Well, I have obtained a PDF copy — you can read the whole thing right here. And it’s really a striking read, because it demonstrates two things. First, how much the current GOP strategy seems to echo the strategic objectives Kristol articulated 15 years ago. And second, how much worse off the GOP is now than it was then in terms of being able to achieve those objectives. Here’s the crux:

Passage of the Clinton health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent an unprecedecented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy — and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security. It’s success would signal a rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment we have begun rolling back that idea in other areas…

The long term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse — much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependency for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government…

Its rejection by Congress and the public would be a monumental setback for the President, and an incontestable piece of evidence that Democratic welfare-state liberalism remains firmly in retreat.

As Greg says (and his post is good and succinct so you should probably check it out), this is amusing mostly because liberal ideals are anything but “in retreat”.

The issue is now, as it was then, much more about thwarting the President and making Democrats look ineffective than it is about real ideology. Healthcare is a winning issue, not because it’s a craven “chicken in every pot” giveaway, but because people need it and only government can assure that it’s provided properly. Believing that government can’t do healthcare is akin to believing that truly good healthcare can never be achieved by average people.

Republicans like Kristol also know that for them to win, Democrats need to lose, and lose big, on core issues like this, regardless of what the actual outcome will mean for you and I.   It’s scorched earth politics.

–The President’s great unreleased lines: “I’m a casual admirer of Abraham Lincoln. … [He should have seen] my inaugural: He never drew crowds like that. … [To Senator Lieberman] No hard feelings because of the election. My door is always open. Feel free to drop by ANY SATURDAY AFTERNOON. … [To Gov. Palin] I never expected you to be PALLING AROUND with THIS crowd. I want to congratulate you on your Golden Globe for ‘30 Rock.’ …. [To Vernon Jordan] Just because a guy can give great speeches doesn’t mean he’s going to be a great president. … I see Chief Justice Roberts is here to administer my daily oath of office. … [On the similarity between Cheney and Biden] Dick Cheney is a man of few words. Joe Biden is also vice president. … [On the delay in getting a dog] The labradoodle we picked has some problems with back taxes. … [On ‘a better way for our time’ than blaming each other and passing the buck] I ask you to summon that spirit once more, and make future generations proud of what we did WHEN WE WERE TESTED BY HISTORY.” …

Mike Allen @ Politico via War and Piece

3. Prohibit any bank that gets TARP II funds from issuing dividends, purchasing other companies, or paying off creditors.

4. Bar any bank that gets TARP II funds from paying its executives, traders, or directors more than 10 percent of what they received in 2007.

5. Require that any bank getting TARP II funds be reimbursed by its executives, traders, and directors 50 percent of whatever amounts they were compensated in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. This compensation was, after all, based on false premises and fraudulant assertions, and on balance sheets that hid the true extent of these banks’ risks and liabilities.

Personally, I like it. But everything I think I know about the financial crisis came from either This American Life’s credit meltdown series or the bartender at Macao Trading Company in Tribeca. I genuinely thought that having the government purchase stock in banks was the way to go, but Reich disagrees, which I find intriguing. Neither does he think we should be buying toxic assets off of the banks. If I’m reading this right, he thinks we should give money to banks, and banks should sell that money to customers, reopening the credit sluice and bringing profits back, albeit slowly, to the banks themselves.

I know that an open dialogue with my readers isn’t really what goes on here at the nurblog, but if anybody has any insight that doesn’t come from NPR or drunken wall streeters, I’d really appreciate it. Plus we can see if the comment section still works.

He was asked when he had gone to Afghanistan and how he had met Mr. bin Laden. When he replied that he had never been to Afghanistan and had not met Mr. bin Laden, the Egyptians tortured him with electric shocks, he said. “I cry and I yell,” he said. “Also they gave me brain electric shocks.” He said he was forced to consume liquids that were laced with drugs “so you don’t know what you are talking about.”

In early April, he said, the Americans flew him to Bagram, the American air base outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. He was held there for almost a year, at times shackled and handcuffed in a small cage with other detainees, and further interrogated, he said.

“A C.I.A. person said, ‘We forgive you; just accept you met Osama bin Laden.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not going to say that.’ ” Even though polygraph tests showed that he was telling the truth, he said, he was shifted from cell to cell every few hours and deprived of sleep for six months.

Listen. Reading the article, this guy sounds like kind of a douchebag, but we don’t need to be torturing people for being douchebags. We shouldn’t be torturing people at all, but we do, and will continue to. We can play all kinds of games like letting the Egyptians do it for us, or defining torture as anything that kills you or ruins your organs (so if you’re not dead and your spleen still mostly works, I guess we didn’t torture you!), or Bush’s weirdly circular logic of “Torture is illegal, we don’t do illegal things, therefore what we’re doing isn’t torture, because I’ve made what we do legal.”

Whatever. These individual cases often have enough ambiguity to allow pro-torture conservatives to wiggle out either with patriotic platitudes or straight up insults (”would you rather die at the hands of a terrorist or risk mistreating a few dumbasses who where in the wrong place at the wrong time anyway?”). What this article is pretty useful for, though, is illustrating that there was clearly a well-oiled torture machine that shuffled the guilty and innocent alike from one shithole to another, beating them up and asking irrelevant questions at every stop.

What also seems obvious after reading this and dozens of articles like it, is that the machine was designed to torture people, it was NOT designed to glean information from them. I’m all for national catharsis, but this is gross. Beating up Pakistani loudmouths is not going to bring the Twin Towers back.

That’s not to say that I cook well, I don’t. Fuckups are frequent, and this is why I solicited advice, scoured the internet, and actually practiced the recipe earlier in the week before deploying it on my friends.

Most of the recipe is from this site, helpfully titled “the Worlds Best Mac and Cheese“. I like it not just because it’s based on a recipe from James Beard, or because it involves a roux, which I’d never done before but might be the secret to deliciousness in all things, but because it’s by someone named Patrick Fitzgerald, and I can pretend that in between indicting Scooter Libby and Rob Blagojevich, Fitz took a moment to do some chefery.

I’d assumed that there had been a drop, but I had no idea it was that sharp or deep. The repercussions of such a drop-off are also surprising. Suck it, Iran.

Not that things can’t go wrong, Democrats have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory [oops, got that backwards at first], but there seems to be a lot of reason for confidence, and there’s certainly a lot of reason for excitement. The mere possibility of an Obama victory is enough to fill even the most jaded political heart with a bit of song.

I’ve been listening to people debate the relative incompetence of the American people for the better part of eight years now, and I’m getting tired of defending them. I truly do not believe that Americans are, as a whole, stupid people. Shortsighted? Easily frightened? Generally disinterested in the nitty gritty of politics and world affairs? Sure. But when a case is presented to them, they will make a rational conclusion, and this is a case where I think that conclusion will be the right one.

Kerry made his case poorly in 2004. Al Gore won in 2000. We have a better candidate now than we did either time (Al Gore has since gotten better and Kerry, thank god, has virtually disappeared), and that candidate has run a remarkably tight, intelligent, positive campaign. Meanwhile, McCain has run a surprisingly incoherent and despicable campaign, so the wind is really at Obama’s back coming into the finish.

Very exciting times. It needs to end soon, though, ’cause it’s getting hard to work with my fingers crossed all the time.

But here’s a tantalyzing possibility: If Stevens were somehow to squeak through this election, and then be forced to resign after exhausting his appeals, might Sarah Palin decide to appoint … Sarah Palin?

You know, I wouldn’t be surprised, and that depresses me.

It’s funny, Jon Stewart is always saying that Bush has one more crazy war left in him, invading Mexico or bombing Vancouver or something, who knew he’d actually be right?