And found this. I won't say more except, holy cow, this is an amazing story. Sad that it is about her 42 year old boyfriend's funeral -- he really was a tragic case -- but, it is a story of the Establishment like none I've ever read before. You won't be able to stop reading.
]]> Note: the problems of Weymouth's boyfriend started when, as a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, he was busted for a heroin purchase. But that did not stop him from being hired by Rupert Murdoch as editor of the New York Post or, in any way, slow his rise within the fanciest of bipartisan social and political circles. Nor did it affect his right-wing politics.After a period of rehabilitation, for his body, his psyche, and his reputation, Breindel signed on at the Post's editorial page in 1986. And immediately, he came out shooting bullets. Homeless people, poor people, gay people, the mentally ill, single mothers. All were subjected to Breindel's uncharitable lashings. There were never even subtle shadings in his writing that indicated he was someone who knew what it was like to stumble, to give in to temptation, or simply to suffer from some common human failing.
Favorite part, about the funeral itself. Even at the saddest of moments, Marty goes off.
All of the speakers, even the pols, kept to the imposed three-to-four-minute time limit. Except Marty Peretz. Distraught over the loss of his friend and unhappy about sharing the moment, the Harvard professor and owner of The New Republic went on for nearly half an hour. When he finished, people were literally fleeing. Pete Hamill whispered to Post columnist Jack Newfield, "Marty Peretz can empty a synagogue faster than a PLO bomb threat.]]>
DeYoung writes:
Despite discouraging news from Afghanistan and growing doubts in Congress and among the American public, the Obama administration has concluded that its war strategy is sound and that a December review, once seen as a pivotal moment, is unlikely to yield any major changes.This resolve arises amid a flurry of reports from outside experts and former officials who are convinced that the administration's path in Afghanistan is unsustainable and its objectives are unclear. Lawmakers from both parties are insisting that they be given a bigger say in assessing the war's trajectory.
The White House calculus is that the strategy retains enough public and political support to weather any near-term objections. Officials do not expect real pressure for progress and a more precise definition of goals to build until next year, with the approach of a July deadline President Obama has set for decisions on troop withdrawals and the beginning of the 2012 electoral season.
I don't doubt that DeYoung, a top-connected correspondent, had a key White Official convey to her the message that no change was ahead as some in the national security establishment would like to puncture early a growing bubble of criticism of the Afghanistan War, the conduct of it, and the war's objectives.
]]>DeYoung herself depicts growing tensions beyond a facade of resolve and current Afghanistan commitments. She writes:
Beneath the administration's outward calm, nerves have been frayed this summer by the slow pace of military operations and paucity of uncontested gains against Taliban forces. Reports of Afghan government corruption have been unrelenting, as has the climb in U.S. casualties. Troop deaths have more than doubled since Obama took office - more than 330 this year by early September - along with the size of the U.S. force.At a Monday meeting with his senior national security advisers, Obama displayed "particularly acute impatience" at "really astounding" casualty figures that are far higher than what was anticipated at the beginning of the year, the senior official said.
The near-collapse of the country's leading bank and President Hamid Karzai's attempts to stop U.S.-backed prosecutions of allegedly corrupt senior Afghan officials have overshadowed what the administration sees as signs of progress, the official said. Not only have the controversies opened the door to congressional efforts to condition funding, "you can't fit them into a story that explains to the American people why we're on a path to fulfill our goals," the senior official said.
A recent senior White House official recently went out of his/her way to convey to me that President Obama was not the kind of person to allow himself to be cornered by the military into a bad or ineffective course of action. This person said the President was not cowed by the military and the December review would assemble all the key voices for a genuine review.
The person speaking with Karen DeYoung -- and I can guess who it was -- is engaged in posturing and is "negotiating" in advance. I understand that.
But the White House must be very careful of sending the signal that the December review is fake and the cards are stacked in advance. That would be a terrible loss for the country and this government.
There will be an Afghanistan War debate in December, if not inside the White House -- then pounding on the door.
For those wanting to see one corner of this debate -- though there are many more participaints in this debate coming forward every day with their own proposals and critiques -- read the Afghanistan Study Group Report.
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note, and is editor-at-large at Talking Points Memo. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons
]]>What is truly at stake, not only at Harvard, is the increasing bestowal of quasi-academic distinction on people who've bought or wormed their ways into liberal education, as Peretz has done, sometimes vowing to rescue it from damage done to it by Marxist, politically correct, and post-modernist leftists.
That some leftists have indeed miscarried liberal education doesn't justify their critics' own abuses. I have body scars to show from taking on leftist abuses, sometimes even in the pages of Peretz's New Republic. But that is not the problem now, even though neo-con harpies will be busy insisting otherwise, as they did even when Harvard's corporation ejected Summers for sins worse than political incorrectness.
]]> David Brooks was right enough to say in 2002 that "American society has decided to warehouse its radical lunatics on university campuses in specialized departments that operate as nunneries for the perpetually alienated." But now, it's failed and aging neo-con fellow-travelers like Peretz, disgraced by their own blunders in foreign policy and other realms, who are scurrying into lavishly funded nunneries the likes of which leftists never enjoyed.What matters here is not merely these men's unwise and perhaps revealing utterances - Peretz's against Muslims or McChrystal's against Obama -- but the creeping academic legitimation of their pedagogy and what it portends for liberal education.
Let me stipulate -- and this is important to understand and to acknowledge -- that colleges like Harvard and Yale have always had to strike a difficult balance between humanist Truth-seeking and republican Power-wielding as they train national leaders through liberal education. In a Los Angeles Times review in 2004 I sketched some of Yale's best, but still-flawed, efforts to do this in the perilous 1960s. And, writing for a Yale undergraduate publication, The Politic, I sketched more recently what's at stake in how college instructors teach the humanities to future leaders.
Let me also stipulate - and this, too, is important - that university communities should make room for people with "real world" experience such as Peretz, Hill, and McChrystal (and me) to teach, say, one course a year. They (we) can be part of the leaven, part of the mix, if the course in question is answerable to the standards of a liberal education and if the teaching is good. What such teachers do not deserve is any academic prestige and organizational sway, especially if these are won more from worldly presence and "connections" or wealth than from scholarship.
When Brooks, in a New York Times column years ago, rhapsodized Charles Hill as much-needed veteran of the world on the Yale campus, a blogger "John-Paul" responded rightly that "If Hill was some veteran of the civil-rights struggle who told students to dedicate their lives to radical political activity (and there are profs like that at universities), Brooks would be incensed at the indoctrination." So, ironically, would Hill. These double standard here reeks.
Peretz is no more scholarly or subtle than Hill and no less craving of the balm of scholarly credibility and prestige that neither of them has earned. What would be amusing and almost touching if it weren't so ominous is the prodigious effort these men and their like-minded sponsors have been making to burnish their scholarly sheen, especially after their political embarrassments of 2008. It is almost as if they felt themselves growing old and suddenly realized that they have so much to live down.
I won't reprise Peretz's problem here, and I've just recently addressed Hill's in Foreign Policy and, more pedagogically and politically, right here at TPM.
I've just done much the same for the ancient military historian and National Review polemicist Victor Davis Hanson, in the new issue of the journal Democracy. (Unlike the others, Hanson has done serious scholarship, but he keeps conscripting it to apocalyptic ends.)
I forgive these men's undergraduate defenders and apologists for not understanding fully what is being done to them as students. I also forgive student critics who've simple-mindedly reduced the problem to specific instances of bigotry like Peretz's or misleadership like McChrystal's or Negroponte's.
And I'm delighted that Yale's Grand Strategy program, perhaps stung or enlightened by criticism it has received, has brought in the writer Jonathan Schell and the PBS economics correspondent Paul Solman to present understandings of power and wealth at odds with those posited and peddled by the program throughout the Bush years.
Harvard's Standing Committee on Social Studies has an easier task: not to let this virus in the body of liberal education infect its program via honoring Peretz, who has already done enough damage as a perpetual lecturer of no deserved distinction.
Former Harvard College Dean Harry Lewis, who clashed with Summers when he was president of the university, has posed the challenge well in his Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Liberal Education.
And Yale's president of the 1960s, Kingman Brewster, Jr., posed it well to my entering freshman class on September 13, 1965: "To a remarkable extent this place has detected and rejected the very few who wear the colors of high purpose falsely," Brewster said. "This has not been done by administrative edict or official regulation. It has been done by a pervasive ethic of student and faculty loyalty and responsibility and mutual regard which lies deep in our origins and traditions."
Consciously or not, Brewster echoed his ancestors' contemporary, the Massachusetts Bay Puritan minister Richard Mather, who said in 1657 that "Imposters have but seldom got in and set up among us; and when they have done so, they have made a short blaze and gone out in a snuff."
So one might hope now, too. But the neo-conservative finance capitalist (and one-time part owner of The New Republic) Roger Hertog has offered to fund versions of Yale's "grand strategy" program at nine more colleges, and, with the few exceptions I've just mentioned, these quasi-academic ventures suggest only that, like Christianity and free markets, liberal education and wise leadership have more noisy claimants and celebrants than they have true friends.
It's not a mincing, scholarly purism that needs strong and faithful defenders, it's liberal education's effort to balance humanist Truth-seeking and civic-republican Power wielding constructively and humanely, rather than opportunistically and ideologically. A student research fund named for Martin Peretz would cleanse neither him nor Harvard of its failures to get this balance right.
No one works harder to parade his apartness from such pseudo-sophisticated posturing than New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who dispatched the apostles of on dit last week by complaining,
"Our sophistication is merely a skill for many surfaces. ... Its objective is breadth, not depth. It is... the intellectual aspiration of a dinner guest. .... We teach ourselves to become even a little haughty about what we discovered the day before yesterday. ("What, you haven't seen Osipova?") And the victims of our intimidation go home to bone up in private, to remediate their out-of-the-loopness and prepare themselves for a role in the on dit--except of course the strong ones among them who recognize this game for what it is, and prefer something better than sophistication, more specific and more substantive, a parcel of knowledge strenuously acquired and genuinely possessed....."
And here is Wieseltier, recognizing the game for what it is on October 8, 2001, as the ruins of the World Trade Center smoldered, dispatching Vanity Fair sophisticates' reactions to the calamity:
Not a pawn of irony but its master, Wieseltier has consecrated himself to the kind of sincerity and profundity that, well before 9/11, made him join Richard Bruce (Dick) Cheney and Carl Christian Rove on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Even on Sep. 20, 2001, as he was penning the comments quoted above, Wieseltier and 40 others signed a public letter to George W. Bush from the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century, urging that ''even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.''
The on dit about Wieseltier is that he keeps on repeating himself, in print and in politics, as I showed at some length here two years ago. Perhaps this is something for him to ponder and -- dare one say it? -- atone for. He can't do so by banging away at people who've dropped him from their dinner party lists, and certainly not by sounding, week after week, as if he himself had penned my own modest proposal for his epitaph:
I am so wise,
That my wisdom makes me weary.
It's all I can do
To share my wisdom with you.
We're in the red zone, and the clock is ticking on some of the most important legislation for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. With just 9 voting days left in Congress, we need the crowd to get loud, get us fired up , and push us across the goal line. Think a Rex Ryan speech in the fourth quarter on fourth and goal.
And a touchdown is in sight. We are just 10 yards away from securing critical upgrades to the New GI Bill. These upgrades will help thousands of veterans get the educations benefits they have earned. From National Guardsmen left out of the first round of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, to vets attending vocational school, to warriors looking for on-the-job training and apprenticeships, this legislation will help set these men and women up for success. Just like the first GI Bill did after World War II.
]]> Iraq and Afghanistan vets have been pushing Congress to put points on the board on three separate issues: disability claims reform, job creation for vets, and upgrades to the New GI Bill. The veterans community moved the ball downfield by meeting with dozens of members of Congress, being vocal in the media and testifying on Capitol Hill, but due to partisan bickering and the focus on the midterms, Congress has dropped the ball on disability claims reform and employment issues. This time, vets are calling Congress out for penalties on the field:Call on the field: Congress Fumbles, Disability Reform Turned Over to the VA
Instead of pushing disability claims improvements forward through the legislative process, Congress dropped the ball. The good news is the VA picked it up, and we're hoping it ends like this. The policy and regulatory changes the VA is making is an alternative route to the legislation vets initially fought for, but the impact is the same. And in the years to come, vets filing disability claims will likely be using a much improved system.
Call on the field: Incomplete Pass, Employment Bill Stalled
Congress failed to bring legislation to the floor to combat record unemployment facing Iraq and Afghanistan-era vets in one of the toughest economies in decades. With unemployment rates hovering above 11% over the past year, this is no time for partisan politics to get in the way of finding real solutions to creating employment opportunities for new veterans.
The big play: Veterans are in the Red Zone, only 10 Yards to Go Until a Congressional Vote
Congress must overcome these setbacks and score some major points on the New GI Bill. But with just 9 working days left until Congress leaves and no time outs, the clock is not on our side. To make sure this happens, vets must make a big play now.
We need you to make some noise by signing this letter demanding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid schedules a vote on the new GI Bill before Congress leaves Washington once again. If Senator Reid has the time to reach a tweet agreement with Lady Gaga, he definitely has the time for this.
We need 10,000 signatures to move us the ten yards needed for a historic congressional vote for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. The more people that sign the letter, the louder the crowd gets, and the more likely it is that vets win.
Millions of veterans across the country, not to mention the hundreds of thousands still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, are depending on Congress to have their backs and to take immediate action on this critical legislation. Let's make sure they follow through and put some points on the board. As Vince Lombardi said, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing"- especially when it is for the men and women who have served and sacrificed.
Paul Rieckhoff is the Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and the author of Chasing Ghosts.
]]>One thing I admire about the right (it's the only thing I admire about the right) is that they will not tolerate Republicans who totally sleep with the enemy.
No Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, or Ben Nelsons for them.
No matter who wins his seat in November -- Republican, Democrat, Whig, Maoist, or Tea Party -- Bayh will be out of the Senate and the Senate Democratic caucus. And that is something to celebrate.
Thank you, God.
]]>
Photo Credit: Nicholas Rosenberg
]]>So now they're getting tough on China.
But it's a dangerous ploy based on wishful thinking.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee Thursday the Administration is "examining the important question of what mix of tools, those available to the United States and multilateral approaches, might help encourage the Chinese authorities to move more quickly." Translated: We're on the verge of threatening them with trade sanctions.
]]> Even this didn't satisfy the Senators. Charles Schumer (D-New York) charged that trade with China "diminishes America, our standard of living here in America, and America as a world power." Richard Shelby (R-Ala) demanded to know why "the administration protecting China by refusing to designate it as a currency manipulator" - a designation that could lead to trade sanctions.On Wednesday the U.S. filed a pair of complaints against China with the World Trade Organization, alleging China was unfairly denying American companies access to its market. Meanwhile, several Democrats facing elections in November are introducing measures that would allow companies to pursue sanctions against China for manipulating its currency.
It's true China has kept the value of its currency artificially low relative to the dollar. If China allowed its currency to rise, Chinese exports would become more expensive to us and our exports would be relatively cheaper to them. This would help shrink the trade imbalance.
It's also true China has dragged its feet. In June, the U.S. stopped short of branding China a currency manipulator after China promised to reform its ways. But since then China's currency has risen just 1 percent relative to the dollar.
America's trade imbalance with China is growing. In the first half of this year, China exported $119 billion more goods and services to us than we did to them - putting the two nations on course to exceed last year's $227 billion trade gap.
But it's naive to assume all we have to do to get Chinese to do what we want is to threaten them with tariffs.
First, they might retaliate. Remember, China is the biggest foreign investor in U.S. Treasury securities, with holdings of more than $843 billion. If China were to start selling off large amounts, America's borrowing costs would soar - and we'd end up worse off.
Second, it's already costly to China to keep its currency artificially low - requiring that China buy loads of dollars. So why would anyone suppose that making it more expensive for them would bring China around?
China has been willing to bear this huge cost because its export policy doubles as a social policy, designed to maintain order.
Each year, tens of millions of poor Chinese stream into China's large cities from the countryside in pursuit of better-paying work. If they don't find it, China risks riots and other upheaval. Massive disorder is one of the greatest risks facing China's governing elite. That elite would much rather create jobs than allow its currency to rise substantially and thereby risk job shortages at home.
Third, even if China did allow its currency to rise against the dollar, there's no reason to think this would automatically generate lots more American jobs.
American exports would become cheaper to Chinese consumers. But Japan, Germany, and other major exporters would also demand a piece of the action. Unemployment is high in all developed nations, and every government is under pressure to create more jobs.
Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers - whose goods would suddenly become more expensive to American consumers - could simply shift their production to other nations with lower currencies. Indeed, as Chinese wages have begun to rise, Chinese manufacturers have already started to shift production to Vietnam, Indonesia, and other low-wage outposts of Southeast Asia.
What worries me most about all this tough talk about China is it diverts attention from the real problem. American isn't suffering high unemployment because we're buying too much from China and not selling them enough. Trade with China is a small portion of the U.S. economy.
Twenty million Americans lack jobs because American consumers - especially America's vast middle class - can no longer spend what's necessary to keep nearly everyone employed.
After three decades of stagnant middle-class wages, during which almost all the economic gains have gone to the top, we've finally reached a day of reckoning. The middle class can no longer borrow vast sums by using their homes as ATMs. They can't squeeze more working hours out of two wage earners. And they have to start saving for retirement.
The central challenge we face isn't to rebalance trade with China. It's to rebalance the American economy so its benefits are more widely shared.
Read the original post here.
]]>Until now, the treaty has been tied up by partisan politics and old, Cold War thinking on the part of its (Republican) opponents. But there is hope for a change in that unfortunate set of circumstances. Today, the treaty was voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and can now be considered by the Senate as a whole. The vote was 14 to 4, including three Republicans: Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Johnny Isakson of Georgia. To reach the two-thirds vote needed to ratify the treaty, eight Republicans will be needed. Other possibilities include Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio, Robert Bennett of Utah, and a number of others who have yet to declare their final opinions on the agreement.
Time is of the essence. It is imperative that the treaty be ratified this year, and with Congress going out of session on October 8th, it is possible that the agreement will need to be considered during the "lame duck" session after the November elections. Senators need to hear from their constituents now, both about the need to vote for the treaty and about the need to consider it as soon as possible.. Organizations that are working toward that end include the Arms Control Association, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Two Futures project, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Women's Action for New Directions. They are to be congratulated on today's successful vote, and supported in whatever way we can as they help move the treaty towards ratification.
]]>
My answer: the scholarship being set up to honor racist Peretz is at Harvard.
***
Here is Jeff Goldberg citing with approval a defense of Martin Peretz by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan basically argues that Peretz is a well-intentioned man who is nuts on the subject of Arabs and Muslims but is decent nonetheless.
Sullivan writes, "Marty is a man of deep passion and such passion, especially on a subject like the Middle East, sometimes leads to irrationality."
And, for writing that, Goldberg calls Sullivan "big-hearted" (Sullivan seems "big-hearted" to me too, but I don't know him).
But here's the thing. Peretz didn't slip up once or twice and spout bigotry against Muslims and Arabs. He does it several times a week. Hating Arabs and Muslims is primarily what he is about. How can that be forgivable?
]]> Now, I don't know if Sullivan defended Helen Thomas who once, once, made an offensive statement about Israel and Zionism and that one statement cost her a job, a career and a reputation. This despite the fact that no one has ever accused Helen Thomas of having personal animus to Jews. She just doesn't like Israel, a foreign country,and she gave voice to that feeling. She did not attack American Jews as Peretz attacked American Muslims.Here is Goldberg on Thomas. Suffice it to say, he did not defend her in any way, shape or form.
So what's the difference? It is this. Some expressions of bigotry are permissible in this country and some aren't.
One had best keep your anti-black racism to yourself -- or pretend it's just about Obama as the Limbaughs and right-wingers do. Same with Jews, where, as the Thomas case demonstrates, expressing disdain for Israel, let alone Jews, can be a career killer.
But it's still okay to express open prejudice towards gays and lesbians, Latino immigrants (legal or illegal) and, above all, Muslims and Arabs.
And that is why there are people -- although, so far, just his personal friends -- who are defending Peretz. He picked the right group to openly hate. Just ask Abe Foxman.
]]>To grab your WXR, you don't need to log in anywhere, just go to the address following this URL pattern:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/yourusername/export.wxr
That should download the file to your hard drive. In your new blogging platform of choice, simply upload that file where it asks for an import, and your blog should be restored on that platform! Enjoy!
Update: It seems like people are having trouble downloading the file, since it's only a URL pattern not a link. Here's a little tool called ExportFile Instant that should generate a link that you can right-click and download. Just type your username in the input box below. A link will appear under the box. Just right-click and download from that link. Don't save as a .doc or any other format. WXR is a form of XML that can be uploaded to various services as is.
Additionally, I see the 10-posts limit, and will be working to fix that. I'll update this post when we've pushed the fix.
Update 2: We just kicked off a rebuild of all the export files that should contain full blogs and comments (up to 500 entries). If yours isn't up yet, it will be within the next few hours. Thanks for your patience!
Update 3: Genghis has asked me to post this link to his instructions for importing your TPMCafe blog to dagblog.
]]>I am continuously amazed at the GOP's ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of potential victory. It is the gift that keeps giving.
I was there November 14, 1995 when Newt Gingrich pulled the plug on the federal government the first time. It proved to be the stupidest political move in recent history. Not only did it help Bill Clinton win reelection but it was a boon to almost all other Democrats in 1996 (Gingrich's photo was widely used in negative ads), and the move damaged Republicans for years.
]]> Gingrich hurt his cause by complaining that Bill Clinton had put him in the back of Air Force One on a trip that occurred about the same time. Republican lore has it that it was this babyish behavior rather than the shutdown itself that caused the public to side with Clinton in the game of chicken Gingrich launched over the budget. Undoubtedly Gingrich's whining didn't help, but it was his cavalier attitude toward government itself that was the defining issue. Gingrich was the one who first bragged he'd shut down the government if Clinton didn't agree to what the Republicans wanted.Now, remarkably, Gingrich is back at it.
Dick Armey says it's "premature" to talk about doing any such thing. What Armey means is if the public sees Republicans already plotting a shutdown, they'll react even more angrily than they did fifteen years ago.
Americans may be cynical about government but we're proud of our system of governance. And we don't want it to be used as a political pawn in partisan power games. That's what Republicans forget time and again. They dislike government so much they don't see the difference between government as a bureaucracy and democratic governance as a cherished system.
The framers of the Constitution developed checks and balances to assure one branch didn't accumulate too much power. But they never contemplated that one party could shut down the entire governmental system if it didn't get what it wanted.
Read the original post here.
]]>As pretext for his gutter-scraping smear against opponent Joe Sestak, the Toomey campaign used Sestak-supporting Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) as a foil. Disclosure time, I serve on the political action committee for CGS that makes these decisions on donations. Disclaimer time, I bear sole and personal responsibility for this post / rant.
Seriously, you'd have to have a gaping hole in your memory to think that America can promote its interests by giving the rest of the world a big kiss-off. Just as a gentle reminder: Iraq War, detainee torture, climate change denial, "un-signing" a bunch of treaties, bloviating about North Korea instead of really working to halt their nuke program, refusing to press the Israeli government... (Remind me why the gap in liberal enthusiasm?) I guess the only good news is that the Toomey campaign had to make **** up in order to make Sestak (a former Navy admiral, by the way) sound really bad and scary.
]]>