Adam Serwer dutifully summarizes every episode of the Rush Limbaugh program since 2009. A thought piece, if you will.
Tag: serwer
…the concept of “seriousness” in Washington punditry is closely tied to the sacrifices rich people expect everyone else to make on their behalf in order to rescue America not merely from fiscal ruin but from moral decline as well.
Adam Serwer, exactly right on serious people.
I’m not optimistic about [Wyden-Brown] going anywhere. The Affordable Care Act has taken on too much symbolism for the Republican base as something that must be destroyed. It doesn’t matter if Wyden-Brown actually gives Republicans what they’re asking for in terms of policy.
Adam Serwer is mostly right here, but the fact is that anything Obama wants has automatically “taken on too much symbolism” for the GOP to allow it to happen. By taking up a position as anything but against Wyden-Brown, Obama has absolutely doomed it.
Obama and his staff are still assuming that the facts matter. That a media exists to notice and discuss his sober position that essentially gives the GOP what they want on a key issue. That the serious people actually care about policy outcomes despite 40 years of evidence to the contrary. That the GOP movers and shakers will be seen doing anything, anything that even remotely agrees with a position the President has taken up. All of this is squarely why Wyden-Brown will fail, no matter how good or bad it might be: Obama wants it, and has signaled as much. It doesn’t stand a chance.
You can support democracy in which the risk of Islamists gaining power and influence is present or you can support secular autocratic regimes that reduce the influence of Islamist groups through repressive means, but you can’t do both.
Adam Serwer, hitting the nail squarely on its head. This is why Obama’s administration is using words like “reviewing our assistance posture.” That’s meant very clearly as a warning to Mubarak in advance of any heavy-handed crackdowns.
By the same token, revolution is vastly more likely to end with a more Islamic regime in charge, destabilization of the Egypt/Israel axis, and a lot more complicated Middle East than it is to end with some magical democratic flowering and instant equality amongst all peoples of Egypt.
Status quo, on the other hand, means either living with a weakened Mubarak (and trying to fix that with some kind of real elections in 2011), accepting some type of military takeover (Pakistan light), or ending up with some other “strongman” style government that emerges in the aftermath.
I’d say neither option makes Obama or HRC sleep more easily. This is the essence of these big jobs and why they inevitably eat you up. Well, they eat you up unless you’re an idiot man-child like George W. Bush.
By the same token, revolution is vastly more likely to end with a more Islamic regime in charge, destabilization of the Egypt/Israel axis, and a lot more complicated Middle East than it is to end with some magical democratic flowering and instant equality amongst all peoples of Egypt.
Status quo, on the other hand, means either living with a weakened Mubarak (and trying to fix that with some kind of real elections in 2011), accepting some type of military takeover (Pakistan light), or ending up with some other “strongman” style government that emerges in the aftermath.
I’d say neither option makes Obama or HRC sleep more easily. This is the essence of these big jobs and why they inevitably eat you up. Well, they eat you up unless you’re an idiot man-child like George W. Bush.
Prediction: Obama’s performance tonight is strong, so [conservative pundits] will pivot to attacking the crowd.
Adam Serwer, tweeting a hole right through the fabric of time and space. There really is nothing that will fail to aggrieve the pundocrats ruling our world.
…the attempted assassination of a sitting member of Congress is inherently political, and politics is the process by which democracies negotiate the solutions to public problems. Conservatives know this. If the shooter had been a member of a Mexican drug cartel as some conservatives assumed, they would be calling for stricter immigration laws and blaming the White House for lax enforcement. If the shooter had been named “Mohammed,” no amount of evidence of mental illness would have persuaded conservatives that Islam wasn’t the culprit, and that the administration’s terrorism policies had failed. Instead, the shooter appears to have lurked on the extremist fringe of right-wing politics, much like Byron Williams and James von Brunn, and so conservatives are calling for a calm and reasoned assessment of the facts. The guilt is individual, rather than collective.
Adam Serwer
To which I add: yep.
To which I add: yep.
Behold: Totally Awesome Criticism
Excellent analysis from Dave von Ebers of the Obama administration’s continuation of the wrongheaded indefinite detention policies that concludes thusly:
Obama is wrong to continue the Bush policy of indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees, and the Executive Order we’re about to see will exacerbate, not solve, that problem. I disagree – vehemently, even – with what the President’s doing here.
Finally–after the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the economic crisis, a long, punishing recession, and an unending war in Afghanistan, it’s nice that someone has finally come along and shaken American’s unbending faith in the ability of political, social, and economic elites to solve problems.
Adam Serwer, in response to Jack Shafer’s assertion that WikiLeaks is “restoring distrust in our most important institutions”
Glenn Beck is the moderate center of Fox News; Bill O’Reilly is its liberal wing.
Adam Serwer in response to Roger Ailes latest maundering about NPR and Nazism. I mean, you knew they both started with an “N” didn’t you? How clear do they have to make it?
I’d say that about sums it up.
I’d say that about sums it up.
Some people have already asked how an American like D’Souza disparages anti-colonialism, but it’s simple really: African self-determination is seen by many in the West, particularly conservatives, as tragic in comparison to the idealized “stability” of white rule. “Kenyan anti-colonialism” manages to say at once that Obama is a black, incompetent despot who is out for revenge against whites and who will destroy the country in the process. This is profoundly racist on its face. Yet it’s the cover story in Forbes magazine.
Adam Serwer, extending these comments for the American Prospect. I know Bob Somerby doesn’t want to hear it, but “the R-word” is the only rational way to describe this sort of thinking.
Lemkin 