Hullabaloo

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

 
I'm Sure It's All Just A Happy Coincidence

Punditwatch posted the following exchange:

Both Kate O’Beirne of National Review, on Capital Gang, and Bill Kristol on Fox used almost identical language to describe a suddenly more hawkish sounding Colin Powell: “Colin Powell is now where Dick Cheney was last August, inspections won't work, we cannot disarm Saddam Hussein through inspections.”

Ah, yes. Back in August, Cheney was ready to parachute into Iraq right at that moment, right?
And Powell led Junior from the darkness and persuaded him (with the help of other cool heads like James Baker and Henry Kissinger) to take the case to the United Nations. I cheered. At least we wouldn't be casting aside international law and "going it alone."

All Things Considered from September 13th:


GJELTEN: The US military official speaking on background says war planners in the Pentagon are basically making that same assumption. For military action to conclude by the end of February, preparations, of course, would have to begin well before that. Some senior commanders say as many as 200,000 US troops would need to be deployed to the region to carry out an Iraqi operation with a good chance of success. John Pike does the math.

Mr. PIKE: That would require military buildup of anywhere from two to three months before the ground campaign began, which would mean that American troops would have to start moving into Kuwait sometime around Thanksgiving.

Waddaya know? According to the Detroit Free Press on January 23rd with the headline:

U.S. firepower a growing force in Persian Gulf . Experts say troops total about 200,000

Cheney may have been "here" in August, but he knew they couldn't make a move until February. We've patiently gone along with the UN inspections process and changed our harsh "regime change" language to "disarmament" for the 4 months it took to build up our forces in the region to the level required for an invasion. Colin Powell, the diplomat, at the most propitious moment possible suddenly become fed up with the UN and is "where Cheney was in August." We are poised to invade in February.

Whodda thunk it?




digby 1/28/2003 08:27:00 AM |

Saturday, January 25, 2003

 
David Niewart's blog Orcinus is so good.

Rush, Newspeak and fascism: Part 1

If there was any question that Rush Limbaugh is the most dangerous demagogue in America, he may have erased it with his latest broadside, describing antiwar protesters as "fascists and anti-American."

This is the latest step in the right-wing campaign to demonize opposition to President Bush's questionable policies as "anti-American," a campaign I've described previously. It is closely associated with attacks on multiculturalism. But Limbaugh takes it another step by associating liberals with Nazis and other fascist regimes

This is not the first time he has misused the term. He has referred at various times to "liberal compassion fascists," and on other occasions has explained to his national audience that Nazis in fact were "socialists." This is, of course, the kind of twisting of terminology that turns the meaning of a concept into its precise opposite -- thereby nullifying its meaning and reality -- that is the essence of Newspeak.

More at the link.

This is important. Limbaugh is not a joke and he isn't an entertainer and he isn't mainstream and he isn't benign. He is a powerful demagogue and a high ranking political propagandist for the Republican party. He should be taken very seriously.

Check out Take Back The Media's boycott. It's certainly worth a try. MWO reports some progress.




digby 1/25/2003 12:13:00 PM |

 
What Was I Thinking?

I was chastised over in Atrios' comments section for not providing the correction on the "Bush revives confederate wreath practice" story on my blog. I did, of course, but that wouldn't have been enough in any case.

We left bloggers have been summarily marched to the wood shed for not adequately prostrating ourselves at the feet of George W Bush, indeed all Republicans, for spreading this shameful lie perpetrated by Time Magazine. It seems that we all owe George W. Bush an apology for ever believing such a thing and, even worse, for commenting on it.

I have given it a lot of thought and I agree that when someone attacks the character of someone in office based upon rumors, gossip and an unprofessional media, they owe it to that person to sincerely apologize when it turns out that such a thing is factually incorrect.

So, I apologize to George W. Bush for believing that he would revive a practice of sending a wreath to honor Robert E. Lee and posting a short comment about it. He did not do it and I hope that everyone realizes this and wipes the scurrilous accusation from their mind.

Now, I realize that this will cause a bandwidth crisis that could presage the end of the Internet as we know it, but there can be no logical consistency in requiring me to apologize for a post that linked to a Time article (to which I merely appended "Karl Rove makes Lee Atwater look like an amateur") without also requiring that Republicans and the press apologize for 8 solid years of character assassination and smears against the Clinton administration. (And I would say that the Gores deserve a mea culpa too, for the lies perpetrated against them by the press and the GOP during campaign 2000.)

I do look forward to Rush Limbaugh and all of his imitators, the entire Barbizon School of Dyed Blond Former Prosecutors, the editorial board of the New York Times and the Washington Post, William Safire, Maureen Dowd and every other columnist, Lucianne Goldberg and her coven of hideous bitches, AND EVERY OTHER REPUBLICAN WHO SAID THAT CLINTON WAS A CRIMINAL, to now prostrate themselves at the feet of Bill and Hillary for the despicable, cruel and outrageous lies they spread from the years 1992 through the present.

If I've got to apologize publicly for posting one inaccurate article, the entire Republican establishment will be spending the rest of its natural life trying to find the time to eat and sleep in between confessions of guilt.

Better get started, Kids. I suggest that you begin with the false allegations of holding up Air Force One with a haircut, go on to the bogus accusations of influencing Beverly Bassett on Madison Guarantee (and ALL Whitewater related smears for that matter.) Don't forget Vince Foster's much investigated "murder," through Safire's "scoop" that Hillary was about to be indicted and just keep going until you hit Clinton's illegitimate love child and the phony White House trashing story.

Once you are through with all that, then come back for the next round of apologies to Al Gore for the series of lies told about him during the campaign. (And you might want to send a couple over to your fellow Republican, John McCain, too.)

After all that, then maybe we can be considered even. I have apologized for the harm I did to George W. Bush by repeating an inaccurate story.

The ball is in your court now, fellas.






digby 1/25/2003 10:38:00 AM |

Friday, January 24, 2003

 
When Did Police Decide That Common Sense Is For Losers?

You know, if those in authority didn't behave like robots and used just a tad of reason when dealing with the public, maybe we wouldn't have to use the legal system to enforce common decency.

Via Skimble

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A woman with a brain tumor filed a lawsuit against Walgreens Advance Care Inc., saying when she arrived to pick up her painkiller prescription one day, a pharmacist had her arrested.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court, Shannon O'Brien, 35, said she went to the drive-up window at a Walgreen Drug Store two blocks from her home last July 7. The pharmacist on duty thought she had faked her Percocet prescription and called police, the lawsuit stated.

"I was in hysterics - crying, very upset and very embarrassed," O'Brien told The Associated Press on Thursday. "They could have checked my records. I've had the same medicine every month."

[...]

O'Brien, who was first diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1994, said she told the officer who handcuffed her that he could call her doctor or her nurse to verify the prescription.

"I told him I had brain cancer, and I had a medical information card inside my wallet," she said. "It didn't matter to him. He didn't believe anything I was telling him."

As Skimble says, "American life gets more humiliating by the day."

I'm sure Toe-art Reform will put this little whiner in her place. A real American would be glad to get arrested and hauled off to jail if it helped fight the drug war, brain cancer or not.









digby 1/24/2003 10:42:00 PM |

 
California GOP twists itself into a big ole Pretzel


digby 1/24/2003 06:26:00 PM |

 
"I'm for it, with reservations" Or is it, "I'm against it, for now?" Whatever.

MyDD
posts about the rhetorical fight being waged between Howard Dean and John Kerry over the Iraq resolution. I'm with Dean on this. Kerry's Iraq vote was disasterous, and all the more so because he didn't have to do it. He says he'll hold Bush's feet to the fire, but unfortunately, he has absolutely no power to do that so it sounds like so much weak political bullshit. Which it is.

The Red Staters who were facing shameful scumbags like Saxby Chambliss last November could be forgiven. But it was important to rank and file Democrats that their leaders (none of whom were facing tough re-election battles) understood how important this issue was to them and that they take a stand.

Every last Democratic presidential hopeful in the Senate took a dive.

It was a cowardly CYA-for-the-future-because-the-big-bad-Republicans-will-be-mean vote that took the starch right out of the Democratic base who made thousands of calls and wrote thousands of letters veritably begging the leading Dems to hold tough on this issue. Any Democratic electoral momentum leading up to the election hit a brick wall when they caved on the issue.

And we can thank the vaunted political strategists of Carville, Shrum and Greenberg for this incredible miscalculation:

According to the memo, the most effective argument for Democrats who oppose the war is one which "affirms one's commitment to wage the war against terrorism, including getting rid of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but that questions the rush to war; it calls on the U.S. to seek U.N. and international support, others sharing costs and making sure we will achieve greater stability."

Nearly as strong, the memo argues, is explaining a no vote as a no "for now," and "stressing the need to go to the UN and try to get the inspectors back into Iraq and work to get the support of our allies."

That position, the memo notes, is strongest by far with "independents and with men (where the issue has more salience.)"

The least effective argument?

"Outright opposition to the war against Iraq and to the concept of regime change, finishing with the phrase, 'it is the wrong thing to do,' produces a weak response," they write.

Driving the point home, the memo points out that the poll found that a Democrat who opposes the war who simply argues that the policy is wrong loses by 15 points (39 percent to 54 percent) to a Republican who says he or she "trusts Bush to do this right."

Yeah. The politician who sounds the most like he's trying to have it both ways is always a big winner.

Carville,Greenberg and Shrum's post mortem of the election said:

In the end, 39 percent of the actual voters self-identified as Republicans, 3 percent more than in 2000 and 1998. The Democratic portion fell to 35 percent (down from 39 percent in 2000 and 37 percent in 1998). That alone could more than account for the shift witnessed at the polls. There was an even bigger increase in self-identified conservatives in the elector-ate, 41 percent, compared to approximately 30 percent two and four years ago.

How surprising.

Now, we are stuck with this absurd position of having to defend giving Junior a blank check while pretending that we are "influencing" the debate. And this happened, in my opinion, largely because some of the Democratic base was depressed by the craven behavior of its Senate leaders on the grave issue of whether to go to war.

I love Carville on Crossfire. He seems like a great guy. But, I have to wonder when the last time these three mythical Democratic strategists actually won any elections.

I lay the loss of the last one at their feet.




digby 1/24/2003 05:30:00 PM |

 
The James Earl Ray Historical Society Is Upset

Josh Marshall has too much class to mention it to this ignorant cretin, but he has a PhD in .... History.






digby 1/24/2003 02:20:00 PM |

 
God And Man At UM

OOOOh. Julia eviscerates William B. Fuckley.

And finds an inconvenient little factoid that has gone missing from the press accounts of the case.

What he didn't add, from the same article in the Wall Street Journal he's quoting without attribution:

Sons and daughters of graduates make up 10% to 15% of students at most Ivy League schools and enjoy sharply higher rates of acceptance. Harvard accepts 40% of legacy applicants, compared with an 11% overall acceptance rate. Princeton took 35% of alumni children who applied last year, and 11% of overall applicants. The University of Pennsylvania accepts 41% of legacy applicants, compared with 21% overall.

At Notre Dame, about 23% of all students are children of graduates.

...

Although universities have always paid special attention to their alumni, the legacy preference was formalized early last century, in some cases partly to limit enrollment of Jews. Today, the practice often has that effect on other groups. At the University of Virginia, 91% of legacy applicants accepted on an early-decision basis for next fall are white; 1.6% are black, 0.5% are Hispanic, and 1.6% are Asian. Among applicants with no alumni parents, the pool of those accepted is more diverse: 73% white, 5.6% black, 9.3% Asian and 3.5% Hispanic.

and this woodnote wild from the Michigan case:

One of those students, Patrick Hamacher, was turned down by Michigan despite having a legacy preference. An earlier version of Michigan's legacy preference had boosted his 2.9 high-school grade-point average to 3 for purposes of considering him. The suit that he and co-plaintiff Jennifer Gratz filed asks for the elimination of race as a factor in admissions at the university. But Mr. Hamacher says he actually doesn't think Michigan should consider either race or parentage in its admissions. He is now a graduate of another university, Michigan State.

Julia says:

So the student who's suing was willing to get in ahead of more qualified applicants. Funny we didn't hear that earlier...

The average SAT of legacies admitted at Harvard is two points lower than that of the average student admitted which number includes the legacies?

Take out the legacy scores from the average and tell me how the average legacy stacks up to that number.

Better yet, let's talk mean scores.

Better yet, how about Mr. Buckley go back to the Dartmouth Review where his kind of reasoning is more at home.

He has always been a liar. Now, he has virtually everything he's ever wanted but he just can't stop himself. It's embedded in the DNA.


UPDATE: Ampersand has a very instructive analysis about how many and which whites are rejected because of affirmative action.

digby 1/24/2003 01:47:00 PM |

 
Honor and Integrity

Kevin Drum says:

Let's recap: When Democrats controlled the Senate and Bush and Reagan were president, they were nice guys and allowed judicial nominations to proceed with only one blue slip.


When Republicans took over the Senate and Clinton was president, Republicans played hardball and demanded two blue slips.


When Bush became president, they suddenly decided that those nice Democrats were right after all: one blue slip should be enough.


Don't you just love principled conservatives?

I just love 'em.


And, FWIW, I've been following the Lott study story mostly on Kevin's great site and I just have to say that it's pretty obvious that this guy is fucked up on a grand scale. Kevin says:

And don't forget: Lott originally sourced the 98% number to someone else and then changed his mind only in 1999 when it turned out that he had misinterpreted the survey results he was using. He had never mentioned doing a survey of his own until then. What's more, Lott's first reference to the 98% number was in early 1997, well before his survey could have been finished.

That does it for me. cred-i-bil-i-ty-gap

So, what are the gun guys saying about all this? Are we demanding that they repudiate everything they've ever said on the issue and crawl on their bellies to every gun control advocate they know and beg for forgiveness and pledge to tell all the world how wrong, wrong, wrong they are? I certainly hope so....





digby 1/24/2003 12:50:00 PM |

 
Via Hesiod:

South Korean Leader Criticizes Bush Approach

"We are looking for some peaceful way of solving this through dialogue," the presidential spokesman said.

Kim Dae Jung reiterated that message in remarks at a luncheon today, in which he took an indirect swipe at President Bush's refusal to negotiate with the North Korean leader.

"Sometimes we need to talk to the other party, even if we dislike the other party," he said, repeating versions of the phrase three times. "There's no other way but to engage North Korea in dialogue. It's reality whether we like it or not."

The barbs were aimed at President Bush's harsh personal rhetoric directed at the North Korean leader, which many in Kim's administration feel have helped create the current crisis. Bush began his administration by bluntly declaring he did not trust the North Korean dictator, and recently was quoted by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward saying, "I loathe Kim Jong Il"-- personal affronts that have great weight in Asian cultures.

(Another instance of Cowboy Bob's lack of experience and intellectual development leading him to unnecessarily personalize a policy dispute with the most paranoid, proud despot on the planet. Calling an Asian leader names is perhaps the most ignorant and disrespectful thing this moron has done. And he did it at a time when Kim Jong Il was trying to re-establish relations with its mortal enemy, Japan, and its estranged brother, South Korea. Calling him a pygmy and saying he loathed him at that moment was akin to pissing on his head in public.

And, you don't have to be a career diplomat to know this. You only have to have read something other than the "Hungry Caterpillar" and watched "Combat" re-runs after school.)

In his State of the Union address last January, Bush lambasted North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." Many South Koreans resented that, feeling it was a gratuitous remark that torpedoed South Korea's "sunshine policy" and scuttled efforts to coax North Korea out of its isolation and hostility.

As Hesiod says, "Is there ANYONE left on the rest of the planet who supports President Bush?"

He also points out:

The Bush administration's obsession with Iraq, and the increasing reluctance/opposition from many countries to our machinations, brings to mind the old Groucho Marx joke: "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member."

Why do I say that? Because, Bush is very good at lining up oppressive, ant-democratic regimes to his cause. But he's terrible at getting Democratic nations to follow his lead with respect to Iraq. The reason is...public opinion. The vast majority of people OUTSIDE the United States don't want a war with Iraq. Hell...it's even unpopular HERE!


The Supreme Irony is...one of the very reason Bush claims he wants "regime change" in Iraq: to advance human rights and democracy, the the very thing that could undermine his whole effort.

The people of the world just do not want this war.

This is just one more example of the undemocratic streak that runs through the modern Republican Party. Creeping fas.....

















digby 1/24/2003 12:13:00 PM |

 
Big Hair

Just looking at MSNBC and wondering when Bay Buchanan decided to get a Farrah do.

It's very disturbing. Very.




digby 1/24/2003 11:48:00 AM |

 
We All Knew This Was Next, Didn't We?

From TBOGG

"The proposals, obtained by The Washington Post, are the first indication of the Bush administration’s plans for changing Title IX, which is widely credited with increasing female participation in collegiate sports over the past three decades."

TBOGG Says:

Anyone think that the Soccer Mom's won't notice this? I guess Bush is counting on a boost from the all-important "Wrestling Moms"...see Catfight, below.

Maybe if the universities weren't paying Bobby Bowden, Mike Krzyzewski, Bob Stoop, and Roy Williams millions of dollars to coach their respective sports, the schools would have enough money to fund wrestling, swimming, and volleyball for men. But that will never happen.

Golly, Tom. Haven't you heard? 64% of Americans think there should be no preferences in college admissions, even for athletics. They'd be willing to give up their winning teams in the interest of a true academic meritocracy. So, you just know they'll be willing to give up those winning coaches' huge salaries in order to preserve fairness for all God's children, red or yellow, black or white AND girl or boy.

Sure they will.

Update: Kevin at Lean Left makes an excellent point:

So, points for race among points for other things is a quota, but setting a minimum number for athletics is not?

Well...no....it's completely different because Bush made his quota statement on a Thursday and this will come out on a Monday. Apples and oranges.




digby 1/24/2003 11:32:00 AM |

 
The Major Problem Is Bush the Cowboy

This is why you don't allow an unqualified brand name in a suit be president of the most powerful country in the world. He thinks he's cute but he is actually confusing and unnecessarily provocative.

To European ears, the president's language is far too blunt, and he has been far too quick to cast the debate about how to separate Saddam Hussein from his weapons of mass destruction in black-and-white certainties, officials in Paris and Berlin say. They add that his confrontational approach, his impatience with the inspections and even his habit of finger pointing as he speaks undermine the possibility of common strategy against Saddam Hussein.

No kidding. I'm California born and bred and I find his language embarrassingly puerile and simple-minded (although I realize that this makes me something more akin to French than American, what with my diet of brie and cheese and all.) That finger pointing drives me up a wall, too. His default tone is a scold. "Ah tole the Murican people they were gonna half tah be patient, an Ah MEANT it!"

"Much of it is the way he talks, this provocative manner, the jabbing of his finger at you," said Hans-Ulrich Klose, the vice chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the German Parliament. "It's Texas, a culture that is unfamiliar to Germans. And it's the religious tenor of his arguments."

It's not Texas. It's stupid. There are millions of smart Texans. He isn't one of them.

When Bush is on CNN, if you close your eyes you would believe you are listening to an inarticulate, bumbling Jimmy Swaggert instead of a world leader. His religiosity has all the sincerity of Elmer Gantry. But, it's one of the only ways he knows how to speak. Lame preacher. Angry scold.

Over the past several months, as Mr. Bush has mounted his argument for forcing Iraq to disarm, the president himself has once again become the issue here. In interviews in three capitals over the past week, diplomats, politicians and analysts said they believed relations between the United States and two of its most crucial allies — Germany and France — were at their lowest point since the end of the cold war.

As the White House was quick to argue today, the American president has friends and admirers among the leading politicians in several Western European countries, starting with Britain, Italy and Spain, and spreading east to Poland.

Not starting. Ending. And there is going to be some tension on those counts as more and more citizens of those countries take to the streets. Unlike the US, when the citizens of Eupopean countries march in huge numbers, the press and the government actually notice.

It is no wonder, Mr. Bush's foreign policy aides say, that he has redrawn his mental map of America's alliances, and that Paris and Berlin have been placed in the deep freeze for failing his loyalty tests.

His loyalty tests. His personal loyalty tests. This is all that matters. It's all about Him. They are supposed to do what he tells them to do. He's the Commander in chief. Of everybody.

An American diplomat trying to keep European objections from delaying Mr. Bush's timetable for disarming Iraq said he heard similar complaints all the time.

"Much of it is the way he talks, the rhetoric, the religiosity," he said of Mr. Bush. "It reminds them of what drove them crazy about Reagan. It reminds them of what they miss about Clinton. All the stereotypes we thought we had banished for good after Sept. 11 — the cowboy imagery, in particular — it's all back."

Reagan was Aristotle compared to this little boy. He had many, many years of experience making speeches and talking politics. He could articulate what he believed. And he could be an utterly charming personality even if you hated his policies.

Clinton actually had the goods. He had a politicians' gift for drawing people to him. But, he also had a lively and nimble mind that could flexibly adapt to situations and people. He knew what he was talking about and that gave other countries' leaders confidence in him. (They were unconcerned with his cock because, well, Europeans know that genitalia is common to all creatures on the planet. It doesn't make them giggle like schoolgirls or recoil in shock.)

Junior is callow, unschooled, unpredictable and tempermentally mean. His good-ole boy persona is a phony mask for his insecurity. He makes thinking people nervous because he is so obviously in over his head.

He has a credibility gap as wide as the Grand Canyon and his rhetoric is so unpredictable and incoherant that they simply cannot trust what this government says.

From the French Foreign Ministry to the chancellor's office in Berlin, there is broad acknowledgement that the breach between the United States and its traditional allies in Western Europe has gone beyond the friction that has long been a staple of French-American relations or the misunderstandings that have grown since the cold-war ended.

Senior officials insisted in interviews that in France and Germany Mr. Bush had not made the case that Iraq posed a more imminent threat than, say, Al Qaeda.

One French official argued that the American military's failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda's top command had led Mr. Bush to search for "easier but less important prey."

That is only partly true. He was manipulated by the people in his administration who wanted to go into Iraq before 9/11 and cynically used that tragedy to justify what they were planning to do anyway.

And it is wrong to say that he is not completely on top of the Al Qaeda situation. Why, just today he made the bold and unprecedented statement that we have Al Qaeda "on the run" and that we've "disrupted their operations," something I don't think we've heard before. I believe he also mentioned something very intriguing about how the terrorists "live in caves" and we are going to "rout them out." Very interesting new developments on that front.

"Terrorists are a hundred times more likely to obtain a weapon of mass destruction from Pakistan than from Iraq," one senior European official said, not permitting a reporter to identify even his nationality because tensions with Washington are so high. "North Korea is far more likely to sell whatever it's got. But can we say this in public? Can we have a real debate about priorities? Not with George Bush."

No, you cannot have a debate in public if it challenges the omnipotence of our great and good leader George W. Bush. It is treasonous for Americans and it is disloyal for world leaders. He TOLD the world what he was gonna do, an he MEANT it!

This sense that many European officials have of dealing with an American president who makes up his mind and then will accept no argument is a central element in the current friction.

[...]

Yeah. It bugs the hell out of over 50% of Americans, too.

In all seriousness, this is a real problem. Say what you will about the Europeans, after 9/11 they were backing us 100%. They are our very closest allies politically, culturally and economically , most especially on the threat of Islamic terrorism. We have worked hand in glove for over 50 years to establish international institutions and a set of norms to govern civilized behavior in the era of nuclear weapons and an increasingly interdependent world.

It is truly outrageous that Cowboy Bob and his band of frustrated middle aged warriors have so little regard for these long standing alliances. They seem determined to destroy every single shred of goodwill we have built up over the last half century the same way they destroyed the post 9/11 goodwill in a matter of months.

I fear that the Strangelove elements in this administration suffer from a feeling of impotence because they did not receive the victory parades and heroic adulation they felt they were entitled to for zealously fighting the cold war and defeating communism.

Containment sucks. Nobody ever says "uncle." Our allies don't lay wreaths of gratitude at our feet. The anti-communists don't get any credit for keeping the heat on. The chickenhawks are frustrated.

So, they bought themselves a nasty little sock-puppet and are going to seize what they think they deserve. They want to be worshipped for being right.





digby 1/24/2003 11:12:00 AM |

Thursday, January 23, 2003

 
Ooops

...damned liberal media
digby 1/23/2003 11:37:00 PM |

 
Demosthenes wonders when the US became the Imperial Rulers of the world

Perhaps I missed the memo.. when exactly did the Security Council and the U.N. itself become something that needed to be judged? Where this comes from is pretty obvious; it's a way of reinforcing that ridiculous line that Bush was pushing at the U.N. that it is the legitimacy of the U.N. that is in question, not the American invasion of Iraq. This is absurd, of course: the United States neither has the right, nor the authority, nor even the ability to objectively judge the U.N., and attempts to do so should be (and yet unfortunately have not been) roundly and thoroughly condemned by those outside the United States who do not agree that American exceptionalism is some sort of carte blanche. Instead we have a British minister acting as if the invasion of Iraq was something upon which the U.N. should or even could be judged. That begs the question; the whole point of gaining U.N. approval is not to grant legitimacy or deny legitimacy to the U.N. (which gains its legitimacy from the consent of its signatory states, consent that the United States cannot take away) but to decide whether or not the U.N. decides the invasion itself is legitimate under international law

"There is no such thing as the United Nations"
John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security



digby 1/23/2003 11:12:00 PM |

 
Civil Rights for Old Boys

William B. Fuckley can still make the most officious prick sound like a good ole' boy. George Will can't shine his shoes.




digby 1/23/2003 10:32:00 PM |

 
Only 6 weeks ago the headlines said:

"White House Claims Election Is Broad Mandate"

My, how the mighty have fallen.

NY Times/CBS Poll

Nearly 50 percent of the public expressed disapproval of how Mr. Bush was handling the economy, while 41 percent expressed disapproval of his management of foreign policy, which has been the foundation of his extraordinarily high levels of support since Sept. 11. Those disapproval figures are the highest they have been since Mr. Bush took office.

Half of all respondents said Mr. Bush did not share their priorities for the country, an increase of 14 points from when the question was asked a year ago. That is a question pollsters watch closely to measure potential vulnerabilities of a candidate.

[...]

A majority of the poll's respondents — including 49 percent of Republicans — said reducing the deficit would be more likely to revive the economy than would cutting taxes, the course pressed by Mr. Bush. The White House announced last week that the budget deficit for next year would reach at least $300 billion.

Finally, 63 percent said things were going worse in the country that they were five years ago.

[…]

Although Mr. Bush has signaled that he is prepared to lead a war against Iraq without the support of the Security Council, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they wanted him to try to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq situation, while 31 percent said the United States should resort to military force. Even so, 64 percent said they approved of the United States taking military action to oust Saddam Hussein, while 30 percent said they disapproved.

[…]

The poll found that 54 percent of respondents said affirmative action in hiring, promoting and college admissions should be continued, while 37 percent said it should be abolished. Along those lines, the respondents said they expected Mr. Bush to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will vote to make abortion illegal, but that stance was not shared by a majority of respondents.
So far, at least, Mr. Bush does not appear to have persuaded the nation that the way to repair the economy is a new round of tax cuts, or that the cuts he has proposed would not favor the wealthy.
And 58 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush's policies favor the rich, compared with 10 percent who said they favored the middle class. In addition, 26 percent said they treated everyone the same and 1 percent said they favored the poor. Two-thirds of respondents said big business had too much influence on this White House.

The poll pointed to some vulnerabilities in what has been Mr. Bush's strong suit, foreign policy and the war on terrorism. By 55 percent to 40 percent, Americans said the administration was reacting to events as they occurred abroad rather than having a clear foreign policy plan.

[…]

Slightly more than half of the respondents said the United States was less respected in the world today than it was two years ago, when Mr. Bush took office, while one-third said relations with Europe had worsened. And while the public said they viewed Iraq as a bigger threat to world peace than North Korea, reflecting the White House view, respondents named Al Qaeda as the biggest threat of all.

The poll also suggested some concern about what the White House has done to forestall future domestic terrorist attacks. Just over 40 percent said Mr. Bush had a clear plan for fighting terrorism, while 53 percent said he was reacting to events.

Fifty-two percent said they believed the government had done "all it could be reasonably expected to do" to protect the country from future terrorist attacks. But 45 percent said it could have done more.

Now, that's a mandate, my friends.









digby 1/23/2003 10:10:00 PM |

 
Oh, What Does He Know?


"President Bush has a vision that the U.S. should be the first to strike and will never be militarily challenged again," Clark said. "It's an incomplete vision. Those of us who have fought in wars know you don't make friends when you use weapons."

[...]

Clark said hatred toward the United States may have originated in the 1980s with the end of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

"We seized the opportunity and took advantage of free trade and open markets," Clark said. "We built tremendous prosperity, but we didn't understand the risks we were taking over our economy, our environment and our lives."

Clark said American Muslims who believe in peace and tolerance should be encouraged to help persuade extremists that American democracy does not threaten their way of life.

Clark commended the president's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism that followed. But, he said, the United States responded out of fear, which is foreign to Americans.

Clark said America's mission in Iraq should include the best interest of all nations.

"When you use force and you talk about using force, it should be used as your last, last, last resort," Clark said. "You have to use it with a lot of prayer because a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt."

I continue to be impressed with Wesley Clark. It's difficult to assess when I don't know his positions of a wide variety of issues, but he sounds eminently reasonable to me on issues of war and peace. All things being equal, I think he would be a dynamite addition to the ticket.












digby 1/23/2003 09:08:00 PM |

 
Via Blah3: Thug Cabal's Final Strategy: Call out the entire WORLD!!!

I don't really think that's overstated. They keep stating their case, but they haven't made it. You can smell the desperation.

This is because they have what is called a "credibility gap." Remember that? It's what happens when an administration repeatedly lies, changes rhetoric but not goals and basically treats the public as if they are as stupid as President George W. Bush.

Very few voters are as stupid as George W. Bush.



digby 1/23/2003 08:45:00 PM |

 
Ahead Of The Curve

That damned LA Times is reading my blog again. That Greatest-Generation-is-against-the war-thing is sooo early January.



digby 1/23/2003 07:56:00 PM |

 
Moral Clarity

Ok. So let me get this straight just so I understand.

Foes of abortion believe that life begins at conception. And they believe that this life should be granted the same rights as the woman within whose body it must stay, at least for a period of time, if it is to develop and grow.

Fine. There is no moral distinction between the fully formed woman and the collection of cells that forms a zygote. From the moment of conception, this life has the same moral standing as a month old baby who sleeps in a bassinette in the nursery or a teen-ager or an old man. Life is life.

Therefore, it must be immoral to allow exceptions to a ban on abortion in the case of incest or rape. Would we kill a month old baby if we found out that it was the result of rape? Would we think that it was ok to smother a 6 month old child if we found out that it was conceived in incest? Of course not. What possible moral difference can it make how the child is conceived if it's endowed with inalienable rights at the moment of conception? You may punish the rapist or the incestuous relative, but the child's right to live is inviolable. Life is life.

In the case of choosing between the life of the child and the life of the mother, one is on delicate moral ground if the child is viable outside the womb. It is a Solomon's choice and one which should probably be left to fate. Doctors may be willing to choose and perhaps husband's or family, but it is not easy to morally defend.

Clearly, though, if a fetus has the same rights as any other human being, a doctor who performs abortions other than to save the life of the mother must be a murderer. But then, so must be the mother who willingly aborts. The life inside this woman has the same rights as any baby. Therefore, just like Andrea Yates, women who have abortions should be arrested and tried for murder. If found guilty she must go to jail. And those who argue for capital punishment for a mother who kills her baby must also agree that a woman who has an abortion must be tried as a capital murderer. Life is life.

I'm there, so far. But, if the life inside a woman's body has the same legal rights as a two month old baby, then if a woman has a miscarriage, shouldn’t she be investigated by the authorities? If the fetus has the same rights as the woman who carries it and it suddenly "disappears” the police should be asked to find out whether this woman murdered her baby, just as the authorities would investigate if a woman's one month old baby disappeared. After all, life is life.

Some jurisdictions are already intervening if women are caught taking drugs during pregnancy. This is the consistent moral stance. If a woman is abusing her body during pregnancy, she is also abusing a distinct human being who exists inside of her and that human being has the same right as she not to be abused by another person. Women must be held responsible for what they do to their babies inside of their bodies, just as they are held responsible for what they do to a 6 month old baby.

Considering these facts, I have to wonder at the moral obtuseness of a pro-life movement that would let murdering mothers go unpunished, negligent mothers go uninvestigated and, worst of all, endorse the legal killing of unborn children simply because they had the misfortune to be conceived in violence or incest. You would almost think that they believe there is a grey moral area on this question rather than the clear bright line of inalienable rights being proferred at the moment of conception. That can't be right.

Because to allow for exceptions or to ignore the woman's culpability in murdering or harming her child while it is inside the womb is to create the false impression that gestation is a unique period for the human species in which the woman and the baby are so inextricable that to all intents and purposes they are one person.

And one could then make the immoral assumption that because they are in all practicality one person, the sentient part of this person must be allowed to decide whether this "part of her" should grow and become an individual who is capable of living outside her body. Then no one would suspect her of criminal negligence if she miscarried after falling down the stairs and she could not be a considered a criminal child abuser if she had a glass of wine or a cigarette. Certainly she would not be a murderer if she felt she could not give birth to her own brother or the child of her rapist.

And if she's not a murderer for aborting her rapists child, then she is not a murderer for aborting any child.

And that would be wrong. Life is life, isn't it?





digby 1/23/2003 04:11:00 PM |

 
Gentle Persuasion

Come fly with me.

Via Musings


digby 1/23/2003 03:44:00 PM |

 
Divining the will of the voter

Avedon Carol has an interesting post up about VNS and the strange happenings with exit polls.

I'm not usually too much of a tin foiler, but I find it very strange that the VNS system went kerflooey at this particular moment in time. I hate to be paranoid, but there is such a strong undemocratic streak in the modern Republican party --- a partisan impeachment, Florida, Supreme Court intervention in a presidential election, Florida, a professional propaganda operation, Republican corporate media, Florida, coordinated character assassination, GOP partisan ownership in voting systems, Florida etc, etc. that when it comes to elections or issues of political legitimacy I think it behooves everyone to be extremely skeptical of any changes during this administration.

These people cannot be trusted with the fundamental machinery of democracy.

They are the political heirs of Richard M. Nixon --- without the brains or the scruples.



digby 1/23/2003 01:56:00 PM |

 
"It was opening us up to a broader knowledge of the situation"

During Campaign 2000, the press incorrectly reported Al Gore's comments about the Love Canal to such an extent that the high school kids who were there felt compelled to issue a press release entitled "Top ten reasons why many Concord High students feel betrayed by some of the media coverage of Al Gore's visit to their school."

Now, the campaign against Patty Murray's supposedly treasonous comments about Osama bin Laden to a senior honors class in Vancouver, Washington has been similarly exposed for the cynical manipulation it was. The students feel so strongly that the story was misrepresented that they also went to the media with a correction.

This seems to be a pattern.

Luckily for the future of the Republic, high school students have a far greater grasp of rational argument than right wing bloggers and Republicans do. It also appears that they are better able to understand the nuances of foreign policy than is the President of the United States. (But then, they are in a high school honors class so it's probably unfair to make a comparison to the cheerleader legacy frat boy...)


Class defends Murray remark


By Eric Stevick
Herald Writer

EVERETT -- For several days, seniors in an honors American government class at Cascade High School followed the public fury over comments Sen. Patty Murray made about Osama bin Laden to high school students in Vancouver.

Murray was criticized over the airwaves and in reader letters on editorial pages. Some called for a reprimand or censure.

All of which was a little hard for the Cascade students to comprehend.

Murray talked to their classroom in December just about the same time she made similar comments to students at Columbia River High School, according to a transcript. They didn't see how her comments could be construed to be sympathetic or supportive of the al-Qaida terrorist leader and the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The students considered writing their own letter to the editor but decided, instead, to take up their teacher's offer to give their perspective in person.

To them, Democrat Murray was merely explaining how bin Laden could gain support in the Middle East.

"She didn't make him up as some kind of humanitarian," Ann Topham said.

"A lot of people thought she was forgiving 9/11," Katie Kelley said. "She wasn't defending it at all."

"She was in no way glorifying him," Becca Reynolds said. "She was just showing us the side we didn't really see. ... It was opening us up to a broader knowledge of the situation."

That perspective was the fact that bin Laden strategically contributed to causes that helped gain public support in the Middle East, they said. Critics point to Murray's lack of proof of any bin Laden humanitarian activities.

"He sees how to use his money to tender favor ... so he could do what he wanted," Will Shepherd said.

Students in Mike Therrell's class were required to work a minimum of 25 hours last fall on political campaigns. Most worked on legislative campaigns, a few on congressional campaigns. Some worked for Republicans, others Democrats, a few for third-party candidates. Murray was not up for election when she visited the class.

"Patty Murray made it very clear that Osama bin Laden was a villain, and the things he was doing to ingratiate himself to the people he was not doing as an act of kindness," said Therrell, who has been teaching for 35 years. "His ulterior motive was very evil."


Perhaps I shouldn't complain too vigorously about this since these politically interested kids will all be able to vote in the next election. They still have some ideals, you see. They still naively believe that silly concepts like intellectual honesty matter.

After seeing the party of honor and integrity up-close and personal, it's quite likely they will vote Democratic.



digby 1/23/2003 01:03:00 PM |

 
If Anyone Was Wondering Why The GOP Is Moribund In California...

Another hilarious example of the comedy stylings of that funny, funny California Republican, Randy Ridgel:

[...]

The letter by retired white rancher Randy Ridgel, a member of the party's Board of Directors, responds to complaints by state GOP Secretary Shannon Reeves, who is black. Earlier this month, Reeves said that some GOP leaders expect African Americans to "provide window dressing and cover to prove this is not a racist party, yet our own leadership continues to act otherwise."

In his letter to Reeves, Ridgel, 72, wrote: "At my age, with the distractions of being a detestable, insensitive racist, I grow befuddled from time to time, but I just don't remember your being hired as our black window dressing."

Ridgel criticized Reeves for sharing his concerns with the news media and suggested that Ward Connerly, an African American who has led efforts to kill affirmative action programs in California, would be more suitable window dressing.

"Knowing your propensity to avoid public appearances, as the job of black Republican window dressing requires, I would have been inclined to hire someone appropriately black but perhaps more garrulous, than your bashful self -- such as Ward Connerly, who, it may surprise you to learn, is not only satisfyingly black but a member of our party too," Ridgel wrote.

"I don't know why but I always fall down on my duties as Party Detestable Insensitive Racist when I encounter Ward; I actually like and respect him."

What a loveable old codger, huh? Nothing like a little bit of rude sarcasm in the middle of a political firestorm to really turn up the heat.

Besides, he likes Ward Connerly. He's not a racist. In fact, he's so not a racist that he thinks the one "good" negro he likes ought to replace that big mouthed Reeves who told the news media that he was considered window-dressing. Ridgel doesn't see him as window dressing. He just thinks he should be quiet and do what he's told.

That's why California Republicans are so successful these days. It's their savvy.



digby 1/23/2003 11:55:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

 
1/25/03: If You are getting this post at the top of the page, please refresh your screen. Blogger is having problems for some people, apparently. There is a lot of recent stuff up.

digby


Moving The Goalposts

Chris at Interesting Times sees a pattern.

I just flashed on something. The Republican's approach to Sadaam's declaration on his WMD programs is similar to their approach to Clinton's declaration of his involvement with Monica Lewinsky: no matter what is said, it will not be enough because the Republicans keep re-defining the parameters of what needs to be said. And the fact that Sadaam/Clinton fail to hit a moving target is taken as proof that they are guilty, unremorseful, and will do it again.

This is an excellent observation of a common GOP tactic that the mediawhores just love more than anything. Keep that story spinning at all costs. Nobody will notice that you are constantly moving the goalposts:

"If he comes forth and tells it and does it in the right way and there aren't a lot of other factors to cause the Congress to say this man is unfit for the presidency and should be impeached, then I think the president would have a reasonable chance of getting through this," said Hatch, R-Utah.

"I don't know anybody at the top of the system," Hatch said, "who really wants to see the president hurt in this matter."
Weeks ago, Hatch made an offer of consideration for confession, which he repeated in some form in virtually every TV appearance.

[...]

After so much criticism of his promiscuous use of language, Clinton made his basic points very directly. "It was wrong." "A personal failure." His observation that even Presidents have private lives was compelling and legitimate--most Americans agree that what goes on in a President's bedroom is no one's business but his.

[…]

What a jerk." ORRIN HATCH, Utah Republican Senator

[...]

Hatch was satisfied with Clinton's contriteness, but it was the Starr part that got him blustering like a blunderbuss. There are, of course, plenty of reasons for Clinton to bash Starr. But Monday night was for taking responsibility. Hatch is right: getting caught is the chance every "jerk" takes when he cheats, and the guy who catches you is not the biggest problem. You are. That's true even if your captor is a jerk as well.

Even if Saddam "disarmed" tomorrow, there's no way in hell that he would do it "right."




Note: Also read Chris' outstanding coverage and commentary about the AntiWar protests in Portland and elsewhere.




digby 1/21/2003 01:03:00 PM |

 
There Is No Closure

Jeanne D'Arc makes a very thoughtful point about the prevailing fallacy that the families of victims are somehow cleansed of their pain by the execution of the killer (or so they think) of a loved one.

It occurred to me in reading this article, how much the short attention span of the press does to feed this beast. When perpetrators of ghastly crimes are tried, we almost always hear the victims' families calls for vengeance. After an execution, family members are trotted out to announce they are happy with the result. And if there is "closure" for anyone at that moment, it seems to be the press -- because that's where the story ends. The only problem is that the victims' families are still left with the pain, and for all the talk of "caring about the victims," once they've achieved their purpose of helping the prosecutor get his conviction and sentence, and helping the press wrap up a neat story of "justice," nobody's terribly interested in them anymore. It would mess up our story if we knew that relief was ephemeral. As everyone, deep down, knows it must be. As Bud Welch says, "God didn't make normal human beings to feel good out of watching another human being take his last breath."

It is simply cruel to hold out the false hope that killing the killer will take away the pain. Sadly, I think that these families of the victims are victimized themselves by a rather ruthless prosecutorial ethos that seeks to leverage their rage and feelings of impotence against the obvious logic of accepting the loss and learning to live with it.

It is certainly understandable and even commendable that they use the loved ones as the living face of the consequences of the act during a trial. They represent society and the loved ones represent the human loss. But, using them afterward as poster children for the machinery of the death penalty as if they are the true beneficiaries is cynical and self-serving. By stoking the need for vengeance, they keep the wound open and festering purely for public relations purposes. The families are so caught up in an illogical belief in the emotional catharsis of execution that they remain in a state of suspended animation for years at a time.

Were the death penalty abolished in favor of life without parole, the families' involvement with the legal system would end on the day of sentencing. And they would be able to begin the painful but necessary process of moving on with their lives. That day always comes eventually and the death penalty system only delays the reckoning.


digby 1/21/2003 12:22:00 PM |

 
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks...

Pentagon Warlord

[...]

Pentagon officials say orders such as No. 177 are normally reviewed thoroughly in advance and fly across a Defense chief's desk. But with every step America takes toward war with Iraq, which could be as little as a month off, Rumsfeld is doing things his own meticulous way. Over the past few weeks, he has been holding up deployment papers at the last minute, demanding answers and explanations about which units are going where, why. He has been running similar drills for months on the generals and admirals, reworking the plans to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. General Tommy Franks, the Army four-star who would run the war as head of U.S. Central Command, actually prepared the plan. But as a Pentagon officer points out, "That misses the point. Franks may be the draftsman, but Rumsfeld's the architect."

[...]

Retired Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the first Gulf War, says he is "nervous" about the control Rumsfeld is exercising over the buildup. "It looks like Rumsfeld is totally, 100%, in charge," says Schwarzkopf. "He seems to be deeply immersed in the operational planning—to the chagrin of most of the armed forces."

[...]

Republican Senators complained to White House chief of staff Andrew Card that Rumsfeld was keeping them in the dark about war plans and other military issues. So last week Rumsfeld reported to Capitol Hill for a 21/2-hour kiss-and-make-up session with Senators. Asked later if he had been ignoring his minders, Rumsfeld said, "I don't think there is a problem."


It is that truculent attitude that most irritates many military men. Some who have worked with Rumsfeld say his interpersonal skills are shabby, however charming he is on camera. "Rumsfeld's a bully; he's arrogant, and he has a huge ego," says a senior Army officer with more than 30 years' experience in uniform. The loudest cries come from the Army, where Rumsfeld and his troops have kneecapped the two men in charge. Rumsfeld let it be known last April that the Army's top general, Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was a lame duck 15 months before his term was slated to end. "It was condescending and a little bit cruel," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general. A month later, Rumsfeld loyalists made it clear that Army Secretary Thomas White, a former Enron executive who vainly tried to thwart Rumsfeld's decision to kill the Crusader, was one more mistake away from losing his job. "It's pretty clear that the Army is going to be the big loser," says Lawrence Korb, a top Reagan-era Pentagon aide.

"If it were not for the war in Afghanistan and the looming war in Iraq, I'm sure they would already be cutting two Army divisions." Perhaps Rumsfeld is counting on the first war of the 21st century to shake the brass out of its cold war mentality. But it may be that he has already accomplished most of what he came to do: reassert civilian control of a military that had grown used to getting its way. As photocopiers cranked out the deployment orders last week for Rumsfeld to consider at his own unpredictable pace, top military officers admitted they are scrambling to think ahead, no longer waiting for him to O.K. their every move. Any delay, they said, would be risky with a man like Rumsfeld prowling the halls. "We're sending troops forward without deployment orders," a top Navy officer conceded last week. "We don't want to get caught flat-footed when Rumsfeld asks, 'How come you guys haven't left yet?'"

Golly, don't you feel all safe and cozy with a cool head like this in charge?






digby 1/21/2003 11:25:00 AM |

 
"Even though progress has been made, there's more to do," Bush said.

uh huh.

The State of Texas still recognizes Confederate Heroes Day, originally on Jan. 19 (Robert E. Lee’s birthday) and now on the second Monday in January, shared with observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Thanks to David E's Fablog



digby 1/21/2003 10:38:00 AM |

Monday, January 20, 2003

 
"The summer of 1963 was a very eventful one for me: the summer I turned 17"

Excerpts from Clinton's Speech at a Ceremony in Oak Bluff, Massachusetts, on the 35th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" Speech

August 28, 1998

The summer of 1963 was a very eventful one for me: the summer I turned 17.

What most people know about it now is the famous picture of me shaking hands with President Kennedy in July. It was a great moment. But I think the moment we commemorate today, a moment I experienced all alone, had a more profound impact on my life.

Most of us who are old enough remember exactly where we were on Aug. 28, 1963. I was in my living room in Hot Springs, Ark.

I remember the chair I was sitting in. I remember exactly where it was in the room. I remember exactly the position of the chair when I sat and watched on national television the great March on Washington unfold.

I remember weeping uncontrollably during Martin Luther King's speech. And I remember thinking, when it was over, my country would never be the same and neither would I.

There are people all across this country who made a more intense commitment to the idea of racial equality and justice that day than they had ever made before. And so in very personal ways, all of us became better and bigger because of the work of those who brought that great day about. There are millions of people who John Lewis will never meet who are better and bigger because of what that day meant.

And the words continue to echo down to the present day, spoken to us today by children who were not even alive then. And, God willing, their grandchildren will also be inspired and moved and become better and bigger because of what happened on that increasingly distant summer day.

What I'd like to ask you to think about a little today, and to share with you -- and I'll try to do it without taking my spectacles out, but I don't write very well and I don't read too well as I get older -- is what I think this means for us today. I was trying to think about what John and Dr. King and others did and how they did it, and how it informs what I do and how I think about other things today.

And I want to ask, you all need to think about three things . . . .

No. 1, Dr. King used to speak about how we were all bound together in a web of mutuality, which was an elegant way of saying, whether we like it or not, we're all in this life together. We are interdependent. Well, what does that mean? Well, let me give you a specific example: We had some good news today. Incomes in America went up 5 percent last year. That's a big bump in a year. We have got the best economy in a generation. That's the good news.

But we are mutually interdependent with people far beyond our borders. Yesterday, there was some more news that was troubling out of Russia, some rumor, some fact about the decline in the economy. Our stock market dropped over 350 points. And in Latin America, our most fast-growing market for American exports, all the markets went down even though, as far as we know, most of those countries are doing everything right. Why? Because we're in a tighter and tighter and tighter web of mutuality.

Asia has these economic troubles. So even though we have got the best economy in a generation, our farm exports to Asia are down 30 percent from last year. And we have states in this country where farmers, the hardest-working people in this country, can't make their mortgage payments because of things that happened half a world away they didn't have any direct influence on at all. This world is being bound together more closely.

So what is the lesson from that? Well, I should go to Russia because, as John said, anybody can come see you when you're doing well. I should go there.

And we should tell them that if they'll be strong and do the disciplined, hard things they have to do to reform their country, their economy, and get through this dark night, that we'll stick with them. . . .

The second thing.

Even if you're not a pacifist, whenever possible, peace and nonviolence is always the right thing to do.

I remember so vividly in 1994 . . .I was trying to pass this crime bill, and all of the opposition to the crime bill that was in the newspapers, all the intense opposition was coming from the N.R.A. and the others that did not want us to ban assault weapons, didn't believe that we ought to have more community policemen walking the streets, and conservatives who thought we should just punish people more and not spend more money trying to keep kids out of trouble in the first place. And it was a huge fight.

And so they came to see me, and he said, "Well, John Lewis is not going to vote for this bill." And I said, "Why?" and they said, "Because it increases the number of crimes subject to the Federal death penalty and he's not for it. And he's not in bed with all those other people, he thinks they're wrong, but he can't vote for it." And I said, "Well, let him alone. There's no point in calling him" because he's lived a lifetime dedicated to an idea and while I may not be a pacifist, whenever possible, it's always the right thing to do to try to be peaceable and nonviolent.

Half a world away, terrorists trying to hurt Americans blow up two embassies in Africa, and they killed some of our people, some of our best people -- of, I might add, very many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, American citizens, including a distinguished career African-American diplomat and his son -- but they also killed almost 300 Africans and wounded 5,000 others.

We see their pictures in the morning paper, two of them who did that. We were bringing them home. And they look like active, confident young people. What happened inside them that made them feel so much hatred toward us that they could justify not only an act of violence against innocent diplomats and other public servants, but the collateral consequences to Africans whom they would never know? They had children, too.

So it is always best to remember that we have to try to work for peace in the Middle East, for peace in Northern Ireland, for an end to terrorism, for protections against biological and chemical weapons being used in the first place.

The night before we took action against the terrorist operations in Afghanistan and Sudan, I was here on this island up till 2:30 in the morning trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift. I believed I had to take the action I did, but I didn't want some person who was a nobody to me, but who may have a family to feed and a life to live, and probably had no earthly idea what else was going on there, to die needlessly. I learned that, and it's another reason we ought to pay our debt to the United Nations, because if we can work together, together we can find more peaceful solutions. Now I didn't learn that when I became President; I learned it from John Lewis and the civil rights movement a long time ago.

And the last thing I learned from them on which all these other things depend, without which we cannot build a world of peace or one America in an increasingly peaceful world bound together in this web of mutuality, is that you can't get there unless you're willing to forgive your enemies. I never will forget one of the most -- I don't think I have ever spoken about this in public before -- but one of the most meaningful personal moments I have had as President was a conversation I had with Nelson Mandela.

And I said to him -- I said: "You know, I have read your book, and I have heard you speak.

And you spent time with my wife and daughter, and you have talked about inviting your jailers to your inauguration." And I said, "It's very moving." And I said: "You're a shrewd as well as a great man. But come on now, how did you really do that? You can't make me believe you didn't hate those people who did that to you for 27 years?"

He said, "I did hate them for quite a long time. After all, they abused me physically and emotionally. They separated me from my wife, and it eventually broke my family up. They kept me from seeing my children grow up." He said, "For quite a long time, I hated them."

And then he said: "I realized one day, breaking rocks, that they could take everything away from me, everything, but my mind and heart. Now, those things I would have to give away, and I simply decided I would not give them away."

So as you look around the world, you see -- how do you explain these three children who were killed in Ireland or all the people who were killed in the square when the people were told to leave the City Hall, there was a bomb there, and then they walked out toward the bomb?

What about all those families in Africa? I don't know. I can't pick up the telephone and call them and say, "I am so sorry this happened." How do we find that spirit?

All of you know I'm having to become quite an expert in this business of asking for forgiveness. And I ----. It gets a little easier the more you do it. And if you have a family, an Administration, a Congress and a whole country to ask, you're going to get a lot of practice.

But I have to tell that in these last days it has come home to me again, something I first learned as President, but it wasn't burned in my bones -- and that is that in order to get it, you have to be willing to give it. And all of us -- the anger, the resentment, the bitterness, the desire for recrimination against people you believe have wronged you -- they harden the heart and deaden the spirit and lead to self-inflicted wounds.

And so it is important that we are able to forgive those we believe have wronged us, even as we ask for forgiveness from people we have wronged.

And I heard that first -- first -- in the civil rights movement. "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

In the middle of the fight of his life, off the cuff, without notes...






digby 1/20/2003 12:05:00 PM |

 
Atrios says "A judge appoints a lawyer to represent the uterus. Lovely"

Hey, if a uterus gets a lawyer, then I think that penises should get one, too. Everybody knows that it has a mind of it's own. If a smattering of cells can be granted personhood with legal rights, the mighty male member with it's often total power over the most rational of men should at least have a right to an attorney.

Just think how differently Clinton's case would have gone if his dick had had Johnnie Cochran (heh) defending it?



digby 1/20/2003 10:11:00 AM |

 
Taking It For The Team

TBOGG provides us with another reason why wearing a bow tie is an immediate tip-off that the wearer is actually a ruthless authoritarian prick.

So by building in safeguards to keep the innocent, the railroaded, the poor, or the not-white-like-Will from being executed by an imperfect system, Will would have a few innocent people die to make sure that the death penalty acts as a deterrent and can be measured. To Will this must be like "taking one for the team" only in this case, the innocent person won't be around to see the final score or if George Will's team of grim social Darwinists win.

How very gracious of him.

Hey, TBOGG. He's not saying we won't get our hair mussed....

I always knew that Will had a rather unseemly attraction to the Power of the State. So many of these supposedly small-government conservatives do. They like the State very well when it comes to overwhelming police power.

All you gun lovers out there had better make sure you treat these boys very nicely and do exactly what they want you to do. For totalitarian types the bill of rights are sentimental words written on a piece of toilet paper. And that includes the second amendment.



digby 1/20/2003 09:17:00 AM |

Sunday, January 19, 2003

 
They've Got To Be Kidding

Bush honors Jefferson Davis

From Daily Kos

The wreath tradition stuck around until Bush I mercifully ended it. Clinton, I am happy to say, let the dead tradition stay dead. But Bush II, never one to squander an opportunity to pander to the racist segment of the South, has happily resurrected the tradition.

Karl Rove makes Lee Atwater look like an amateur.


digby 1/19/2003 08:51:00 PM |

 
Diversity Is Good For Business

Maybe the Court (and the American people) will listen to these guys:

From Business Week:

The Bush Administration is poised to weigh in, opposing the school's right to consider race in its admission process. But the companies, including Exelon, Microsoft, Bank One, General Motors, and Steelcase, plan to advocate for the defense with a new brief in mid-February.

The Administration and the justices should take heed of Corporate America's argument. These corporate chieftains are speaking out about such a hot-button social issue because they believe that as minorities' share of the U.S. population has mounted, diversity has become a critical workforce requirement.

The nation's colleges are an essential part of the pipeline that feeds new hires to large companies. On a campus where diversity thrives, students develop an understanding of different cultures. That enables them, as tomorrow's business leaders, to "appeal to a variety of consumers" and work with colleagues and clientele from many ethnic backgrounds, the companies argued in their amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals. It also creates a more competitive workforce that can "facilitate unique and creative approaches to problem-solving," the brief said. Simply put, says Bank One Corp. Chief Legal Officer Christine A. Edwards, "diversity is good business."

[...]

"A diverse college environment is a much better setting for preparing graduates for life in business," says Steelcase Inc. CEO James P. Hackett.

Or, you can send a bunch of morons who think that having a "Ghetto Party" on Martin Luther King Day is good clean fun, out into the workforce.





digby 1/19/2003 04:09:00 PM |

 
Everybody Brings Exactly The Same Thing To The Party

Newsweek Poll

More than two-thirds of Americans polled said they don’t think colleges and universities should give preference in admissions based on race or ethnicity. They also felt strongly that preferential treatment should be denied to children of alumni, athletes and even musicians and other artists. However, 65 percent would approve of affirmative action based on income, giving preference for college admissions to applicants from low-income families, regardless of their race or ethnic background.

So, the only talent that Americans value is straight academic talent as measured by tests and grades. You play like Shostakovitch? Tough shit. We cannot measure this so-called talent in our computer brain so you had better get that math score up, comrade. You paint like Picasso? How sweet. But, you shall receive no extra credit for such a useless talent. We have no need for your unproductive contribution in higher education. Study your English so we can measure how valuable you are by the almighty SAT scores from which all judgements shall be made.

And, all of you athletes are wasting our time. Sure, we spend billions each year on college sports but we are willing to give all that up for an academic meritocracy based upon infallible test scores. You are nothing to us, now.

Study math and English, brothers. Your tests and your "objective" grades are the only measure we care about. Everything else is unfair to the truly deserving.



digby 1/19/2003 03:44:00 PM |

 
What Would It Be Worth To You?

Oh Man. Dwight Meredith has a devastating post up about compensatory damages.

As Bill Clinton knew so well, in order to make a complicated point comprehensible to average Americans who have no first hand experience with abstract issues involving big money and policy choices --- you personalize it, you draw contrasts and you frame the issue in terms of human values.

These are real human beings who have been determined to have suffered a life changing loss due to negligent or conscious actions on the part of corporations. It is not about the "greedy trial lawyers." It is about them.

It is beyond dispute that pain and suffering is a real, actual, legitimate loss. The hard question is how much money is required to compensate for a given amount of pain and suffering. There is no scale that actually balances pain on one side of the scale and money on the other side. The Bush administration suggests that a lifetime of pain and suffering result in compensation of a maximum of $250,000.

Perhaps we can put that amount into perspective by comparing it with other values our within society.

In 1999 Ken Lay dispatched an empty Enron Jet to France to fetch his daughter Robin home from Nice. The cost of that flight was was $125,000 or one half of what the Bush administration considers to be the value of a lifetime of pain and suffering.

The Bush administration’s latest tax cut proposal would have reduced Dick Cheney’s taxes by $220,000 in the last year he worked at Halliburton. That tax relief is approximately 90% of what the Bush administration believes to be the damages for a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Invested in 10-year Treasury Notes currently yielding 4.02%, $250,000 could provide a yearly income of $10,050. A full time minimum wage earner makes approximately $11,850 per year.

Last year Braves pitcher Gregg Maddox earned more than $13,000,000 and pitched almost 200 innings. Mr. Maddox earned more than what Mr. Bush feels is adequate compensation for a lifetime in a wheelchair for every four innings he pitched.

There is more. Go read it.





digby 1/19/2003 03:07:00 PM |

 
Tricky Dick, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Chicago Tribune does a thorough analysis of the administrations duplicity and mendacity in the Michigan case. Thomas Spencer at Thinking It Through cuts to the chase:

In short, W and the boys are saying one thing in public and something entirely different in their legal arguments before the Supreme Court. Just one more example of this administration's astonishing dishonesty with the American people.

It's not exactly surprising though. Since Nixon's folks are largely running this adminstration, it doesn't exactly surprise me that they would take such a Nixonian approach. If you recall Nixon once said "Watch what we do, not what we say."

Apparently these folks learned well from their former boss because Nixon's caveat applies to the present administration as well.

Spencer is a historian who knows whereof he speaks. The Nixonian character of this administration cannot be overstated. They overtly reject Bush I and try to assume the mantle of Saint Reagan, but this is the party of dirty tricks, ratfucking, enemies lists, secrecy and imperial executive power.




digby 1/19/2003 02:27:00 PM |

 
How About A "Priest and Alter Boy Party" On Easter?

Via Orcinus:

From College Station, home of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum:

Texas A&M Embarrassed by 'Ghetto Party'

Texas A&M University officials are trying to stop some students' plans to mark Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with an-off campus party at which guests are encouraged to mimic stereotypes about blacks.

``It's hard to understand how students could live in today's world and think a party playing on stereotypes of African-Americans would be acceptable,'' said Ron Sasse, director of dormitories at the College Station campus, where 85 percent of the students are white and 3 percent are black.

Fliers at the Walton Hall dormitory advertised the event and encouraged partygoers to mimic stereotypes and ``think ghetto.''

Oh come on. It's just a little bit of modern Minstrel fun on Martin Luther King Day. True, King was the leader of the most important civil rights movement in our history and was assassinated by a racist scumbag, but that's no reason you can't dress up in blackface on his birthday and make fun of African-Americans. Lighten up (no pun intended.)

All I can say is thank gawd they got rid of that racist affirmative action in those Texas universities. There's obviously no advantage to having more African-Americans on campus. Those fun-loving pranksters don't need to have any black people around to challenge their prejudices or make them defend such insulting stereotypes face to face with those they seek to humiliate and demean. No need at all.

MLK had it right. People should be judged by the content of their character.
digby 1/19/2003 02:12:00 PM |

 
Why Not Capital Punishment for Double Parking, Too?

Talk Left discusses the case of a man accused of attempted espionage. Ashcroft is seeking the death penalty.

Please, please spare me any hand-wringing on this one about the families of the victims and how the only possible justice for them is "an eye for an eye." There are no families of the victims, because THERE ARE NO VICTIMS.

Does everyone feel comfortable with the idea of executing people for espionage that wasn't even committed? Particularly when Robert Hansen, everybody's favorite Clinton hating G-Man, was personally responsible for numerous deaths of American agents by the KGB and he got life (and we taxpayers are paying his pension to his wife.)

Of course, Hansen had information to share because he was guilty as sin and his crimes reached to highest level of the clandestine spy world, so they couldn't kill him. Who knows what he might say in a courtroom? But, this poor schmuck is just a mentally challenged loser so they can "make an example of him."

That's Justice with a capital J.

Correction: That's Hanssen. Thanks to Patrick Neilsen Hayden for the heads up.



digby 1/19/2003 01:26:00 PM |

 
Meow

Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged directs us to this delicious little bit of feline DC back-biting.

I honored the rule about keeping confidences," says Frum, 42. He also honored the rule, he says, "of keeping the president's thinking confidential as he's thinking it." (It's unclear, however, how familiar the author was with the president's thinking. Asked how many one-on-one meetings he had with the president, Frum says there were "six or eight." But when pressed to exclude walk-by encounters in the hallways, the total falls to "two or three.")

He has fleshy pale cheeks, bright brown eyes and an eager bearing that leaves the impression of an overgrown boy. Frum is sitting in his office at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a resident fellow. He is surrounded by stacked boxes of "The Right Man." Speaking in a smooth, NPR-perfect voice, he has completed 17 radio interviews by lunchtime. He began at 6 a.m. and will be finished by midnight.

Frum is attempting what is probably an impossible balancing act: He wants to "speak truthfully about what I saw" at the White House while still hoping for the administration's love. He observes from outside the sanctum but still promises an "inside account." He is a self-described "minor player" who still feels qualified to write that Secretary of State Colin Powell is the "deadliest bureaucratic knife fighter in the whole Bush administration."

All of which has made him a figure of some disdain, both within and beyond the Bush circle. This is manifest in a classic Washington form: Conversations with people who know Frum begin with on-the-record praise and spiral into on-background ridicule. "There's a sort of desperate edge to David's need to be noticed," says one well-known conservative who knows Frum and has ties to the White House. Frum has an outsider's zealousness for recognition, he says. In addition to still being a Canadian citizen, Frum was also one of the few Jews in the Bush White House, a point of which he seems acutely conscious.

As Julia pithily observes: Shame no-one in the White House realized what a loser this guy was before he set our foreign policy, isn't it?





digby 1/19/2003 01:00:00 PM |

 
Andy Card, Boy Genius II?

Matt points to an unintentionally hilarious look at SUV manufacturers market research:

According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.

I hesitate to condemn the many fine people who drive these behemoths, but as a resident of Los Angeles, it's pretty clear that in this town, at least, a good many SUV drivers are young girls who drive at 80 mph on the freeway during rush hour while simultaneously applying mascara and talking on the phone. I'll leave it up to the experts to decide whether they might generally fit the picture of those descibed above. The Greg Easterbrook review of High and Mighty in TNR
says "...One such wise man, named Clotaire Rapaille, tells the Big Three that people buy SUVs "because they want to look as menacing as possible." I can't say why these young women want to look menacing, but I can confirm that they are a roadway menace in a crowded big city.

Ryan Barrow at That Said draws a nice analogy between the auto manufacturer's cynical marketing of SUVs and George W. Bush's cynical marketing of his anti-affirmative action policy. After quoting the Easterbrook piece he adds:

Like the manufacturer of an SUV, the President is peddling his product by appealing to our fears and base nature with deliberately misleading language and imagery. Rather than an enlightened and judicious system which aims to make some accomodation for citizens whose race is held against them every waking day, the UM's admissions process is derided as a morass of quotas and reverse-discriminatory tomfoolery. For quota, we have discovered, brings all sorts of negative imagery and paranoia to mind, enabling us to dismiss the historic suffering of this country's minority citizens and to demand that they once again Yield to the supposed interests of an overwhelmingly privileged majority; Bush rhetoric encourages us to do so. And it allows a handful of unsuccessful applicants - who avowedly believe that they were the particular white people who ended up on the short end of the deal - the satisfaction of playing the Scooby Doo victim, moaning and crying about how they'd have gotten what they wanted if it wasn't for those meddlin' brown kids, while all the while protesting that a mildly race-conscious admissions process is merely a sop to moaners and cryers who just can't get it done on their own.

Neat.

digby 1/19/2003 11:26:00 AM |

 
He's Too Cool To Blog

Simply the best.

From Altercation via :Electrolite

THE PIERCE SECTION

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric —
“All men are bored with other men’s lives.”
Pete apparently never was more wrong than when he wrote that one. was he? I’m going to buy his story for the time being, especially since the charge — “suspicion of harboring an image” — is sufficiently vague and (Don’t say it!)”Orwellian.” However, the guy is now a punchline for every two-bit Morning Zoo guy on AM radio now. I’m 49. I’m not supposed to get disillusioned like this any more.
You probably saw the story where the Vatican put the knuckle down on American Catholic politicians — read John Kerry and (maybe) Nancy Pelosi — about hewing to the company line regarding certain issues on which a “well-formed Christian conscience” does not permit them to take a certain position. Now, ever since John Kennedy gave his speech to the Baptist ministers in Texas back in 1960, we American Papists have taken comfort in the fact that this peculiar “double loyalty” issue had been put to rest. Now, with their institutional church possessing on issues of human sexuality the approximate moral credibility of a barnyard goat, the bureaucrats in red beanies have decided to raise it again. If Kerry has any brains at all, he’ll make a speech this week telling these ermined layabouts to go climb a tree. My own informed Christian conscience won’t rest until a battalion of them are hauled off to the sneezer on conspiracy charges.
Noticed that Weepin’ Joe Lieberman (D-Madame Tussaud’s), burnishing his hepcat credentials, appeared with Conan and with Jon Stewart this week. It was like hearing Cotton Mather rap.
When did this start making sense?




digby 1/19/2003 12:41:00 AM |

Saturday, January 18, 2003

 
Sis Boom Ba

I was just wondering if anyone but me finds it wierd that the President of the United States holds these Nuremburg style rallies to talk about serious issues like tax policy or social security when he's not election campaigning. I saw him whip the hand picked crowd into a complete frenzy the other night with the phrase "we need ta pass tort reform!" You would have thought he was announcing the capture of bin Laden. (who?)

I know the guy was a cheerleader and all, but is this really appropriate? And who are these freaks who get completely hysterical over the words "tort reform?" It's creepy.

(Cult of personality? Nah)




digby 1/18/2003 10:44:00 PM |

 
They Should Fire Their Lawyers

PLA has an interesting post up about tort reform and defensive medicine. It brought to mind a debate on the Lehrer news hour the other night about "traaaal lawyers" and their monstrous greed and avarice.

The defender of liberty and all that is good and clean -- the corporate apologist -- kept complaining about how these evil toe-art lawyers were conning innocent unknowing Americans into filing suits against their will and then taking all the ill gotten gains when they rape the Godfearing American job creating corporations. One of the "reforms" he was lobbying for was to eliminate contingency fees.

Satan's handpuppet pointed out that it would hardly make sense for him to pour a bunch of his own money into these cases, which he does in these contingency arrangements, if he knew they were frivolous because he could not hope to recoup it if he didn't win.

The sainted corporate defender didn't respond, but it made me realize that these bastards are actually trying to persuade average Americans that corporations are at a disadvantage in a courtroom. They want people to believe that plaintiffs lawyers are able to take completely bogus cases, pour huge sums of their own money into them, convince a judge that the case is for real, use all their wiles on the jury of complete idiots...er... average voters (oops) who are mesmerized by their devilish powers to convince them to bankrupt the guileless corporations for no good reason at all.

If this is the case then the huge stables of highly paid lawyers representing these corporations in court really suck at their jobs, don't they? Perhaps rather than outlawing the practice of contingency fees altogether it would make more sense to hire those corporate lawyers on a contingency basis too. It seems to have a very salutory effect on performance.



digby 1/18/2003 10:17:00 PM |

 
Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Matt Yglesias poses a challenge to liberals on their position on affirmative action and legacy admissions. He says:

...the point here isn't that the existence of legacy admissions is irrelevant to the affirmative action debate. The point is that liberals owe the world an explanation of exactly what the relationship is supposed to be. Should both be abolished, or neither? Are we making a serious policy point here or are we just mocking the president?

From the standpoint of principle, for what it's worth, I think one offsets the other. The legacy admission is a pure expression of reward based on systemic privilege and the affirmative action admission is a pure example of redress based on systemic underprivilege. They represent the two main groups of our society that are judged and rewarded in accordance with characteristics that have nothing to do with them as individuals-- inherited privilege and inherited color. (Even athletics, after all, requires more than just genes. You do have to work at it.) Yet, privilege and color are fundamental forces in American life, whether we want to admit it or not. On this issue they are bound together.

Everyone else on a college campus is a mishmosh of various athletic, artistic and academic talents along with regional obligations and various other missions assumed by the school, wherein students with a certain baseline level of skills are exposed to the most diverse group of people that the college can muster. It benefits elite children of privilege to have exposure to people of color and it benefits people of color to rub shoulders with children of privilege. Indeed, jocks and geeks and artists and musicians and rich kids and black kids and foreign kids all living together on the same campus and sharing classes and making friendships is a demonstrably educational experience, which is after all, the point.

So, I say keep both affirmative action and legacy admissions along with all the other criteria that the school decides creates the best opportunity for learning.

On a strategic level, unfortunately, I think that many reasonable people have been gulled into thinking that the affirmative action issue is one of fairness and that without it students would otherwise be admitted to college purely on "merit." The legacy issue is the most crystal clear example of why this is not so because it is such a perfect comparison to racial preference. And it draws attention to the fact that the Republicans are not acting out of a desire for true meritocracy. One cannot say that people should not be admitted to college because of their race, which after all is a heritable characteristic, something they receive from being the child of certain parents through absolutely no effort of their own, while defending the legacy student like George W. Bush who also was admitted to college because he was the child of certain parents and through absolutely no effort of his own.

Indeed, one could make the case that Bush was far less deserving than the average racial minority who is admitted with extra points, because unlike them he had the good fortune to be sent to the best private schools in the nation and could have engaged tutors and SAT preparation etc., to bring him up to the level at which he could have been admitted on a meritocratic basis. After all, those who wish to abolish affirmative action always make the case that the best way to ensure equal opportunity is to ensure that the primary and secondary education system properly prepares all students to the best of their ability. George W. Bush and all the other privileged rich kids who rely on legacy admissions to attend college are a screaming example of those who have every possible advantage in terms of preparation for college and still fail to win their place in the institution of their choice on the basis of their own accomplishment. Certainly, they are far worse examples of a meritocratic ideal than a black student who came from sub-standard schools in a lower middle class family and had none of these extraordinary opportunities to better their academic performance.

This dichotomy illustrates to sincere people that the issue is more complicated than it seems and makes them question the motivations of those who consistently argue as if unfairness in admissions is only a matter of race. Since I believe that most Americans are not racist and don't wish to be used for the purpose of pandering to racists, I think it behooves liberals to expose these coded appeals.

The issue of legacy admissions is strategically useful for Democrats because no matter how sincerely argued on both sides, it is primarily a political football that serves as a useful symbol for those who believe that all of this "race" business has just gone on long enough -- they're tired of hearing about it and, -- Judas Priest, haven't we done enough for those people already?

Legacy admissions are the way to show people who believe that the issue has been raised out of a concern for fairness that they have been duped. Republicans should be forced to explian why they have been such passionate advocates of meritocracy when it comes to blacks and hispanics and yet so silent on the issue of meritocracy when it comes to the children of wealth and privilege.

...which leads to the question of who really plays the "class warfare" card, doesn't it?


Note: edited for embarrassing misspelling of Matthew Yglesias' last name.
...and misspelling misspelling.

Have another glass of wine, dig.

and another...









digby 1/18/2003 04:02:00 PM |

Friday, January 17, 2003

 
They Make It So Easy

In my post below, I discuss how odd it is that Republicans are so distressed about the unfairness of these few numbers of white students who have to go to their second choice school and yet in all other respects are convinced that people should just "get over it."

Lo and behold, Atrios posts the perfect illustration of the point.

Keep in mind that these are the guys who completely decimated the Republican Party of California. As California goes, so goes the the nation...

SACRAMENTO -- A California Republican Party leader has called on the highest-ranking African American in the state GOP to stop "parading" his race by complaining about "how awful it is to be a black Republican."

In an angry letter distributed to GOP activists statewide, Randy Ridgel, a member of the party's Board of Directors, responded to an accusation by fellow board member Shannon Reeves, who is black, that Republicans have treated African Americans as "window dressing."

"I, for one, am getting bored with that kind of garbage," Ridgel wrote. "Let me offer this suggestion to Mr. Reeves: 'Get over it, bucko. You don't know squat about hardship.' "

Ridgel added: "I personally don't give a damn about your color ... so stop parading it around. We need human beings of all human colors in our party to pull their weight, so get in without the whining or get out."

[...]

He [Reeves] recalled that during the 2000 Republican national convention in Philadelphia, delegates asked him six times to "fetch them a taxi or carry their luggage."

Ridgel responded by calling Reeves "a bombastic gasbag." He criticized Reeves for writing "a lengthy whining letter explaining how awful it is to be a black Republican."

Ridgel added: "Your sniveling letter makes me sick, young man; you are a superstar because you are a black Republican, and you love it. Now I wonder if you can make it as just a Republican ... like the rest of us. And don't try any of that Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters racist garbage on me."

But, he will fight all the way to the Supreme Court for all those poor hard working white kids who know first hand about hardship having been denied admission to their favorite school because one of these sniveling, bombastic whiners got extra points for being black.

You know, it's not just that they are such dumb fucks. It's that they are so damned proud of being such dumb fucks.




digby 1/17/2003 10:54:00 AM |

 
Put your feet up, click and enjoy:

Jesse on the victimization of rich white people.

Jim Cappazola on friendship, good hair and Marlene Dietrich

Elton Beard on Insty Confidential. (I'm surprised there wasn't more buzz on this. It was quite the fluffy puffer.)

Chris Anderson at Interesting Times

"The only empty warheads I'm sure exist are the ones currently working in the White House."

heh

Cowboy Kahlil on "the hypocrisy of the current drug war, that incarcerates self-medicators or self-abusers while the greater fatality rates accrue from the use of legal drugs."

Lisa English on Bush's "mandate."

See the Forest on agri-business, vegetarianism and cute pot bellied pigs

Julia on the Michigan affirmative action case

Skimble on cracker chic and other good stuff

TBOGG on Mr. Lively's Pro Family Law Center and his bad boy obsession.

Oh, just one little snippet:

Fortunately he has provided us with the Triangle of Tolerance so that we can live a godly life. My guess is that watching Will & Grace falls under "Reasonable Tolerance" while actually enjoying Will & Grace thrusts you into "Zero Tolerance", somewhere between drunk driving and violent crime. Enjoying Queer as Folk, however, sends you straight to "Re-education Camp and Possible Shock Treatment", so watch your ass, Mary.

Ted Barlow's lightbulb series is destined to become legendary and for good reason. They are all hilarious, but this one made me spew the coffee:

Q: How many Green party voters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Dude, we shouldn't have to change lightbulbs. GE has this secret lab in Costa Rica, and they made a lightbulb out of hemp that totally lasts forever.

Avedon Carol on class warfare

Devra on zoos and big cats

And speaking of cats:

Kevin Drum on PoMo science on the right. (A subject I want to write about too when I get time.)

Eschaton for japanese internment, pickering, fundy perverts, ....everything.

Incidentally, I know I need to update the blogroll, but for some reason I have a mental block. I will do it soon. There a many wonderful blogs I want to include.



digby 1/17/2003 05:15:00 AM |

 
Campaign 2000 Acid Flashback


3rd Presidential debate:

Ms. LISA KEY: How will your tax proposals affect me as a middle-class, 34-year-old single person with no dependents?

Vice Pres. GORE: If you make less than $60,000 a year and you decide to invest $1,000 in a savings account, you'll get a tax credit which means, in essence, that the federal government will match your $1,000 with another $1,000. If you make less than $30,000 a year and you put $500 in a savings account, the federal government will match it with $1,500. If you make more than $60,000, up to $100,000, you'll still get a match but not as generous. You will get a--an access to life-long learning and education, help with tuition if you want to get a new skill or--or training, if you--if you want to purchase health insurance, you will get help with that. I--if you want to participate in some of the dynamic changes that are going on in--in our country, you will get specific help in doing that. If you are part of the--of the bottom 20 percent or so of wage earners, then you will get an expanded earned income tax credit.

Now the tax relief that I propose is directed specifically at middle-income individuals and families. And if you have a--if you have an elderly parent or grandparent who needs long-term care, then you will get help with that, $3,000 tax credit to help your expenses in taking care of a loved one who needs long-term care.

Mr. LEHRER: Governor Bush?

Gov. BUSH: Right. Let me just say the first--this--this business about the entitlement he tried to describe about savings, you know, matching savings here and matching savings there, fully funded is going to cost a whole lot of money, a lot more than we have. You're going to get tax relief under my plan. You're not to be targeted in or targeted out. Everybody who pays taxes is going to get tax relief. If you take care of an elderly in your home, you're going to get the personal exemption increased. I think also what you need to think about is not the immediate, but what about Medicare? You get a plan that will include prescription drugs, a plan that will give you options. Now I--I hope people understand that Medicare today is--is--is important, but it doesn't keep up with the new medicines. If you're a Medicare person, on--on Medicare, you don't get the new--new procedures. You're stuck in a time warp in many ways. So it will be a modern Medicare system that trusts you to make a variety of options for you.

You're going to live in a peaceful world. It will be a world of peace because we're going to have a clearer--clearer sight of foreign policy based upon a strong military and a mission that stands by our friends, a mission that doesn't try to be all things to all people, a judicious use of the military which will help keep the peace.

You'll be in a world, hopefully, that's more educated so it's less likely you'll be harmed in your neighborhood. See, an educated child is one much more likely to be hopeful and optimistic. You'll be in a world in which--fits into my philosophy, you know, the harder work--the harder you work, the more you can keep. It's the American way. Government shouldn't be a heavy hand--that's what the federal government does to you--it should be a helping hand, and tax relief and proposals I just described should be a good helping hand.

Tim Russert: That was President...uh ooopsie!...Governor Bush and Vice President Gore in their 3rd and final Presidential debate.

So, panel, what did you think!

Barbie Banfield: Oh my Gawd! Dubble Yew is so kewl cuz he isn't all stiff and you know, like such a total liar and stuff!

Brian Williams: If I recall correctly, Tim, didn't the Vice President wear that tie two months ago with an off white shirt and a navy blue 3 button pin stripe? Is it possible, Tim, that the Vice President of the most powerful country on the planet doesn't realize that all over America, indeed the entire world, people are commenting on the choice of this tie, on this of all nights and how that affects not only his credibility vis a vis his comfort inside his suit but, yea verily, inside his own skin?

Chris Matthews: Gore's a stiff! And he lied, he lied, he lied!!! He said if she wanted to participate in the dynamic changes in the social security system she'd have to make less than 20,000 year and that's just not true Tim. Peggy, why do you think that Bush makes so much sense and Gore can't tell the truth if it hits him over the head with a signed copy of "Love Story?"

Peggy Noonan: Well, Chris it's because George Bush is a man, a man with two legs and two arms. A man who goes to bed at night and a man who gets up in the morning. He eats breakfast. He feeds his dog. He likes his own pillow because he is a real man, a man who sleeps. Who loves his sleep and his pillow and Americans feel that and understand that and feel comfortable with that. Al Gore is a souless empty shell, a cipher in earth tones who consists of words, and facts and phrases and numbers that nobody understands because he isn't real, because he can't love a pillow or his breakfast and people need that in a leader. They need a man, they need one so badly they feel as if they'll burst if they don't have one, a rich one with cowboy boots and a bad temper. That's what I need...er the American people need, Chris, and George W. Bush looked right into my...er...their eyes tonight and promised to give them everything he has until he is completely spent.

Brian: Peggy, do you think he uses 350 count egyptian cotton pillow cases or is he more of a percale kind of guy? His shirts are always so crisp. Do you think he uses starch vis a vis his collars?

Michael Beschloss: When Al Gore spoke tonight I was eerily reminded of Nixon's farewell speech in which he cried and said he wasn't a quitter. It is interesting to see the corrupt and mendacious side of Al Gore show itself in such an obvious way. It is said that when Millard Fillmore debated he had much the same effect on people, they recoiled in horror and averted their eyes. Now Governor Bush sounded as if he were a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Socrates with his sober, unadorned style and his challenging abstract way of explaining his positions as if to require the voters to delve into themselves for the deeper answers. He was very noble in his bearing, almost Christlike, but with an accesible persona that brought to mind the universal acceptance of George Washington as the father of our country.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: I thought George W Bush sounded as if he were a cross between Socrates and Abraham Lincoln with his straight and sober style and the abstract way he has of explaining his positions. He wants the voters to delve into themselves for the deeper answers. He very much reminded me of the father of our country, George Washington. Al Gore looked strangely like Millard Fillmore tonight, and perhaps a bit like Derek Jeter and Pedro Martinez too.

Tim: Well, Doris, if you are saying that the Governor of Texas hit the ball out of the park tonight, I'd have to agree with you. Join me Sunday on Meet the Press when I'll have Jim Nicholson, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay on to explain Al Gore's economic plan. Good night from all of us at NBC News.

Thanks to "nameless" from Atrios' comments section for the debate excerpt, which is 100% factually correct.





digby 1/17/2003 03:35:00 AM |

 
Those Bleeding Heart Republicans

In the ongoing discussion of our fearless leader’s decision in the University of Minnesota case over on Atrios’ and Hesiod’s blogs, I find it disconcerting that many feel the Democrats are making a strategic mistake by defending affirmative action because it upsets certain white people who feel it is unfair. Hesiod says in Atrios’ comments section:

The Republicans are all home ejaculating over this debate. Why? Because middle class, suburban white women are seeing the Democrats argue in favor of a system THEY perceive as being inimical to the interests of their sons and daughters

He is certainly not alone in this assessment and I know that he does not say this out of any racial animosity himself. But, setting aside whether the debate should be fought on principle, I strongly disagree with this strategic analysis. I do not believe that these middle class suburban white women are offended that black students get a leg up in college admissions, nor do I think they perceive preferences as being detrimental to the interests of their children. They are, in fact, the group most likely to be offended by the GOP's thinly veiled racist appeals when they are made aware of them. It's why Olympia Snowe came out yesterday and said that Bush's decision was “disappointing.” The issue cuts to the Democrats' benefit, not the Republicans.

Bush did this to shore up his base who are very unhappy about Lott's ouster. That the administration had to handle it so carefully is a testament to how much the issue ties them in knots.

Democrats have to recognize that the “compassionate conservative” agenda is Bush’s Achilles heel. Republicans don’t really believe in compassion as a governing principle. They think compassion enables dependency. Their operating principle is self-sufficiency. But, the GOP cannot win national elections with religious conservatives, CEO’s and white male gun owners alone. They’d like to say to hell with all this caring and sharing bullshit but they can’t because those swinging suburban women expect the government to do things to affirmatively better the lives of citizens who need help and that includes racial minorities. The Republicans don’t expect to win non-white votes, but they have to win a few of those whites who are sympathetic to the cause and it’s not easy with the confederates expecting Bush to honor the unspoken promise that if they stay quiet, he'll deliver.

They have a problem and, in my opinion, from a strategic as well as a principled standpoint the Democrats should dig at that scab every time they try to cover it over. It is an internal inconsistency that makes them vulnerable.

And substantively, this whole issue is a crock. The country is veritably overwhelmed with unfair practices, from absurd drug laws to rich people buying their way out of trouble to corporations draining pension funds to red-lining to off shore tax dodges and the list goes on and on and on. We Democrats spend our lives decrying the inequality of opportunity that pervades the entire system – a progressive’s raison d’etre is to try to level the playing field. So, how absurd it is that this particular "unfairness" is such a rallying cry for Republicans, seeing as they normally consider such concerns to be examples of weak individuals who aren’t tough enough to “suck it up” “get on with it” “work harder and stop whining.”

So, why then are we supposed to believe that their interest in this somewhat arcane and academic debate about scoring systems and weighted averages and a few thousand kids around the country who have to go to their second choice school is a brave act of principle? Since when is that kind of issue even on the GOP radar screen?

In that context, it becomes very clear that the affirmative action debate has been willfully constructed entirely for the benefit of the Republican Party’s race based politics. It is a useful surrogate issue for those simpleminded bigots who just have to gripe about blacks and Mexicans and for the phony meritocrats who knowingly wink and nod at them while smugly toasting each other for their “color blind” principles at NY cocktail parties.

It is beyond comprehension that in a country with a 300 year history of slavery, apartheid and discrimination against racial minorities (that clearly persists to this day) the single most important equal rights issue presently on the table is the case of a relative handful of white people who maintain that they were unfairly denied access to the college of their choice because racial minorities were granted a small advantage roughly equal to that of a football lineman or an alumni’s idiot offspring. This is the country's burning civil rights issue that must be taken all the way to the Supreme Court, again and again and again?

Sure it is. When Republicans respond with as much outrage and passion to something like this and like this then maybe I’ll believe that they are acting out of conviction. Until then, I have to assume that the fact that the only time they get worked up about discrimination is when they perceive it to be toward white people means that they are doing what they have been doing since 1968 --- pandering to losers who are so primitive that they believe their problems would all be solved if it weren’t for those uppity blacks, lazy Mexicans and ugly women stealing away all their opportunities in life.



digby 1/17/2003 01:17:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

 
If they want to take my Navigator, they'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers...

Jay Caruso on The Daily Rant says:

Her ads have nothing at all to do with her concern over whether not money used to buy gasoline in this country is somehow winding up in the off shore bank accounts of terrorists. Her issue is obviously her born again environmentalism. All of this talk about funding terrorism is a bunch of crap. Oh, and while the anti-drug ads were stupid as well, nobody spends $250K on a public service announcement simply to make a point about another one, so that stuff doesn't fly (Marty).

If she wants to come out and say that the millions of SUV's driving around the United States are killing the environment, then fucking say it! Don't cloak your agenda in some nonsense about terrorism, and make sure you're driving a Prius and living in a tent before you lecture others.

Jayzuz. Literalism is epidemic these days.

She is using the administration's slick, condescending terrorist ads against them to make her point. If they can say that smoking a joint causes terrorism, then why can't she say that driving a gas guzzling SUV causes terrorism? At least there actually is oil in middle east terrorist countries. Unless terrorists are hiding out in Humboldt County, I seriously doubt that the sensimilla crop is particularly relevant to Homeland Security. (And if they are, the biggest threat is to the cookie section at 7-11.)

Huffington clearly states that she is using the format of the stupid "drugs finance terrorism" ads to "turn the tables" on the Bush administration. She isn't hiding her environmental agenda, it's right up front. The entire campaign is a parody. It's humorous. Funny. And it is a way of pointing out the emperor has no clothes when it comes to lecturing Americans about funding terrorism through drugs when the administration's cozy relations with the oil industry, Saudi Arabia and the auto manufacturers actually do contribute to the terrorist threat because it is warping our foreign policy. (Is it really debatable that our relationship with Saudi Arabia would be what it is today if they didn't have oil? Because if it is, then that bit in the Bush Doctrine about "harboring terrorists and funding terrorists makes you a terrorist" is total bullshit on every single level. If it isn't the oil then why the hell didn't we invade immediately after Afghanistan?)

She does not say that eliminating SUV's will miraculously end terrorism OR clean up the environment.
She doesn't have to live in a tent to make a case for driving a fuel efficient car. That's ridiculous. (She drives a Prius, BTW) All she's doing is trying to get Americans to cut down on their consumption of oil --- both for the sake of the environment and because our dependence on foreign oil forces us into alliances that don't make sense in the era of Islamic terrorism. She's isn't suggesting that the government should take away anybody's precious SUV. She's just trying to raise some consciousness, get Americans to stop driving them if they don't need to, and pressure the auto companies to push harder for alternatives.

And she used the administration's silliness to do it. I think it's damned clever.




digby 1/15/2003 12:47:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

 
Big Tent

Katie the Goblin Queen gives Little Ben a final fisking so sublime that he had to read it over and over and over again to remind himself how offended he was.


Update:

TBOGG tells us that today is Ben's brithday. He's just 19 years old. For a birthday present, I suggest that Ben allow himself to re-read the paragraph in Katie's post about her boyfriend's fantasy of laying on top of her in a gold fish tank. It's your birthday, man. Treat yourself.




digby 1/14/2003 11:35:00 PM |

 
Vaara's blogging on the Road to Hong Kong!





digby 1/14/2003 10:20:00 PM |

 
They don't call it The Daddy Party for Nothin'

From the Liquid List

I've come to the conclusion that Republicans must need to regularly inflict a certain amount of self-flagellation. What other reason could there be to explain their tendency to make themselves look like idiots, over and over again, on most issues relating to the economy? What else accounts for pushing so many financially ruinous ideas on the public? Instituting debunked supply side schemes, cutting social programs that Americans support, forgetting the lessons of massive deficits, tax cuts for the super-rich that will do nothing for the big spenders…on it goes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If I were a psychologist, I'd first look for any twisted parental relationships that might be at work here: "Son, take a bath or I'll burn a cross in your room." That kind of thing can damage a person, no? Make them feel bad about themselves? Make someone want to hurt themselves a little? "I'm not good enough for Daddy, so I'll support this tax cut that will send the economy south, and I won't get re-elected, which is what a bad boy deserves." The bifurcation of the brazen quest for power and the self-loathing is just so pathetic.

The daddy issues aren't always subtle, though. George W. Bush has spent the last six months trying to aim a big missile (more Freud there, don't miss it) at, as he put it, "the man [who] tried to kill my dad." But the young warmonger has missed the fact that it wasn't Saddam who ended GHWB's presidency. It was the economy, stupid! Bush enemy #1, with a bullet.

So here we are, stationed with 1991 Company at Camp Déjà Vu. The war, the economy, and the personnel. There's trouble in Kennebunkport. Because 43 is all mixed up, see, just like all the other Republicans. He want's to defend Daddy's honor by grabbing power and killing Saddam, and at the same time he's pushing this incredibly self-defeating economic policy -- the kind that makes people think Republicans are bad boys.

It's sad, really. Sometimes Republicans just need to be held.

Poor lil' w.

To tell you the truth, this is the first time I've actually considered what it must have been like to grow up with Read My Lips for a father and Rhymes with Witch for a mother.

Jesus. Buy Gold and potassium iodide. We are in so much trouble.....





digby 1/14/2003 10:06:00 PM |

 
The Earth Moved

I need a cigarette and I don't even smoke.

From the Poor Man Andrew Northrup.

The Republican ticket is a lock. Bush has matured into a masterful and commanding leader, and Dick Cheney is a widely respected policy heavyweight who has become the most active Vice President in American history. Combine this with high approval ratings, an untouchable war chest, a friendly Congress and an upcoming romp to victory in Iraq, and you've got an unbeatable combination for four more years ... and beyond!

Or do you? I remember the election, and the thing that struck me, and most of the voting public, about Dubya, wasn't that he was a "masterful leader" so much as that he was an "embarrassing fool". A cartoonish, empty-headed serial idiot with a resume made up entirely of draft dodging, tequila shots, and gifts from daddy and a political platform composed entirely of lies, impossible promises, and stunningly, shockingly, record-breakingly empty rhetoric. And don't tell me that this is some liberal propaganda - I watched the debates, I watched every step of the way, I watched you babbling on with a smirk on your face like some 4th grader giving the class his book report on a book he didn't even read. Every time you spoke it was a breakthrough in the field of stupidity, opening up unexplored vistas of idiocy beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. You don't even read the paper, you don't even have a single clue what's going on in the world, and you don't even fucking care. Knowing who is in charge of Pakistan isn't like knowing the square root of pi - it's in the paper every day, it's not like some outrageously esoteric thing that only super big nerds know about. If you are going to be President, it’s something you might want to look in to.

And I know we were all supposed to be impressed with you after September 11th, and, yes, you did a good job of playing President. And everyone kind of forgot about all the dumb stuff for a little while, because we thought maybe we might all be dead tomorrow, so we'd better stick together, and if I say something mean about the President and then someone kills him I'll feel pretty bad. And in a lot of ways you were very good, looking very grim and determined looking in a situation that was difficult emotionally, but, let's face it, kind of a no-brainer policy-wise. "Kill the mutherfuckers" was, indeed, the correct response, and it was carried out with some efficacy, but it's not exactly rocket science.

But you know what? Stupid's not a passing thing. Stupid's not some phase in life, like when you were really into MC Hammer or when you abused alcohol and cocaine for twenty years, which you suddenly recover from and no one is supposed to talk about anymore. Stupid's forever, my friend, and you can't get away from it. Stupid sticks. Stupid shows.

Do you even know what your Iraq policy is? Do you even really have one? I know what I hope it is, but every time I hear you talk about Iraq it's something different. Sometimes it's nuclear weapons, sometimes it's terrorism, sometimes it's human rights. Aside from moments of (scripted) lucidity, such as the speech to the UN, it's all been very obscure. And what about North Korea? "I loathe Kim Jong Il!" What are you, two years old? Nobody likes Kim Jong Il, he's a fucking maniac, but what's your point? It is your job, as President, to do a little thinking about things beyond the level of 'starving people is wrong and I hate it,' beyond the level of being the national id. It's your job to actually figure out how to deal with this guy. The whole Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or Mr. Smith Goes to the OK Corral, or whatever it is schtick is getting pretty stale. It worked when the problem was medieval religious fanatic douche bags in Afghanistan who thought that they could deflect bombs with old tires, but when dealing with the real problems of the world, your faux-regular guy bullshit act is not going to cut it. And you got a free ride for a while now because of extenuating circumstances, but if you think the Democrats are still going to be playing patty-cake with you in 2004 you're in for a surprise. If the war in Iraq doesn’t go like a picnic on a cloudless day (and it probably won’t, Sunshine), they’ll kill you with it. And it may not be fair at all, but that’s just too bad. And if you think that two years from now, when you have lowered taxes (on the rich), raised spending, the economy is going no where, and you’ve spent four years shitting on the environment, sucking up to the hard right wing, and embarrassing the country on the world stage, if you think that people are going to be satisfied with you gritting your teeth and telling people that you’re a man of conviction who says what he means or some John Wayne Hallmark card horseshit like that, well, you’ve got another thing coming. You are doomed in 2004, and I can’t wait until we dump your clueless ass.

Oh baby. Was it as good for you as it was for me?



digby 1/14/2003 08:38:00 PM |

 
The Mouth That Roared

Josh Marshall posts another very interesting tidbit on the Korea train wreck about James Kelly, in which he discusses some of Kelly's questionable ties to certain Chinese businessmen and how that may be shaping the internal conflict in the administration between the "China Hawks" and what I like to call the "sane people." Kelly, as Powell's Asia policy person, has been lobbying from the beginning for a less bellicose approach to the North Korean situation and is viewed with some suspicion in the bully boy crowd. Marshall thinks these suspicions about his China ties may be playing into the debate.

But, somebody also needs to take a close look at the screaming jackass that Bush appointed as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, apparently against Colin Powell's wishes, John Bolton. It's hard to keep track of all the neocon nutcases that populate this administration's foreign policy shop, but this guy ranks up there with the worst. He won the post with a vote of 57-43 --- fewer than Ashcroft. It was a disastrous decision.

Here are just a few of the highlights about Mr. Bolton:

Bolton on China/Taiwan: "...diplomatic recognition of Taiwan would be just the kind of demonstration of U.S. leadership that the region needs and that many of its people hope for. The notion that China would actually respond with force is a fantasy."AEI web site, 8/9/99

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: "The Senate vote on the CTBT actually marks the beginning of a new realism on the issue of weapons of mass destruction and their global proliferation... the Senate vote is also an unmistakable signal that America rejects the illusionary protections of unenforceable treaties." The Jerusalem Post, 10/18/99

North Korea: "A sounder U.S. policy would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have "normal" diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours. We should also make clear that diplomatic normalization with the U.S. is only going to come when North Korea becomes a normal country." Los Angeles Times, 09/22/99

At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association Bolton claimed "there's no such thing as the United Nations," and stated ''if the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.''

Sen. Jesse Helms on John Bolton: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon." Speech at American Enterprise Institute, 01/11/01

Past Scandals: As a young lawyer Bolton in 1978 Bolton helped Sen. Helms' National Congressional Club form Jefferson Marketing "as a vehicle to supply candidates with such services as advertising and direct mail without having to worry about the federal laws preventing PACs, like the Congressional Club, from contributing more than $5,000 per election to any one candidate's campaign committee" (Legal Times). He later defended the club against charges from the FEC that led to a $10,000 fine in 1986. As a reward for his service Sen. Helms "helped the career of John Bolton" by supporting him for his Department of Justice and State positions (Legal Times).

At the Justice Department, Bolton acted as the Department's "no man" refusing to provide congressional committees documents on Supreme Court nominees William Renquist, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. He also refused to provide information, including his personal notes regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, and aided congressional Republicans who attempted to stop investigations of Contra drug smuggling.

After leaving the State Department under the first Bush Administration, Bolton headed the National Policy Forum which "reportedly pursued money from overseas" for the RNC (Los Angeles Times). The NPF defaulted on a $1.3 billion loan guaranteed by Hong Kong businessman Ambrous Young, whose lawyer claimed his willingness to absorb the debt was "contingent upon Mr. Young getting something in return," namely "business opportunities." The Taiwanese government "served as an intermediary for a $25,000 contribution" to the NPF(Washington Post). At his confirmation hearing Bolton acknowledged that he had received $30,000 from the Taiwanese government for writing a series of papers.

At his confirmation hearing Bolton defended his ability to separate his personal beliefs from his professional duties: "Of all the different jobs I've had in government, I've never had any allegations that I wasn't following the policies that were set." Actually, Bolton ignored administration policy while in the Reagan Justice Department when he held an unauthorized press conference lashing out at special prosecutors. His comments drew sharp criticism from the White House when spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called Bolton "intemperate and contentious."

Since his confirmation he's been a total disaster.

It is widely assumed, his views on North Korea being what they are, that Bolton is one of those who pressed for it to be included in the "axis of evil," one of many stupid pieces of advice.

On Feb. 22, 2002 he announced that the United States would no longer respect a long-standing agreement to limit consideration of a nuclear response only to attacks from a nuclear-armed foe. He said that the long-standing agreement to avoid using nuclear weapons reflected "an unrealistic view of the international situation."

And then, there was this gem. Bolton, clearly off the reservation, said in early May 2002, that the administration may be targeting Cuba in its war on terrorism. His "Beyond the Axis of Evil" speech claimed, without any evidence, that Cuba was developing biological weapons and sharing its expertise with other U.S. enemies. It was a crock.

Throughout this period the administration was sending all kinds of mixed signals to the North Koreans, from the President calling Kim a "pygmy" to embarrassing the Prime Minister of South Korea (and Powell) by publicly dissing the sunshine policy without notice, to releasing $95M last April under the Agreed Framework even while claiming that North Korea was not in compliance. They were all over the place.

Then, once again, with administration's hallmark arrogance and bad timing, on August 29th, Bolton let fly with what was probably the final straw:

North Korea is the world's foremost vendor of missile technology and has "one of the most robust offensive bio-weapons programs on earth," the top U.S. arms negotiator said Friday, echoing President Bush's warnings about the communist state.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton called North Korea "an evil regime that is armed to the teeth, including with weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles."

"President Bush's use of the term 'axis of evil' to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea was more than a rhetorical flourish — it was factually correct," Bolton said in a speech to a a group of South Korean government officials and scholars.

"There is a hard connection between these regimes — an axis along which flow dangerous weapons and dangerous technology," he said.

The chief U.S. arms-control negotiator was in Seoul for a three-day visit that included talks with South Korean officials on the communist North's arms proliferation. He discussed the same topic with Japanese officials in Tokyo earlier this week.

His comments come at a sensitive time, as the two Koreas try to revive stalled reconciliation after months of tension. South Korea wants Washington to open dialogue with Pyongyang about the arms issue.

Bolton stressed that such overtures will depend on whether the North will stop developing and exporting missile parts and technology to "notable rogue state clients such as Syria, Libya and Iran."

[...]

Bolton also said that there is "little doubt" that North Korea has an active chemical weapons program and has "one of the most robust offensive bio-weapons programs on earth."

As Bolton spoke, economic officials of the two Koreas were meeting in Seoul to discuss a host of pending issues, including a cross-border railway. The talks were part of an agreement reached during Cabinet-level negotiations in Seoul earlier this month.

The revived inter-Korean dialogue has coincided with North Korea's moves to reach out to the rest of the world.


Meanwhile, on Wednesday [same day] during a visit to Japan, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage signaled that Washington was planning to send an envoy to Pyongyang in the near future.

"We have received a variety of messages from North Korea in recent months and it seems to me that the general thrust is that they would welcome a visit by assistant secretary (James) Kelly," Armitage told a news conference.

His comments followed a brief meeting last month between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Brunei.

Their brief informal chat over coffee was the highest-level contact between the U.S. and North Korea since a landmark visit to Pyongyang by Powell's predecessor Madeleine Albright in October 2000.

Hello???

The North Koreans reacted very badly to this saying “Known as a standard-bearer among the notorious hard-line hawks of the Bush administration Bolton never opens his mouth without making anti-DPRK remarks, bereft of reason. Therefore, his recent outbursts do not deserve even a passing note,” said a DPRK foreign ministry’s spokesman on August 31. “If there is any security issue over which the U.S. should worry, it is entirely attributable to the Bush administration’s hostile policy toward the DPRK,” he added.

[...]

“It is also an unpardonable criminal act to vitiate a positive atmosphere of dialogue between the DPRK and the U.S. and between North and South Korea, which has been created with so much effort, and to strain again the military situation on the Korean peninsula,” it said, and continued: “This compels the DPRK to doubt the U.S. will to dialogue and interpret its call for dialogue as a fig leaf to conceal its moves to stifle the DPRK by force of arms.”


So, when they sent Kelly to Pyongyang in early October, the North Koreans were prepared to get in his face and they did. Bolton had made a fundamental mistake by embarrassing Kim Jong Il when he was in the middle of the Japanese reconciliation and the sunshine policy negotiations. To publicly disrespect him, in front of his adversaries whom at that very time he was trying hard to accomodate without losing face, was probably more than a neurotically proud tyrant of a seriously distressed country could take.

And, if Bolton's speech was approved by the State Department, while at the same moment Armitage was in Japan talking about how North Korea would welcome a visit from Kelly, then you can only assume that the strategy was to drive Kim Jong Il over the bend. I'm afraid it's far more likely that, once again, Bolton was off the reservation. Pure speculation on my part, of course, but unless Richard Armitage has become the rogue peacemaker at State, or this plan is so Machiavellian that even the players don't know the final goals, then there are not a lot of other ways you can explain it.

So when all hell breaks loose, what does the administration do? They send Kelly and Bolton to Beijing to try to pressure the Chinese to put the heat on North Korea. This was so very intelligent, considering Bolton's restrained public language about Taiwan and China. What a wise choice it was to send him in at a time of crisis to request Chinese cooperation in a ridiculous fuck-up of our own making. Needless to say, China has been somewhat opaque in its response to our foolish dilemma.

To summarize, John Bolton is a complete disaster. The Bushies seem to be intent upon keeping all of the members of the Reagan and Bush I administration who were involved in Iran Contra close and cozy, for reasons we can only guess. But, once one of these guys single-handedly bring the world to the brink of nuclear war with their big mouths, wouldn't you think they could find them a nice quiet job writing policy papers on US Peruvian trade policy or something? Allowing crazy men to make speeches on behalf of the US Government is really not a good idea.




digby 1/14/2003 02:22:00 AM |

Monday, January 13, 2003

 
The Founders were Marxists! Who knew?

Reading a lively discussion on Atrios' blog about the article linked in the post below, there is a debate about Bobo Brooks saying that "Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads," and it reminded me that the GOP seems unaware of the great mistrust of wealth inequality in this country going a little further back than old Karl (and I'm not talking about Rove.)

In an 1813 letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy."

Now, Jefferson may have been dead for 40 years when Marx published Das Kapital, but apparently he was a Marxist, being a proponent of "class warfare" and all.

And old Teddy Roosevelt actually WAS a Marxist, because in 1906 he said, while arguing for a graduated inheritance tax and a progressive income tax:

"The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."

Talk about class warfare! My God, didn't he realize that he was cruelly punishing the most productive and hard working members of society who were just trying to keep their hard earned money so they could spend it on antiques and fine art and thus produce jobs for dead people?

Bobo tells us that Americans are just not receptive to arguments based upon "envy." (Perhaps, although I certainly don't see that Americans are lacking in that, any more than any other deadly sin. Bobo needs to take a good look around him at one of those DC cocktail parties if he wants to look into the eyes of the green eyed monster up close and personal.)

Kevin Phillips, with his usual insight, tells us in his book "Wealth and Democracy" and in a timely op-ed in yesterdays LA Times, that Bobo and the rest of the fat cat, investor class Republicans who are trying to press this line, are not only corruptly self-dealing in ways that Harding and his crew could only dream of, but they are badly misreading the political history of this nation. The Republicans have had their asses kicked repeatedly on this issue, but they can't help themselves.

[...]

Historically, this is the great Republican Achilles' heel -- favoritism to the rich. The 2003 Bush tax cut proposal is the biggest, baldest example since the 1920s, when Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon decided that if Congress wouldn't let him cut income tax rates enough he'd just start giving money back, to individuals and corporations alike, through Treasury refunds, rebates and remissions. Given this recurrent thread over eight decades of GOP fiscal history, White House and congressional Republicans may be setting up a dangerous issue for the 2004 elections.

[...]

Will the Democrats, who in recent years have baa-baaed around Washington like clueless sheep on an Idaho hillside, somehow turn and swing this issue like a political power saw? They show some movement, but they have displayed too little knowledge of their own history -- Thomas Jefferson's fear of the money power; Franklin D. Roosevelt's bold use of the inheritance tax; Harry S. Truman's lambasting of Wall Street -- to assume that they can call up a memory of the Republican fiscal heritage, however vulnerable.

Yet, the vulnerability is potentially huge. As Bush fiscal policy suns itself in the mentality of Coolidge-Hoover-era Treasury Secretary Mellon, it disdains the better legacies of other GOP presidents. Dwight D. Eisenhower favored taxes on excess wartime profits; Richard Nixon signed legislation imposing a higher top tax rate on unearned, rather than earned, income; Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax reform insisted on equal top rates for earned versus stock-market income, eliminating the preference for capital gains. The first President Bush was the succeeding president who cried incessantly to restore capital-gains favoritism to investors. We should also mention Theodore Roosevelt, who called in peacetime for the progressive tax on large inherited fortunes that George W. Bush works to eliminate in wartime; and Abraham Lincoln, whose wartime taxes covered dividend income.

The Lincoln-Roosevelt-Eisenhower-Nixon-Reagan viewpoint still commands a fair minority of the Republican rank and file, if not among its Bush-era leadership. The only major Republican voice speaking for the old party, however, is that of McCain, who said in December, "We probably need to have tax cuts directed at lower-income Americans, such as payroll-tax reductions. ... [L]ow-income Americans in totality bear a much higher tax burden than wealthy Americans do; therefore, there is a growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans." He scoffed at the notion that Bush's tax policy embodies compassionate conservatism. McCain's father and grandfather were four-star admirals; he learned a different tradition than that of the tax-shelter sale.
digby 1/13/2003 12:54:00 PM |

Sunday, January 12, 2003

 
I live in California. What am I, French?

From David Brooks:

This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth redistribution, the reason that subsumes all others. Americans do not see society as a layer cake, with the rich on top, the middle class beneath them and the working class and underclass at the bottom. They see society as a high school cafeteria, with their community at one table and other communities at other tables. They are pretty sure that their community is the nicest, and filled with the best people, and they have a vague pity for all those poor souls who live in New York City or California and have a lot of money but no true neighbors and no free time

Oh yeah. Bobo Brooks knows all about real haaaartland Muricans.

I dun heard he's a champeen cow tipper who kin toss a chew moren' 50 feet in one spit.

Right in the middle of The Palms at lunch hour.


digby 1/12/2003 07:49:00 PM |

 
Carrie Nation tried this and it didn't work

Talk Left links to an article about MADD that points up one of the dangers of do-gooding --- it seems to have the unfortunate effect of turning genuine concern for the public good into self-righteous puritanism.

MADD is calling for the resignation of British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. Why? Because a few days ago, Campbell, in Hawaii on vacation, was pulled over by police as he was returning from dinner with friends and charged with alcohol impaired driving. Campbell does not intend to contest the charge and issued an apology after his arrest.

Why should MADD call for the resignation of a public official who committed a minor transgression in his personal life, on his own time and in another country? Who made them the arbiter of personal conduct by a public official? Sure, they have a right to call for whatever they want, but in oppposition, we should be making fun of them, not debating them. Arguing won't do any good--they are out of control. We believe their true agenda is prohibition, on moral grounds. They are far outside the field people associate them with--safety on the public highways.

If MADD has become an official adjunct of the morals police, I would say their work is done and they can pack up their briefcases and pick up a Bible. Moral suasion is one thing. Moral coercion with the strong arm of the state behind you is quite another. On this, and most issues of civil liberties, privacy and personal behavior, count me with the libertarians.

Strangely enough it turns out that, for many people, drinking in moderation is actually good for you. Ayez un autre verre de vin rouge et vivez !


digby 1/12/2003 07:10:00 PM |

 
A Moral Void

I was going to expand on my post about the internecine struggle within the administration for Junior's empty soul by looking at the contrast between George Ryan's principled decision to commute the sentences of every person on death row due to the incurable flaws of the justice system in Illinois, and the cavalier faith-based assumption of judicial perfection of the President of the United States.

Jeanne D'Arc already nailed it.

And the moral struggle implicit in this passage -- I spent a good deal of time reviewing these death row cases. My staff, many of whom are lawyers, spent busy days and many sleepless nights answering my questions. -- brought to mind George Bush's contrasting refusal to engage in thought, let alone an honest moral reckoning, when he responded to an AP reporter who asked about the possibility of innocent people being executed in Texas: "If you’re asking me whether or not as to the innocence or guilt or if people have had adequate access to the courts in Texas, I believe they have." A report had indicated that the death penalty in Texas was a knot of racial bias and incompetent defense, but Bush didn't even think it was worth looking into the issue. The refusal to bother asking yourself ethical questions must be the worst form of laziness. As Governor Ryan put it, "Many people express the desire to have capital punishment. Few, however, seem prepared to address the tough questions that arise when the system fails. It is easier and more comfortable for politicians to be tough on crime and support the death penalty. It wins votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a problem, most run for cover." Cowardice, as well as moral sloth.

As I listened to the Sabbath Gasbag Shows this morning, I found my stomach churning in visceral reaction to the cold-hearted, unmerciful attitudes of the majority of conservatives on this
issue. So many were completely unmoved that the judicial system in Illinois was so corrupt and incompetent that 17 death row inmates have been exonerated. Conservatives, in fact, seemed to take the position that the larger miscarriage of justice is that Ryan commuted the death sentences of over a hundred inmates to the "soft on crime" sentence of life without parole --- even though the system that put them there has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be so unreliable that 17 innocent people lived with a sword hanging over their heads for years --- a fact that only the hard work of volunteers and students brought to light. This commutation "sends the wrong message," and is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" despite the fact that the message that was already being sent is that the State of Illinois doesn't care if it executes innocent people, so the baby in the bathwater had already drowned.

They seemed to have absolutely no empathy for the human beings, people who could be them or members of their family in a different life, who were caught in a horrible Kafkaesque nightmare in which despite their innocence the State brought it's full power and authority to bear to kill them, refused to admit it when caught red handed and continued to defend its actions in the face of absolute proof of its corruption or error. Not only do they betray a singular lack of simple human compassion and heart, they betray the principles they fought for for over 50 years when they railed against the totalitarian Communist state and it's rejection of individual rights.

Can we get down to brass tacks on this? When the judicial system is as arbitrary, corrupt and prone to error as the Illinois judicial system (along with most jurisdictions in America) it is immoral to entrust it with the ultimate punishment of death. And if one defends such systems in the name of the authority of the State, and believes that it is destructive to the State to question its infallibility, then one is a Totalitarian.

Many conservatives are flirting openly with Totalitarianism these days and their lack of empathy and moral judgment, even in the face of a gross miscarriage of justice, is indicative of a frightening will to power. All those years of studying Stalinism in order to defeat it seems to have evolved into a sort of Stockholm Syndrome in which the student has come to identify with the subject.

I think it is time for conservatives to take a hiatus from their Sabbath Gasbag assignments and check in with their priests. Because if they are unmoved when the State is willing to execute innocent people in their name, then their problems run much deeper than the moral relativism they love to pin on the left. They are operating in a moral void.



digby 1/12/2003 12:47:00 PM |

 
We know you weren't getting ready for church...
(...so just what were you doing up this early on Sunday morning, young man?)

While we all know that Matt Iglesias is the philosopher king (and antichrist) of the left blogtopia, I think we sometimes overlook the fact that he is also really funny:

So has anyone ever noticed that at 5:30 AM EST on Sunday mornings Fox News has a show on hosted by a guy who looks virtually identical to Sean Hannity? Of course not — who would be watching Fox News at 5:30 AM EST on Sunday? Only crazy people. Still, it's true, and it's freaking me out.



digby 1/12/2003 11:27:00 AM |

Saturday, January 11, 2003

 
"I do believe invading Iraq has become theological to certain people"

The buck stops...uh..somewhere. We're not sure. It just happened. Somehow. Glenn Kessler continues with his inside look at the decision making process in the White House:

[...]

The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.

Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.

With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.


[...]


digby 1/11/2003 10:00:00 PM |

 
Zizka says fight Gingrichian propaganda with Gingrichian propaganda:

How to Write Effectively About Our Bold President

Bob Somerby has collected evidence that "bold" is the RNC buzzword-de-jour. In case you want to avoid monotony and put a little variety into your crank-outs, here are some useful synonyms:shameless, blatant, bald-faced, brazen, brassy, impudent, nervy, audacious, and cheeky. In the proper context the phrases "unimitigated gall" and "brazen effrontery" can also be used to good effect.

To those I would add presumptuous, imperious, overweening and authoritarian.




digby 1/11/2003 07:58:00 PM |

 
Sontag? Chomsky? Streisand?

Via Orcinus:

[...]

When a U.S. plane or cruise missile is used to bring destruction to a foreign people, this nation rewards the bombers with applause and praise. What a convenient way to absolve these killers of any responsibility for the destruction they leave in their wake.

Unfortunately, the morality of killing is not so superficial. The truth is, the use of a truck, a plane, or a missile for the delivery of a weapon of mass destruction does not alter the nature of the act itself.

These are weapons of mass destruction -- and the method of delivery matters little to those on the receiving end of such weapons.

Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign tartgets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivilent to the bombing in Oklahoma City. The only difference is that this nation is not going to see any foreign casualties appear on the cover of Newsweek magazine.

It seems ironic and hypocritical that an act viciously condemned in Oklahoma City is now a "justified" response to a problem in a foreign land. Then again, the history of United States policy over the last century, when examined fully, tends to exemplify hypocrisy

When considering the use of weapons of mass destruction against Iraq as a means to an end, it would be wise to reflect on the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. His words are as true in the context of Olmstead as they are when they stand alone:
"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."

Sincerely,


Timothy J. McVeigh


digby 1/11/2003 07:38:00 PM |

 
You were expecting John Galt?

During Campaign 2000 we heard endless paeons to the vaunted CEO style of Governor Dubya. He wouldn't "micro-manage" the way the feckless Clinton did. He would delegate to his trusted lieutenants and then leave them alone to do their jobs. There would be no all night brainstorming, no bull sessions, no long policy meetings to hash out differences and (Gawd forbid) no blue jeans. This would be an administration run like a successful business --- visionary, focused and organized.

The Grown-ups were back in charge.

Having some experience in organizations, I was always struck by the Randian romanticism implicit in this view. I long ago realized that John Galt is seven parts Rhett Butler and 3 parts Ludwig von Mises and is, therefore, a tad unrealistic as a measure of human behavior. But even if one held fast to that gushing ideal, it was clear the George W. Bush was exceedingly short of leadership qualities, Galtian or otherwise.

So, the value of having these strong "division" chiefs to whom the president would delegate and "hold accountable" was set forth to answer the criticism that George W. Bush was too inexperienced and intellectually shallow to run the most powerful country in the world. We were to be simultaneously impressed with his humility in choosing far more qualified people than himself to advise him and comforted that these uber-advisors would give him the best guidance the country could provide. These broad-shouldered, square-jawed corporate superheroes would work in their separate spheres with singleminded ambition, motivated by their shared vision of a strong, wealthy compassionate nation, where empowered individuals would singlehandedly replace an ossified bureaucracy through sheer talent and hard work.

Needless to say, this is childish nonsense, whether as a fantasy of corporate ethos and practice or a reading of human nature in general. It is clear that the single most basic function of the U.S. President is choosing amongst the competing power centers of various advisors, competitors, ideologues and special interests whose egos, agendas, commitments and beliefs often conflict. It helps if the president is expansively intelligent, engaged in the issues, astute about people and therefore able to find his own vision and goals through the filter of the advice and pressure he receives from all quarters. But, even if the president is not a policy wonk or a politician with superior insight into power and human nature, he would at least need to have the superior executive instincts that surely would have manifested themselves long before a run for the Presidency --- through long experience in business, the military or some other large organization.

Because, in the final analysis, the President is the one who has to decide when his square-jawed, broad-shouldered superheroes disagree. The proverbial buck actually does stop there.

Throughout the campaign, as George W. Bush assured us that George W. Bush was "a leader because he could lead," (while others were quietly winking about the "grown-ups" keeping the frat boy out of trouble) I kept wondering," What will George W. Bush do when his grown-ups disagree?" How does a man like this make such a decision? How will someone with so little experience with responsibility --- someone who doesn't have even have an interest in understanding the complexities of making life and death decisions --- how does someone like this weigh competing interests, particularly since he doesn't appear to have developed even a Reaganesque set of basic principles to which he can always refer for simple guidance?

That these questions were asked, much less so difficult to answer, proved unequivocally to me that this man was unqualified to be President. Nonetheless, he sits in the Oval Office and the answers to those questions are beginning to emerge.

He makes decisions based upon the most primitive, unrefined aspects of human nature, most often deciding instinctively in favor of the most combative, aggressive course of action until reality and necessity intrudes and he reverses course and follows the advice of his more sophisticated and rational advisors. It is not just that he takes a simple instinctive gut check after listening to competing views, it's that his gut seems to always favor a show down over a negotiation even when it is obviously counter productive and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, his instincts are that of an insecure rich boy surrounded by "friends" who manipulate him with sycophantic ego strokes to his manliness --- a troubled child whose father is constantly having to bail him out of trouble.

Of course, looking back we can see that when he snickered and callously mocked Karla Faye Tucker's plea for clemency that we were dealing with an extremely immature and emotionally stunted individual. It was a spontaneous illustration of the man's juvenile cruel streak and his instinctive rejection of compassion and complexity. It told us everything we needed to know. We were constantly asked to judge him on his great "heart" if not his intellect, to evaluate him on the basis of his "dignity" and "honor" and that is exactly what this country ought to have done.

Now, we must hope and pray (if we do that) that Colin Powell, the only responsible grown-up in the entire administration, continues to be able to extricate our President from his court of radical ideologues and his own dwarfed instincts in foreign affairs. On domestic policy, we must support the "grown-up" GOP moderates in the Senate (and keep the pressure on the Democrats) to mitigate the worst of the "bold" ideological Bush agenda.

Because, as shocking as it may be, if this cruel boy-man makes a decision it is almost always the worst possible one.

North Korea's decision to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was greeted yesterday as a regrettable but expected development by a Bush administration deeply split over how to respond to the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

Some senior officials are counseling careful engagement, and others are urging complete isolation that would lead to the crumbling of the North Korean regime. The "very dramatic tensions" within the government have led to near paralysis in policymaking, one official said.

oh boy. Keep Junior away from Ken Adelman and the rest of the Korea Krips.



digby 1/11/2003 01:14:00 PM |

Friday, January 10, 2003

 
Via Talk Left

I'd like to propose a toast to Governor George Ryan of Illinois...

Let justice be done though the heavens fall.





digby 1/10/2003 11:28:00 PM |

 
The Big Lie

"The White House is saying this is the second 100 days the president will have because of the strength of the 2002 election," said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist who is close to Bush aides. "It is as if the president has been reelected."

haha. You wish.


UPDATE:

Mickey Kaus is quite the catty bitch here.

They're after him: Prof. Eugene Volokh (not me!) on whether Paul Krugman's latest distillation of complaints against the Bush administration's creation of a cult of personality, its obsessive secretiveness, its propensity for mass arrests, and its evident fondness for Big-Brotherish schemes of public surveillance is a sign of formerly "reasoned criticism" turning into "blind hatred." Volokh particularly derides the "cult of personality" charge ("Oh, yes, outside my office window I see the sign on the street corner -- 'Long live Bush, hero of all times and nations!'").

Ask V.I. Norquist about his plans for a George W. Bush legacy project, Mickey. Haven't you heard? Ronnie Raygun may have single handedly smote the Commies, but Junior is ridding the world of evil for all time. And then he will rise bodily into heaven.

Oops they did it again

But Bush doesn't like caution. Besides which, he got a look at Pickering's soul this past year and seems to have liked what he saw. Given his success at soul-reading Putin, Bush has reason to think he's pretty good at it.

Dubya Dazzles the Opposition John Podhoretz

What is this cult of personality you speak of, comrade?











digby 1/10/2003 10:29:00 PM |

 
Heavy

From alicublog at alicubi.

Sometimes you have to wonder if the people you read on the web intersect with reality at any point. So often they discuss matters of life and death as if they were After-School Special scripts.

A case in point is the popular Instapundit, who makes this bizarre observation on the current Korean crisis:

"LAST NIGHT there was a Cosby show rerun on Nickelodeon. Theo defies his parents, and they leave him with nowhere to live in order to teach him that actions have consequences, and forgiveness isn't to be taken for granted...I wonder if there's a parallel to be drawn here?...long-term, there's a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That's a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too. We live in a world where most of our allies are Theo Huxtables..."

Maybe this guy should be writing for Bush. "Good and Evil" has been getting a little old as an metaphor, but "Cliff and Theo Huxtable" might have some juice in it. Plus, they're black! Take that, Trent Lott!

The funny thing is that the serious part of Insty's post is just as strangely otherwordly as the "Cliff and Theo" thing:

I haven't written much on Korea, because I don't know enough about what's going on to have a very strong opinion about what ought to be done. On the one hand, North Korea is probably the worst place on the planet now. I suspect that the reason why some South Korean politicians want to prop it up is that when it comes out just how bad things have been there, which looks to be Pol-Pot-bad -- and that they've known a lot more than they've let on while cozying up to and propping up the North -- they'll be seen as collaborators in horror. (And some, quite possibly, may turn out to be real collaborators, on the take from the North, and might be worried that that will come out).

On the other hand, North Korea is mostly inward-looking, and I don't think it's a big, direct threat. And, long-term, there's a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That's a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too.

Wow. If he isn't indulging in some very opaque irony, that is a testament to the wisdom of holding back an opinion when you are ill informed on the subject. Tell the North Koreans to go fuck themselves. They're not a big, direct threat (like Iraq, I suppose). And tell those collaborationist South Korean bastards to shove it too, for that matter. Nothing bad'll happen. Not a problem.

Cuz they'll come crawling back, jes' beggin for American love and forgiveness, you wait and see. Ram that lesson home again and again ---- just like we keep doing to the Germans????

The sad thing is that I heard Ken Adelman make a very similar argument on NPR yesterday. And, unfortunately, he is on the Defense Policy Board and has the infuence to put the "Cliff and Theo Doctrine" into practice.

I think we are delving into psychological issues here rather than ideological ones. This puerile compulsion to demonstrate who's boss is certifiably cuckoo.

Not bold. Reckless.








digby 1/10/2003 09:51:00 PM |

 
North Korea in a Vice


Here is an excellent analysis of the geopolitical strategies of the 4 big players in the Korean crisis (North and South Korea, Japan and the US.) It's more complicated than I realized --- by centuries of cultural animosity, economic frustrations and military ambitions, and a spectacularly ill-timed bellicose American foreign policy. From the New Left Review

[...]

Yet the thickening mesh of relationships between the two Koreas—a few of the many separated families had also been united—was taking place within an increasingly fraught international context: a deteriorating world economy, heightened competition between China and Japan, and an incoming American administration already seeking a more direct assertion of Washington’s primacy in the region. With the sharpening of US policy after 9.11 North Korea was declared one of the three members of the Axis of Evil in Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address; and, with Iraq, was one of the two named ‘rogue states’ in the September 2002 National Security Strategy document. Meanwhile in Seoul, Kim Dae Jung’s five-year presidency staggs to its end in the December 2002 elections through a mire of corruption. Of the candidates looking set to replace him, the conservative Lee Hoi Chang of the Grand National Party, in particular, espouses a much harder rhetoric on North Korea.

Within this hostile forcefield, the Pyongyang leadership seems to have concluded that normalizing its relations with Tokyo and Washington—its former occupier, on the one hand, and the devastator of its civilian infrastructure, on the other—was now an essential goal. In October 2001, tentative feelers were sent out to Japan, seeking negotiations. Quiet diplomatic exchanges, involving at least thirty meetings between North Korean and Japanese diplomats over the following year, explored the outstanding issues: for Pyongyang, apologies and reparation for the atrocities committed during Japan’s four-decade occupation of the peninsula, from 1905 to 1945; for Tokyo, the encroachment of North Korean spy ships into Japanese waters, and the suspicions that a dozen or so of its nationals had been abducted by the DPRK. Broad principles were agreed over the summer of 2002 and the stage set for Koizumi’s 17 September visit to Pyongyang.



digby 1/10/2003 08:29:00 PM |

 
Are they so hard up for cops in Tennessee that they are handing out shotguns and badges to trigger happy paranoid morons?

The Smoak family was pulled over the evening of January 1 on Interstate 40 in eastern Tennessee by officers who mistakenly suspected them of a carjacking. An investigation showed James Smoak had simply left his wallet on the roof of his car at a gas station, and motorists who saw his money fly off the car as he drove away called police.

The family was driving through eastern Tennessee on their way home from a New Year trip to Nashville. They told CNN they are in the process of retaining a lawyer and considering legal action against the Cookeville, Tennessee, Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol for what happened to them and their dog


"What did I do?" James Smoak asks the officers.

"Sir, inside information is that you was involved in some type of robbery in Davidson County," the unidentified officer says.

Smoak and his wife protest incredulously, telling the officers that they are from South Carolina and that their mother and father-in-law are traveling in another car near them.

The Smoaks told CNN that as they knelt, handcuffed, they pleaded with officers to close the doors of their car so their two dogs would not escape, but the officers did not heed them.

Pamela Smoak is seen on the tape looking up at an officer, telling him slowly, "That dog is not mean. He won't hurt you."

Her husband says, "I got a dog in the car. I don't want him to jump out."

The tape then shows the Smoaks' medium-size brown dog romping on the shoulder of the Interstate, its tail wagging. As the family yells, the dog, named Patton, first heads away from the road, then quickly circles back toward the family.

An officer in a blue uniform aims his shotgun at the dog and fires at its head, killing it immediately.

For several moments, all that is audible are shrieks as the family reacts to the shooting. James Smoak even stands up, but officers pull him back down.

"Y'all shot my dog! Y'all shot my dog!" James Smoak cries. "Oh my God! God Almighty!"

"You shot my dog!" screams his wife, distraught and still handcuffed. "Why'd you kill our dog?"

"Jesus, tell me, why did y'all shoot my dog?" James Smoak says.

The officers bring him to the patrol car, and the family calms down, but still they ask the officers for an explanation. One of them says Patton was "going after" the officer.

"No he wasn't, man," James Smoak says. "Y'all didn't have to kill the dog like that."

Brandon told CNN that Patton, was playful and gentle -- "like Scooby-Doo" -- and may have simply gone after the beam of the flashlight as he often did at home, when Brandon and the dog would play.

The Tennessee Department of Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, has said an investigation is underway.

Cookeville Police Chief Robert Terry released a statement on the department's Web site Wednesday night describing the department's regret over the incident. The Cookeville Police Department site was not responding Thursday morning.

Cookeville Police Chief Robert Terry released a statement on the department's Web site Wednesday night describing the department's regret over the incident. The Cookeville Police Department site was not responding Thursday morning.

"I know the officer wishes that circumstances could have been different so he could have prevented shooting the dog," Terry wrote. "It is never gratifying to have to put an animal down, especially a family pet, and the officer assures me that he never displayed any satisfaction in doing so."

Terry said he and the vice-mayor of Cookeville met with the family before they left "to convey our deepest sympathies" for the loss of their dog.

"No one wants to experience this kind of thing, and it's very unfortunate that it occurred," he wrote. "If we had the benefit of hindsight, I'm sure some -- if not all of this -- could have been avoided. I believe the Tennessee Highway Patrol feels the same way."

Sure, some trained police officers would have immediately become skeptical of the carjacking claim when they realized that all the people in the car were together and nobody was being held against their will --- because that would have meant that A MIDDLE AGED MAN, A MIDDLE AGED WOMAN, A TEEN-AGER AND 2 DOGS CARJACKED A LITTLE SUV FOR A PLEASURE RIDE around Tennessee.But that would have required them to have IQ's above 26 and that presents a serious recruiting problem in certain parts of our country, evidently.

I sure hope nobody gets it in his head that this cop shouldn't be carrying a lethal weapon because he's so damned stupid, badly trained and trigger happy that he's a danger to society. That would undermine our freedom.




digby 1/10/2003 12:57:00 PM |

 
Cojones the size of basketballs

Here come their drastic cuts in domestic spending to pay for their drastic tax cuts for cronies.LA Times

With budgets for most federal agencies still in limbo, congressional Republicans are drafting a spending bill for the 3-month-old fiscal year that would slash billions of dollars for domestic programs the Senate approved when it was under Democratic control last year.

The bill will hew to the tight constraint of $385 billion that President Bush set for domestic spending after the Republicans gained full control of Congress in the midterm elections. As a result, lawmakers from both parties face battles over how to divvy up scarce dollars among their favorite programs.

Among the potential trade-offs: Should the National Institutes of Health get a big boost at the expense of education programs? Should the U.S. Customs Service sacrifice to make room for reforms in election procedures? And should the government scale back parks and public land programs to bolster homeland security?

Thankfully, however, they will not be skimping on the salaries of the new accounting oversight board members. NY Times

Six months after it was created by Congress, the new board overseeing the accounting profession — the centerpiece of reform legislation after a year of corporate scandal — held its first formal meeting today without a permanent chairman, a senior staff or a final budget.

During the meeting, the new board members voted themselves annual salaries of $452,000, or $52,000 more than the pay of the president. (Once it has a chairman, the board said, it plans to pay that official $560,000.) They also ratified a lease to put their Washington headquarters in the K Street space that was vacated by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen after it collapsed last year.

Now, the SEC will probably have to wait for a while before it gets all the money it needs to more thoroughly oversee the US financial markets because, gosh darn it, we just don't have the money.

President Bush signed with great fanfare the legislation calling for the $776 million budget last July. Less than three months later, his administration said it supported an appropriation of $568 million for the agency. After the administration was criticized for supporting the scaled-back budget, officials said they would be willing to seek more but never said how much.

In announcing his selection of Mr. Donaldson to succeed Mr. Pitt, President Bush vowed last month to seek a substantial increase in the S.E.C.'s budget for the 2004 fiscal year. Critics say that proposal, while helpful, would defer necessary increases in the agency's staff and improvements in its outdated technology for more than a year after the passage of the law that both identified the shortfall in the agency's resources and increased its mission.

But, not to worry. Tough new rules are being pushed through as quickly as humanly possible so that investors can once again have faith in the accounting of American businesses. And, thankfully, there is someone in charge who we know we can trust.

The board was formally introduced today by Harvey L. Pitt, who remains the chairman of the S.E.C. despite resigning two months ago because of criticism over the selection of the new oversight agency. He continues to serve during one of the commission's busiest rule-making periods in history and plans to remain until the confirmation of William H. Donaldson, who has been selected to succeed him. That process could take months

Harvey Pitt is still on the job, overseeing the biggest retrenchment of the SEC since its inception.

Even though he was forced to resign because of his bad judgment with the Webster appointment.

WTF?

They get away with this crap because they have no fear of repercussions and no consciences. Their grand ambition, with it's tentacles relentlessly slithering through all areas of government, is so overwhelming that you feel a creeping sense of paralysis when you consider their awesome singlemindedness. Casual hypocrisy, blatent corruption and outright mendacity are so pervasive in this administration that it's exhausting trying to keep track of it all.

It's a very effective strategy because after a while you can't help but begin to think that Resistence Is Futile.






digby 1/10/2003 11:06:00 AM |

Thursday, January 09, 2003

 
Why Me?

Work is interefering with my blogging. The humanity.

But, Aaaaahl Be Back.

And many thanks to that crazy Finn, Vaara, for relieving me of that unsightly banner ad. For those who miss his most entertaining blog, "Silt." here's a little tidbit I gleaned from Atrios' comment section today. He's so got lil' Andy's number.

Memo to Sully: You gaze with filial devotion upon the various distinguished raiment chosen by our President to enhance our appreciation of his lean, powerful frame and his unswerving dedication to the timeless principles on which our great nation was founded. I'm sure you know what I mean: that athletic-cut suit with jaunty flag lapel pin, that respectable red tie, those snow-white BVDs, those shiny wingtips, and that stern air of rugged, manly sternness and unswervingness.

But guess what?

He's actually naked.

vaara

heh



digby 1/09/2003 10:15:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

 
He Loved that Sidney Poitier, too...by George Schultz

The Republican Party's commitment to equality of opportunity has come under question in recent weeks, particularly its determination to deal effectively with racial segregation. That's lamentable, for there is a laudable story to tell about the modern Republican Party and the efforts of a Republican president to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans.

[...]

I remember the meeting in the Oval Office to discuss these proposed events. Vice President Agnew warned the president not to go. There you will be in that room, Mr. President, I recall him saying. Half the people there will be black; half will be white. Pictures will be taken. When the schools open, there will be blood running through the streets of the South, and if you go, this will be blood on your hands. This is not your issue. This is the issue of the liberals who have pushed for desegregation. Stay away.

The president looked at me. I told him what was obvious: I can't predict what will happen. The vice president may very well be right about violence, but you're the president of the whole country. We should do everything we can to see that the schools open and operate peacefully and well.

The president decided to go ahead.

The meeting with the Louisiana group began early on Aug. 14, 1970. The going was tougher than with any other delegation. It's one thing to gather across from the Oval Office and it's another thing to sit around a table in a hotel meeting room. The president was due to arrive about noon, but as the time drew near, I had not reached the level of agreement that I wanted. "The president has just landed," came word from the Secret Service. "The president is 10 minutes out." We took a break. I went to meet the president, the vice president's views in the back of my mind. "Mr. President," I told him, "I haven't got this group there yet. I'm afraid you're going to have to finish the job."

The president came in. He listened. He talked. He emphasized the importance of having the schools open peacefully. If there were problems, children would suffer.

That afternoon we met with the co-chairmen from the seven states. Everyone was on board. At the end of the meeting, the president went before the television cameras. From the heart of the South, he spoke forcefully about his determination to enforce the law, and the importance of community involvement.

It is quite true that while Nixon enthusiastically embraced the Southern Strategy, he also personally oversaw a smooth transition to desegregated schools in several states in the south in 1970. But before we get all misty about his generous committment to civil rights, it's probably a good idea to listen in on a couple of Dick's taped conversations just sitting around the Oval shooting the breeze with Ehrlichman and Haldeman (and Rummy) around the same time:

We're going to (place) more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family . . . let people like Pat Moynihan and Leonard Garment and others believe in all that crap. But I don't believe in it. Total emphasis of everybody must be that this is much better than we had last year. . . . work, work, throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key."

(Uh, Mickey.....?)

"It hurts with the blacks. And it doesn't help with the rednecks because the rednecks don't think any Negroes are any good."

"Yes," Rumsfeld replied.

As for the notion that "black Americans aren't as good as black Africans," Nixon said, "most of them are basically just out of the trees. ... Now, my point is, if we say that, they (opponents) say, 'Well, by God.' Well, ah, even the Southerners say, 'Well, our niggers is (unintelligible).'Hell, that's the way they talk!'" the president said on the tape.

"That's right," Rumsfeld said.

Nixon moved easily from Blacks to Mexicans in his conversations, because they just go together like a chitlins and tamales, I guess.

"I have the greatest affection for them (blacks) but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years," says Nixon. "They aren't. You know it too. I asked Julie about the black studies program at Smith (College, which she attended)."

"The Mexicans are a different cup of tea," says Nixon. "They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest. They do have some concept of family life, they don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."

As so often happens in these conversations, the topic then smoothly moves on to gays, which really seems to work these guys up. This conversation took place over 30 years ago, but I imagine you can hear much of the same stuff today at pot luck suppers in the Southern Heritage Community :

You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that so was Socrates."

"But he never had the influence television had," Ehrlichman says, apparently referring to Socrates.

"You know what happened to the Romans?" says Professor Nixon. "The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They (had sex with) the nuns, that's been goin' on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell, three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France."

"Let's look at the strong societies," says Nixon. "The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, (Atty. Gen. John) Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this."

"It's fatal liberality," declares Ehrlichman, ever the sycophant.

"Huh?" says Nixon.

"It's fatal liberality," says Ehrlichman. "And with its use on television, it has such leverage."


You know, I'm just stymied as to why the Republican Party's commitment to equality of opportunity keeps coming under question. It just makes no sense. Trent Lott has a black maid. John Ashcroft loves spirituals. James Inhofe has a strong committment to Luxembourg's cultural heritage. Jeff Sessions was deeply offended by the KKK's embrace of reefer madness. (There was Strom, of course. And Jesse. They're gone now, just like Tricky, who bore the white man's burden with such class.)

But, before we start building memorials to their contributions to the civil rights movement, it would probably pay to remember that they never did one thing for one Black person that they were not absolutely forced to do, either by the courts or public opinion. Dick Nixon did desegregate southern schools during his term, but his conversations make it pretty clear that it wasn't because of his adherance to these so-called bedrock Republican values of equal opportunity and color blindness, now was it?





digby 1/08/2003 01:23:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

 
Brought to you by the Crossburning Committee for the Annual Ashley Wilkes Sweet Magnolia and Antebellum Lynching Festival.

Morris Dees Fact Sheet

Apparently he's a racist, homosexual, womanizing, communist, multi-millionaire. Obviously, a very complex man.

I could forgive him all that. I could even deal with the beating up of old ladies, the sleeping with his daughter in law and the stealing from destitute African-American clients. But, when I read that "Dees and the SPLC defames the entire Southern Heritage Community by labeling them Neo-Confederates," well I just saw red.

The man is obviously deranged.




digby 1/07/2003 11:05:00 PM |

 
Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
(or, dressed up like a douche another boner in the night. whatever.)

I don't know when it disappeared. It could have been a day ago or a few minutes ago. It seems odd that I wouldn't notice...

But, the incredibly cool person who bought out my ad needs to write to me so I that can properly thank him or her for doing such a nice thing.

digby 1/07/2003 10:27:00 PM |

 
From his mouth to Bozo's ear

TBOGG reports that Saxby Chambliss is being looked to as an expert on terrorism by pResident Dubya.

I value his advice on terrorism," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Chambliss at a March campaign rally in Atlanta. "He's sound when it comes to counterterrorism. He's been in the Oval Office to give me sound, solid advice. And I've listened to it every time he's come in there."

Now it all becomes clear.

As Atrios reported last November, the Saxter's advice on counterterrorism is: "Just turn (the sheriff) loose and let him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line."

Yep. Bush is listening, all right.






digby 1/07/2003 09:31:00 AM |

 
As I told you yesterday and the day before, Helen. This President rejects the notion that he is a moron.

Dubya's Genius Moment,
Blink and you may miss it by Tim Noah reminds me why I used to love Slate.

George W. Bush and his political Svengali, Karl Rove, are sharing a genius moment. Everyone in politics gets one, and this is theirs. It began right after Trent Lott stepped down as majority leader, with a Dec. 22 piece by Adam Nagourney in the New York Times headlined, "Shift of Power to White House Reshapes Political Landscape." Nagourney quoted former Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss saying that Bush "and several talented people around him have made the White House a power center in ways that I haven't seen in a long, long time—all the way back to Lyndon Johnson."

[...]

Years from now, when we look back and puzzle over Dubya's genius moment, a key historical document will be "The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Commonsense Lessons From the Commander in Chief," by business consultants Carolyn B. Thompson and James W. Ware. The just-published book's strategy is to redefine Bush's vices as virtues that the corporate world ought to emulate. "Much has been said about Bush's deficiencies in foreign policy, lack of attention to detail, and big-picture orientation," Thompson and Ware write. But "part of the leadership genius of George W. Bush is just that, knowing that no one can know everything." Bush's ignorance renders him unself-conscious about hiring "people who are smarter than he is." From this, Thompson and Ware derive the lesson, "Check your ego at the door, and then get on with the recruiting!" Once Bush hired these smart people, did he boss them around? Did he show off by asking them complicated questions? Hell, no! That's because Bush "also has the common sense and discipline to leave them alone to do their jobs."

On some occasions, of course, Bush must make an actual decision himself. On such occasions, does he study up so he can understand the arguments on all sides? Hell, no! Naturally, this invites some criticism:

Many of Bush's critics claim that he is not well-read. They say he does not spend enough time reading policy statements and studying long briefs. … [But] Bush's honesty about intelligence and learning is downright refreshing. Rather than faking understanding, he will unashamedly admit that he isn't following. At one large conference, Bush turned to New Mexico Governor George Johnson and said, "What are they talking about?"

"I don't know," Johnson replied.

"You don't know a thing, do you?" Bush shot back.

"Not one thing," said Johnson.

"Neither do I," said Bush, and the two high-fived each other."

Here, Thompson and Ware employ the very technique they praise by not bothering to check the name of New Mexico's former governor, which is Gary, not George. One obstacle they may face in marketing their book is that remaining ignorant about what's done in your name (or at least pretending to) is a strategy already in place in most of the nation's boardrooms, as the recent corporate accounting scandals amply demonstrated. What's new in "The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush" is the insight that feigned shallowness is a poor substitute for the real thing.

heh heh heh.








digby 1/07/2003 08:35:00 AM |

 
Sleeping with pigs is a no-no, but a BLT once in a while never hurt anybody, right?

It looks like Shiny-and-New Shapiro may have been playing hooky from Hebrew school some afternoons. Find out why at physics professor Jacques Distler's
Musings, a blog that features everything from a Gilbert and Sullivan version of Xena: Warrior Princess to posts that say things like this: "Remember that a single harmonic oscillator has an infinite-dimensional Hilbert Space, and a single free scalar field corresponds to an infinite number of harmonic oscillators, and you see just how weird that statement is."

It's got it all.


digby 1/07/2003 07:57:00 AM |

 
Survivor Blogtopia?

Check your local listings and set your TiVos for "Media Matters" on PBS to see the great Oliver Willis, Anil Dash, Megan McArdle and Instapundit featured in "A Trip to the Blogosphere." (Should air sometime around January 16th.)


digby 1/07/2003 07:27:00 AM |

 
"Now if this had happened someplace else, we couldn't have helped...Just do as I say ... All that's left is our friendship."

Brad DeLong says there's no good reason for Glenn Hubbard to drink this kool-aid.

Remember the scene in the Godfather part II where they set up the Nevada Senator with the dead hooker? It's getting to the point where I'm quite seriously beginning to believe that this is what's going on in the Bush administration.


digby 1/07/2003 07:19:00 AM |

Monday, January 06, 2003

 
Yes, they are deluded

Ron Brownstein has a very interesting piece in today's LA Times about the shape of the electorate for 2004.

First, I cannot emphasize enough that this triumphalism about George W. Patton's win in '02 is just another example of Rove's "inevitablity" strategy and in my view it is much less effective than he has persuaded his minions and the mediawhores to believe.

The fact is that the electorate remains polarized between the two parties. 9/11 changed that temporarily, but it has crept back incrementally and resulted in a 2002 midterm squeaker for the party that would have been expected to win after the 2000 election result. This is because historically the party out of the white house gains seats in the midterm due to some weak candidates being turned out after having come in on the winners coattails. See: Jean Carnahan. Bush's small gains in '02 had nothing to do with his huge swinging manhood or the country's overwhelming support of his policies, (even Ike lost seats in his first midterm and he was mighty popular) but because like most elections, the party that won the white house in the previous election lost seats in the next one.

Granted, that is only relevant to the extent that Bush is being given credit for something that is easily explained by forces that had nothing to do with him and it creates the impression that he is stronger than he really is. Brownstein's piece shows the actual depth of the electoral divide and discusses the small range of voters who are up for grabs to claim a victory, assuming that the Republican base stays true to Bush.

This is where the votes are:

Data from Los Angeles Times Polls over the last several years offer a revealing look at where Bush has made the most progress -- and where Democrats might still find opportunities. The best insight comes from an analysis in which pollsters group voters by their partisan leanings and by ideology. That divides the electorate into six groups: liberal Democrats, moderate to conservative Democrats, liberal to moderate independents, conservative independents, liberal to moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans.

The liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans are the base of each party: Just 4% of each group voted for the other side's presidential nominee in 2000, according to The Times' exit poll. Not many more will be up for grabs in 2004.

The real battle is in the middle. Relative to Bob Dole, the GOP's 1996 nominee, Bush in the 2000 election advanced across the entire center of the electorate. Bush improved on Dole's vote by 7 percentage points with moderate Democrats and by double digits with the three other swing groups: moderate independents, conservative independents and moderate Republicans. Yet that still wasn't enough to win the popular vote

Bush has gained more ground since: In the latest Times Poll, 52% of adults say they're inclined to support him for reelection. But his advances have been uneven.

Compared with his vote tally in 2000, Bush didn't do any better on that reelection question among conservative Republicans -- largely because he already attracted 95% of them last time. With almost all the other groups, Bush managed small gains, from 2 to 5 percentage points -- within the poll's margin of error. Though lessened, the basic polarization from 2002 is still visible: Bush draws little support from Democrats but overwhelming backing from all voters to the right of center.

Intriguingly, just one group is moving in the opposite direction: moderate to liberal independents. Just 28% of them said in the poll that they're inclined to support Bush in 2004, down from his 38% vote in 2000. Just over half of the center-left independents say they're now inclined not to vote for Bush.

Those attitudes are opening a huge chasm with the conservative independents, four-fifths of whom say they'll now support Bush. What explains this divergence? The center-left independents are much more likely than the conservatives to favor legalized abortion. And the centrists are less hawkish: In the Times Poll, the centrists were much less likely than the conservative independents to favor invading Iraq without allied support or if U.N. inspectors find no evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been developing weapons of mass destruction.

But the economy is the biggest divide between the two groups. Three-fourths of the conservative independents say they approve of Bush's economic performance; just one-third of the center-left independents agree. And while half of the conservative independents say further tax cuts are the best way to revive growth, two-thirds of the centrist independents prefer spending on infrastructure and schools -- a view that brings them much closer to Democrats.

The public judgment that Bush has effectively handled the war against terrorism is an enduring strength. But it hasn't answered all questions about him for the electorate. Bush's hold on right-leaning voters is overwhelming. But these numbers suggest that beyond the conservative core, there's still a large audience for competing ideas on the economy, health care and even a possible war in Iraq -- if Democrats can find something to say, and someone to say it.

The important thing to remember about this is that with the electorate so polarized and static both parties need these center-left moderates. Rove is going to try to use the war with Iraq to give Bush a glossy winner's image and project the usual inevitability of his win, but he is also going to have to fend off the wing-nuts who are starting to get restive and want some action. And, according to yesterday's NY Times, "In a New G.O.P. Era, DeLay Drives Agenda for Congress" quite a few of these wing-nuts are leaders of his own party. It's going to be quite a challenge to keep them under wraps considering that they no longer feel the sting of Gingrich's downfall and the failed impeachment. Rove's troops believe that George W. Bush is unbeatable, largely because Rove has told them so. It will be interesting to see how they react when they are told to sit down and be quiet so Junior can woo the center-left moderates!

Meanwhile, a bad economy, a frighteningly militant foreign policy, an ascendant far right faction means the Democrats are much better positioned to capture those center-left moderates who should find the Democratic party to be a much more comfortable fit than the party of Trent Lott, Richard Perle and Tom DeLay.

Let the games begin.



digby 1/06/2003 09:53:00 AM |

Sunday, January 05, 2003

 
Blogged Up

Hello to my smart commenting buddy Emma at her new blog Late Night Thoughts (Isn't that one of those blog titles you are just shocked to find that nobody's taken already?)

Also, give The Better Rhetor a look. He's got a dump Ashcroft movement going that should be supported by all lovers of cats, nudity and freedom.



digby 1/05/2003 08:22:00 PM |

 
You keep all your money in big brown bag...inside a zoo, what a thing to do

Hesiod alerts us to the fact that they are considering destroying the ballots from the 2000 election in Florida.

The designer of the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot, Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, says she'll take her cue on what to do with the old ballots from the state.

Asked what she'd rather see done with the punch cards, she replies: "A big bonfire."

There's a big surprise.

This brings up an issue I've been thinking about. With all the hoopla about putting together a Democratic media operation and getting some rich donor types to fund a network etc., I have a couple of ideas that I think someone with some money could fund rather inexpensively but that could be very useful to Democrats.

Preserving these ballots seems like something that some rich Democrat who has a feeling for history, or libraries or their alma mater could offer to do if the State of Florida, as expected, decides to destroy the evidence...er...ballots "due to the cost" of storing them. Perhaps a rich Florida Democrat would like to offer to fund a study at The University of Florida or something. It's a small thing, but historians and scholors really do have a right to study everything associated with that anomolous election and Jebbie and his pals should not be allowed to throw the disputed ballots on "a big bonfire" to save the Bush dynasty from further embarrasment (as if Dubya's foreign travels aren't enough.)

The other thing I think that someone should fund is the archiving of Republican propaganda. There should be a repository and database of tapes and transcripts for Rush and Sean et al, along with FoxNews, various pundits and print material. Not only would this be a valuable historical project, it would be very useful for countering the Mighty Wurlitzer.

It's always frustrated me that you can't get Rush transcripts because the single most effective thing you can use against the GOP propaganda machine is to expose the blustering fatuousness of its premiere disseminator of The Big Lie. Normal people find him absurd at best and repellant at worst. Only Dittoheads, mediawhores and RNC operatives think that his every day rhetoric is mainstream. He cleans it up for TV or interviews, but his show is is truly a sickening display of raging mendacity.

Of course, it would take a very special liberal to be willing to immerse himself in the music of the Wurlitzer all day long. I'd suggest a savant of some sort who is beyond being affected by relentless brainwashing. Otherwise, your going to have another Republican Railian on your hands or a Democrat so frustrated and angry that he could morph into one of those violent MWO types that Mickey is so afraid of.

Still, there should be some moneybags who could do this much at least. It's embarrassing that we have to take shit from people like Howie Kurtz who claim that Rush is just offering mainstream conservative criticism when we know damned well that his simple mission is raising Republicanism to a religion and fomenting hatred toward liberals. I'd like to be able to shove old Rush's words up Howie's...uhm...inbox.


digby 1/05/2003 06:53:00 PM |

 
Myopic Geopolitics

Atrios has a lively discussion going about today's Tom Friedman column that more or less defends the notion that the Iraq operation is at least partially about oil. I also believe it is partially about oil, but only to the extent that it is about neoconservative geopolitics and their stale but untrammeled notion of what constitutes American vulnerability.

It is true that Iraq could get nukes and Saddam could extort the entire western world by withholding oil and driving up the price. So could other countries, for that matter. No matter who managed to do this, it would not be a pretty picture. But, evenKenneth Pollack, who is held up as the authority on the necessity of invading Iraq, argues that while Saddam will have to be deposed, it is not so immediate a threat that we could not wait long enough to mitigate some of the potentially dangerous repercussions and plan for our long term responsibilities in the region before taking action.

Confronting Saddam could have waited because what is not waiting is the simmering bloodlust that is sweeping the Middle East, particularly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Invading Iraq on a thin pretext (which is what is going to happen because this war is already timed for American convenience and nothing else) is possibly going to set off chain of events that could have been avoided if we handled the situation with a little more sophistication and finesse instead of fulfilling some long held neocon wet dream. And that is the real problem.

The Wolfowitz/Perle school never took terrorism seriously when it was becoming a threat on the world stage and they don't take it seriously now. The influential CSP issued only 2 reports since the 1998 embassy bombing about the threat of terrorism until 9/11. The PNAC has been wringing their hands about Iraq and pushing for missile defense for years, but terrorism was hardly even on the radar screen. They are about China, Iraq, North Korea, Israel, US "benevolent" hegemony and missile defense. Period. Anything else will be subsumed under what they believe is the real agenda.

As with the ever changing justifications for the tax cuts for their rich friends, Bush and his foreign policy mavens are so blinkered and myopic and that they pursue their preordained agenda no matter what the current situation. They seem completely incapable of exercising any flexibility in light of changing circumstances. They just find a way to use the changing circumstances to justify what they plan to do anyway.

This is very dangerous. Bush, with his stupid bellicose posturing has created a needless crisis in Asia by challenging a cornered and neurotically proud despot in North Korea into a nuclear standoff. He has escalated the problem with Iraq to one of immediate danger, when it was a medium term threat at worst, and by conflating it with Al Qaeda and Muslim fundamentalism for no good reason other than political expediency, he has made it a cause for a whole lot of disaffected people in the Mideast and Indian subcontinent to rally to.

All of this is because the primary neocon focus of the last 10 years has been the threat of China and rogue states and thus their obsession with missile defense. This is what they have been lobbying for, this is what they believe is the greatest threat to American hegemony and this is what they want to use their newfound political power to deal with. And, while there is no doubt that individual bad actors with nukes are a serious challenge, there was absolutely no need to put the issue of rogue states immediately on the table next to Islamic terrorism, confusing the world about our intentions and creating a sense of chaos. Events are predictably hurtling out of control because the Bush administration has spoken with a rhetorical blunderbuss and opportunistically used 9/11 as a way to achieve their long held goals instead of refashioning the agenda to meet the changing threat.

And now, even after seeing with their own eyes the dangers of using a crisis to further unrelated goals, they still seem to think that we can beat North Korea or some former Soviet State or a middle eastern power like Pakistan to the punch with this missile shield that is many, many years away from reliability, if ever. The technology for ICBMs, on the other hand, has been around for decades. N. Korea is probably quite close and has shown a willingness to sell such technology. The former Soviet states probably have access to the technology already. Yet, the administration is still barrelling ahead in a near panicked state, ratcheting up the crisis so they can build their fantastical missile shield with the only recourse in the meantime being military intervention and a series of dangerous standoffs.

Meanwhile, just a little over a year ago we got attacked by terrorists who used low-tech box cutters to destroy Americas most vivid symbols of economic and military power. We got attacked on our own shores and thousands died and the success of that action absolutely guarantees that it won't be the last. For this administration to basically sideline that issue into bullshit "homeland security" with a color coded danger chart and bogus manhunts to pretend they are doing something--- in fact, to exacerbate the danger by provoking all manner of violent and unpredicatable global reactions with their swaggering bullyboy rhetoric --- mainly because they refuse to relinquish their cherished vision of themselves as astride a great global military Colossus, is about as irresponsible a position as I can imagine.

The Bush administration shows every day that they are willing to compromise American security rather than compromise goals that anyone else would have reevaluated in light of the new priorities wrought by the destruction and death of September 11th. But, apparently even the demolition of the World Trade Center was not enough to blow them off the course they set those many years ago.

One can only hope that their misguided relentlessness doesn't blow back on us in ways that are too terrible to contemplate.



digby 1/05/2003 01:03:00 PM |

Saturday, January 04, 2003

 
Hide the rabbit, Senator

Roger Ailes has a funny post up about Margaret Carlson fawning over Fred Thompson on Capital Gang.

Am I crazy or wasn't there some chatter at one time about Margaret having a big crush on Thompson and stalking him all over DC?

I didn't think so:

The New York Post, of all venues, reported recently that the Tennessee senator had of late become something of a sex object for "Capitol Hill hotties," one of whom complained about "all these other women" who wouldn't leave the senator alone. "I can't get up to get a cocktail at a party without coming back and finding some girl sitting at my chair," the woman was quoted as saying.

Margaret Carlson, the writer for Time and host for CNN, is described this way: "She calls his apartment all the time. It's the joke all over Washington that Margaret has this huge crush on him. And Fred is clearly not interested." (To which the gallant Thompson responded: "I generally don't comment on these matters, but as it relates to the statements made about my friend Margaret Carlson, I should be so lucky.")





digby 1/04/2003 09:36:00 PM |

 
It’s History Day on Calpundit:

For some reason, every generation loses the ability to appreciate the emotional impact of events from the previous generation. They become merely words in history books, and the players seem somehow like misguided little children making silly mistakes that, really, are sort of obvious in hindsight, aren't they?

Hey, we're not even paying attention to the words of various revered Greatest Generation types who are still alive and fully appreciate the emotional impact of events of their generation. The videogame cowboys who think to prove their manhood by saying things like “glass ‘em” apparently believe these men don’t have a clue about war and geopolitics. After all, they only lived through a worldwide depression, a war of survival that took the lives of about 50 million people and then ran the world during the following 40 years of nuclear standoff known as the cold war. Surely, they could not possibly have anything useful to say about Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il.

As Kevin Drum says, “these two are not the first thuggish dictators we have had to face.” Try Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler on for size.

How ironic it is that the Republican baby boomers, most of whom “supported” the Viet Nam war but were awfully busy and didn’t have time to actually participate, would find in their middle years that the elders and the Generals whose favor they so unctuously sought in their youth are now openly contemptuous of their adolescent bloodlust. Because the fact is that many of the elder statesmen who lived through the bloody 20th century are not very impressed with the bellicose prattle emanating from the President and many of his advisors.

I don’t consider him to be a liberal pushover, but Andy Rooney was on Donohue last night and pulled absolutely no punches in his criticism of the Bush administrations foreign policy. (No transcript available.) Studs Terkel is downright apoplectic about the prospects for a worldwide conflagration. And Walter Cronkite said in October that he thought going in to Iraq unilaterally might very well provoke WWIII.

From Scowcroft to Schwartkopf to Zinni to Clark to Shalikashvili --- all younger certainly (except Scowcroft) but nonetheless better informed of the reality of war and more connected to WWII on a visceral level than the amateur historians like Gingrich, Cheney and Perle who complain that the Generals are all "McClellans" --- all of them believe that the rush to war is a mistake.

And, I personally need look no further than my 80 year old father, a retired Navy man and veteran of WWII and Korea who thinks the rhetoric about Saddam and impending war with Iraq is a “joke.” We’re talking about a former John Birch society type wing-nut here, a man who treated the possibility of my older brother refusing to go to Viet Nam as a very personal insult. This man, who voted for George W. Bush with enthusiasm, is convinced that these Neocon hawks are leading this country into disaster.

When I read him the quote from Richard Perle, (another messianic hawk with no military experience) “The Army guys don't know anything. With 40,000 troops, the United States could easily take over Iraq. We don't need anyone else," he replied with one of his more pithy Navy phrases that roughly translates to something like, “why the heck would any President listen to an effeminate draft evader like Perle about anything but how to stuff a coq au vin?”

Needless to say, these older fellows are not necessarily right, merely on the basis of their experience. However, it should be noted everytime somebody trots out the "Pearl Harbor" analogies that there are still some people around who were actually there. And they know it wasn't a video game because they can still see the blood of their buddies and the Auschwitz victims and the millions of refugee children and the widows of their friends when they close their eyes at night.

They are worth listening to because they aren't going to be around forever and they are the last living connection we have with what a real, live world war is like.

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digby 1/04/2003 07:41:00 PM |

 
A Horse is a Horse, of course, of course

He's rested, he's glossy, he's ready to go. And right oughta the box, we've got our favorite feature Whore of the year!

It wasn't easy for me. I was torn between Howard Fineman (who is such a wild and crazy guy that he just drops to his knees and delivers his specialty in front of Chris Matthews, God and everybody) Margaret Carlson and The Mickster. The problem is that I get the feeling that Fine loves his work so much that he wouldn't even be mildly chagrined to be called whore of the year. In fact, it has come to represent a sort of advertising for him.

So, I was drawn to the next obvious choice, Margaret Carlson for her bizarre (and frankly bi-polar) choice of the Wellstone tribute as the outrage of the year. It's possible that she dropped a Steven Colbert special (mushrooms and Ecstasy --- takes you to a really special place) just before the show, but she didn't have quite the requisite tranquility. Or maybe she was playing naked truth or dare with little Ben Shapiro and lost. It was definitely something along those lines because there can be no rational explanation as to why she would choose this GOP propaganda ploy unless she was high or simply had no choice. I suspect somebody's got something on Maggie and it isn't pretty.

Finally, I'm left with the choice I somehow knew I'd end up with from the beginning. Mickey "the good liberal" Kaus is my favorite because he believes that poor people should stop thinking that money will solve their problems and realize that they should just strive to be nice to rich people so that rich people will be nice to them. He calls it "social equality" and thinks it is a lot better than "economic equality." (I call it "feudalism" and think kissing the asses of a bunch of in-bred rich people to survive it is only slightly better than being dead. But, that's just me.)

He should win the award, though, because he wrote that Ann Coulter was being maligned by the liberal media because it turned out that only 97% of her footnotes were bogus instead of the 98% claimed by the leftist media behemoth (or something along those lines...). He even links to Lucianne Goldberg, which goes beyond whoredom and enters the dark realm of submissive BDSM.

Finally, nobody has been more whorish than Mickey Kaus when he postulated on his blog that the liberal outcry against Trent Lott must have been orchestrated by the Wizard of Oz aka Sidney Blumenthal, the great liberal puppeteer. He even mused that Atrios might actually be Sidney Blumenthal...

I'll bet he got a big ole Rovian kiss on the lips for that one.


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digby 1/04/2003 06:57:00 PM |

 
It's Just Not Faaair!!!

Don't you just love hearing poor little conservatives whine like itty bitty babies about their victimhood at the hands of the big, tewwible liberal media? It's just heart rending, I tell you.

Check out Laura Ingraham on Reliable Sources when it repeats. She is just beside herself at the possibility that conservatives might be seen as anything but oppressed minorities who are shunned and cast aside by the monolithic liberal media that refuse to even acknowledge their right to exist! How could anyone even suggest that Republicans like Rush are doing anything but fighting back with their tiny fists against the liberal monsters who refuse to give them an even break? They are fighting for their lives! Sean and Bill and Neal may be vicious on the outside, but they're quivering in fear on the inside, singing "we shall overcome" and "swing low sweet chariot" through a veil of tears.

And what really makes her just stomp her feet with exasperation is when people claim they aren't liberal when they are! It's dishonest and just plain evil. I mean, sure, George W. Bush has gotten some ok coverage but that's just because he's such a goood President compared to Clinton who was an evil President. That's the difference. And even then, sometimes those icky liberals are just so mean to Bush when they say he might even be wrong sometimes and they try to get him to translate his sentences into English at press conferences. I mean, how much more biased can you get??? Why can't everybody be fair and balanced and unapologetic, huh?

I just have to wonder something, though. They have complete control of the government, yet they are still unhappy and feel oppressed and powerless. What exactly do these people want? One party rule? World domination?

(oh yeah, that's right.....)


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digby 1/04/2003 04:10:00 PM |

 
The Liquid List is gooood.

Check this out!

(And while I readily admit to knowling zilch about web design, I have to say that this one looks really good to me.)



digby 1/04/2003 08:27:00 AM |

Friday, January 03, 2003

 
Talk about Kewl!

Sisyphus Shrugged finds another example of the hateful liberal media in action.

And that special gal mentioned in the piece, Jennie Taliaferro of The Greatest Jeneration, should never be mentioned without quoting her at her very super-coolest:

We are at War--as much with Liberals as we are with Islamist terrorists. Your side is, unfortunately, the Enemy.
JennieTaliaferro

courtesy Martin Wisse at Progressive Gold

digby 1/03/2003 09:53:00 PM |

 
Again from His Purplosity, and on the subject of his earlier post on Rhandi Rhodes I'm pointed to a post by Skippy who lists a number of liberal radio voices who have been canned, eased out or otherwise metaphorically "disappeared" under suspicious circumstances.

But, he leaves out the best talk radio host ever in my book, the great Michael Jackson (not that one) who is considered by many in the radio business as having been the first talk show host.

His was on KABC until 1997, when the station unceremoniously demoted him to weekends. After being in drive time for more than 35 years, Jackson wasn't too happy with his weekend gig at KABC, and eventually left the station in 1998.

He is famous for his "little black book," which contains the name and phone number of anybody who is anybody-the rich, powerful, famous or infamous. Jackson has interviewed every U.S. President since Lyndon Johnson, and he was the first and only talk radio host to interview President Bill Clinton following the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

His show is erudite, intelligent, informative --- but unfortunately he doesn't get into any shouting matches with his guests, he doesn't pontificate about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of the evil Americans who don't agree with him and his callers seem to be more interested in asking questions than sharing their learned opinions on every subject. In other words, his show doesn't appeal to the angry morons who seem to be the most coveted audience in America.

Interestingly, he just spent the last couple of years at a Clear Channel station KLAC. Of course he was let go this last November when Clear suddenly decided to change from the talk show format to oldies. As it said in this article in the Long Beach Press Telegram:

The change comes at a time when, perhaps, Jackson has never been better. His in-studio guest list reflects that: Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Al and Tipper Gore all in the last week, all shunning phone interviews they might have given other radio hosts to meet in person with Jackson.

"Nobody turns us down,' he says proudly.

But that only adds to the sting Jackson feels in losing his show. He explains the machinations that have put the political right in talk- show ascendancy, while making liberal hosts such as himself an endangered species.

"Talk shows are dominated by conservatives, probably because they reflect the political leanings of station managers, who, in the main, come up through the ranks of sales rather than through news, entertainment and programming. Also, they are in the main, although not entirely, hoping to emulate the success of (Rush) Limbaugh.'

KLAC, its sister station, KFI [on which appear Limbaugh, Elder, Hannity et al] and nearly 1,300 others are owned by Clear Channel Radio. But those vast holdings may prevent the company's front office from correctly measuring the politics, public opinion, and personalities in its local markets.

Says Jackson, "The change at KLAC had nothing whatsoever to do with me.' And, he adds, it had nothing to do with the rise of conservative talk-show hosts. "I don't want to sound like sour grapes. I don't want to sound as if hosts on the political right have driven me out. The decision was a business one where the owners feel that they can make more money by cutting the staff, in front of the microphone and backstage, and by running canned music.

"My show was way ahead of expectations in the ratings at this stage of development. I had been on the air for just one and a half years, and the company had decided that they were not going to spend any money promoting the project. By contrast, look around. Our successful sister station, KFI, is publicized and advertised everywhere.'

The guy is the absolute best and he is having trouble staying on the air in Los Angeles, for Gawd's sake! This makes no sense whatsoever.

It is possible, he says, that Clear Channel has misread the L.A.-area market, and has failed to grasp the presence of an extensive audience for a liberal talk show. (He defines a liberal talk-show host as one "open to all points of view.')

"California is different from the rest of the nation,' he says. "Every single major elective office in the state is held by a Democrat: the governor, lieutenant governor, the assembly and senate, the mayor of L.A., the attorney general, all of them. And so, KLAC turns off the microphones to talk.'

No kidding. Los Angeles is one of the most liberal cities in the country and we have no liberal talk shows. We have one of the best talk show hosts in the country right here, the man who is credited as inventing the genre and he can't keep a job.

Sorry. This simply does not compute.



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digby 1/03/2003 08:51:00 PM |

 
There's just something about it they don't like


Atrios has a post up about John Edwards coming out against legacy admissions, a position which is immediately derided by some as being silly because the federal government can't do anything about such things.

This is true, of course, but then the Government can't make people go out "and love a neighbor like you'd like to love yerself," as our President preaches, but he says it anyway.

The point is that Edwards is using the legacy issue as a way of drawing attention to the fact that there are many dispensations given for a variety of reasons in college admissions, so why is the race issue being used as the only example of discrimination in this area? It's a smart way of putting the anti-affirmative action forces on the defensive by making them explain why one is so much worse than the other. After all, if a student is denied access to the college of their choice because someone with lower scores was admitted due to their race, how is it that no one complains if the same person is denied admittance because someone with a lower test score was admitted because their father graduated there? If one is discrimination, isn't the other?

Clearly, the GOP is trying to mislead the public into believing that affirmative action is the only impediment to colleges being a pure scholastic meritocracy, which is nonsense. Admissions take many factors into account, race being only one of them. One could easily ask whether it is fair that a musically gifted student should be given admission even though her test scores and grades are lower than some others. Certainly many athletes are given preference over others with far more impressive academic credentials. Any one of these jocks could have "taken the slot" that would have gone to the student who would have made the cut if only scores and grades had been taken into account.

When you frame the issue this way, it makes you wonder why affirmative-action has become the only focus of these supposed legions of white students who have been denied admission to college because someone less qualified took their place. You have to wonder why they are so sure that their place was taken by undeserving African-Americans or women or Hispanics. Is it not just as reasonable that their place was taken by an undeserving football player, legacy C student or ballet dancer?

Why is it that only "less qualified" minorities make everyone so upset?


digby 1/03/2003 07:53:00 PM |

 
You only hurt the one you love

Via Cursor:

Following up on the item I posted yesterday on anti-trust investigation of the alternative media the SFGate reports on the issue and I obviously misunderstood the depth of the problem and was much too flippant in characterizing it as political. Apparently, it is also about whether there is too much style coverage in alternative papers and whether anybody in LA should ever have to answer to somebody in New York. It's a super-duper crisis in the alternative press that some evidently believe can only be resolved with a tough US Attorney and a visit by some G-men.

The inquiry is the result of a horse-trading deal last October in which each of the two firms agreed to shut down one of its papers in a city where they competed. The arrangement between the nation's two largest alternative newsweekly chains left Los Angeles and Cleveland with only one citywide weekly each.

[...]

If so, the trend would be one more sign that weekly newspaper chains are moving farther away from their progressive, grassroots origins and acting more like the gargantuan daily newspaper conglomerates they were meant to provide an alternative to in the first place.

Do read the entire article. You will see that the real problem is the corporate dominance of the alternative press by such behemoths as The Village Voice and New Times and how this is hampering the spread of progressive ideas.

Liberal critics seem to agree that we must help John Ashcroft stop these corporate media tyrants. Like progressive political writer "Marc Haefele, a former political columnist for the LA Weekly who resigned from the paper within a month after the New Times-VVM deal, and was first approached by justice investigators in mid November." He told them, "The LA Weekly to a large extent is being edited under New York oversight at this point in time. This was basically going on before they made the [deal]. I was asked about whether I felt that had an effect on the content of the paper ... and I said that, yeah, I thought the paper was basically run from New York by New Yorkers, and it was a paper about Los Angeles, and that did not necessarily work out all the time."

If that doesn't require federal intervention, I don't know what does.

However, some people like Los Angeles Magazine editor in chief Kit Rachlis inexplicably find the much welcomed Justice Department investigation to be a bit more complicated:

"There's a terrible irony in the John Ashcroft Justice Department investigating the alternative press when, in fact, they have allowed far larger corporate entities to get away with transactions that have certainly raised a lot more antitrust issues than the LA Weekly-New Times deal has, and which had far greater effect on society," he says. "I don't think it's too paranoid to say that they're looking into the alternative press for political reasons."

As the article then points out:

Indeed, the U.S. Justice Department has done nothing to derail the endless media mergers that have taken place between corporate giants in recent years, and has yet to block a single joint-operating agreement between competing newspapers since the Newspaper Preservation Act was passed in 1970.

Oh please. Is he trying to say that there is something unusual about Ashcroft investigating a media company for anti-trust violations? Well, so what if there is, anyway? It is far more important that reporters from the LA Weekly don't have to take orders from some stupid New Yorker. And if it takes crawling into bed with the Bush administration to make that point, well then I don't see that you have any choice. As long as those rotten editors get theirs (and they stop publishing all that icky arts and culture junk that actually make people pick up the rags in the first place.)

Seriously, this is nuts. It sounds like NewTimes and VVM made a deal that was a technical violation of the Anti-Trust act. But, to believe that this "violation" of anti-trust in any way impedes competition in a marketplace that is totally dominated by mega-media corporations who own everything from the cable coming into your house, your computer dial-up, your only local mainstream newspaper, several radio stations and at least one of your local TV stations plus many more cable networks is ridiculous. The Justice Department is NOT investigating because of its grave concern about competition in the marketplace of ideas and those who are helping them out of myopic concern that these corporate chains are infecting the alternative press with commercial values are hopelessly naive.

Gleefully helping the Feds lean on the Village Voice just doesn't seem to me to be the smartest thing for liberals to do in this day and age. Call me crazy, but I don't think that's going to guarantee a more "responsive" alternative media going forward.



digby 1/03/2003 03:48:00 PM |

 
It's pretty clear that the Washington Kewl Kidz have decided that John Edwards is completely unqualified to be President. He just doesn't have the requisite foreign policy experience or the "gravitas" required in this time of crisis.

The kind of gravitas that was presumably evident in the last presidential campaign when George W. Bush handled foreign policy questions with such aplomb:

“Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?” asked Andy Hiller, political reporter for WHDH-TV in Boston. He was inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country Oct. 12 in a military coup. “Wait, wait, is this 50 questions?” asked Bush.
Hiller replied: “No, it’s four questions of four leaders in four hot spots.” Bush said: “The new Pakistani general, he’s just been elected—not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that’s good news for the subcontinent.”

And he has grown even beyond that fine performance to attain a Churchillian stature today that is likely unbeatable. For instance, two days ago our leader showed the kind of calm, measured response that makes people feel confident that a mature person is in charge and can be trusted to make the right decision for America:

You said we're headed to war in Iraq. I don't know why you say that. I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq.

I'm the person who gets to decide, not you. And I hope this can be done peacefully.

We have got a military presence there to remind Saddam Hussein, however, that when I say we will lead a coalition of the willing to disarm him if he chooses not to disarm, I mean it.

Just yesterday, President Lincoln...er...Bush demonstrated once again his thorough grasp of the complexities of the North Korean crisis:

"We've got a great heart," Mr. Bush said of the United States, noting the nation's food donations to North Korea, "but I have no heart for somebody who starves his folks."

This is the kind of compelling, seasoned rhetoric we have come to expect from our President and I'm afraid that the Democrats are going to have to look long and hard to find someone who not only thoroughly understands the nuanced and subtle language required for delicate diplomatic situations, but can communicate the complexity of international affairs so clearly and understandably to the American people.

The Kewl Kidz know better than anyone that George W. Bush has set a new standard for foreign policy knowledge, leadership and rhetoric and it's going to be extremely difficult for any Democrat to meet it. Those with furrowed brows or lawyerly backgrounds need not apply.


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digby 1/03/2003 02:05:00 PM |

Thursday, January 02, 2003

 
Now, where did I read that liberals are boring ascetics and conservatives are the real partiers...

A letter to the editor in today's LA Times:

My "Right-On Girlstyle Award" goes to the women of Nigeria -- not for the stoning problem. I'm talking about the women who took over and closed down a Chevron-Texaco oil refinery.

More than 100 Nigerian women closed it down for several weeks. Their big demand -- jobs for their husbands and sons. Yes, all they wanted was a means to alleviate their severe poverty while living a stone's throw from the symbol of U.S. wealth, cheap oil. They finally won by threatening to bare their breasts. It's a tribal custom called shaming; if a woman bares her breasts in front of strangers it is a shame on the men who witness it.

I propose that the women of America go to Washington and shame those men. Yes, let's go there and bare our breasts at President Bush's State of the Union address. Shame on him for diverting attention away from the health-care crisis, the pension crisis, the education crisis; shame on him for stomping on environmental protection regulations; shame on him for bombing innocent people any minute now in Baghdad; shame on him for promoting the use of oil and thus a war, rather than promoting alternative methods of energy production; shame on him for all the young Americans who are totally unmotivated to vote, yet have already died in Afghanistan or will soon die in Iraq. Women of America, let's bare our breasts for peace and democracy!

Carolyn Rios

I hadn't actually thought of it before, but this could be the radical new form of political discourse we Democrats have been looking for.

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digby 1/02/2003 03:38:00 PM |

 
Johnnie puts his foot down

General Johnnie is on the case when it comes to cracking down on those anti-trust behemoths who would crowd out competition and leave the poor unsuspecting public with no choices and no hope. He is the consumers best friend and don't you forget it. Just read this by John Powers in The LA Weekly if you don't believe me.

Who Do You Antitrust?

Ashcroft's Department of Justice is investigating possible antitrust violations on the part of two alternative news companies, New Times Media and Village Voice Media (of which the L.A. Weekly is part). While I'll leave it to the lawyers to limn the merits of the case, I must say it's striking that two comparatively small chains should face the scrutiny of the same DOJ that notoriously gave Microsoft a cushy deal in its antitrust settlement, takes no steps against America's broadband monopolies, and does nothing to limit huge "synergistic" empires like Fox, AOL Time Warner and Disney. If I were of a politically suspicious nature, I would wonder whether the DOJ is targeting alternative papers like this one because we are an alternative to the corporate media — opposing the Iraq war, chronicling Ashcroft's efforts to dismantle the Constitution and challenging our government's near-religious faith in the market. In fact, there's something worthy of Joseph Heller, if not Kafka, in the idea that, at this point in history, the secrecy-obsessed Bush administration is going after free weekly papers — in the name of defending free expression.

So, the all powerful alternative media are flexing their muscles in the marketplace of ideas. Have they no shame?

You go General Johnnie. Shut these corporate tyrants down!
digby 1/02/2003 03:18:00 PM |

 
Can you say "deluded?"

I have one more little balloon I'd like to prick before we move on to "bare breasts for peace." (Just hold on.) I have to take issue with a meme that seems to have infected the brains of many Republicans. I'm not the first to note this, but I don't think it can be repeated too often. It is best exemplified in a letter I read in the NYTimes on Tuesday:

"George W. Bush's campaign tactics in 2000, the "Southern Strategy" and the Trent Lott episode are yesterdays' news. The Republican Party, and all it stands for, won an overwhelming victory in the 2002 Congressional elections. Americans are pleased with the presiden'ts agenda just as it is."

Ok. I won't go into the obvious absurdity of Trent Lott being "yesterdays news" compared to the election returns because he is literally last week's news at the very least. Of course, the election was last November's news, before the Trent Lott scandal, but why pick nits?

The real delusion is this triumphant interpretation of the 2002 election. The Republicans gained two Senate seats and 6 House seats. This is constantly claimed to be an "overwhelming" victory.

Ah, but it is an historic victory because the party in the White House always loses in the first midterm, right? And, they usually lose by more than 25 seats in the House, too, so it was extra, super-duper overwhelming. It's been more than 60 years since any President was so beloved by the American people that they voted for his party in the first election after his inauguration. Therefore, George W. Bush achieved something that makes him eligible for Mt. Rushmore if not canonization.

But...but...he didn't defy history at all. And why is that?

Because he didn't win the election in 2000, that's why. If Al Gore had been in office as the voters wanted, there would have nothing remarkable about the 2002 GOP gains at all, except for the fact that they were so small.

Uncle Tony may have defied history, but Dubya didn't.


digby 1/02/2003 11:51:00 AM |

 
My oh my

I am truly overwhelmed by the welcome wagon in beautiful downtown Left Blogtopia. Thank you all very much. Now I suppose I'll actually have to write something, huh? Is that how it works?

And many thanks also to those who voted for me in The Koufax Awards over at PLA. (Dwight Meredith is a mensch of heroic proportions. But, we already knew that.)

Congratulations to all of those grand lefty pontificators. Gawd knows my sanity depends upon reading all of them.


digby 1/02/2003 11:24:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

 
Still waiting for an apology...



I just want to say this before everybody moves on to bigger and better things and forgets Old Trent and all the hoopla around the sudden "revelation" that he had been a racist all of his life.

I was very moved by Peggy Noonan who seemed so puzzled and disturbed by Lott's unfortunate statement. She wrote:

...when Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 he ran explicitly as a segregationist who would attempt to stop the civil rights revolution. He never, ever should have been elected president of the United States. It is truly weird for a person who lives in our world, in the modern world, to say otherwise

She goes on to tell a little story about a Democrat who fought for civil rights back in the 60's. She feels his pain.

It is very painful, our racial past. We made blacks and whites and all other colors equal in this country at great cost. A lot of feelings got hurt; a lot of people got hurt; a lot of people died. To pick only one of the millions of examples: Harold Ickes, the political operative who worked for Bill Clinton and now works for Hillary Clinton. I can't imagine agreeing on too many political issues with Mr. Ickes, but back in the '60s he helped organize the Freedom Riders to desegregate the South. In Louisiana he got into a fight with some local bad guys. He was beaten so badly that he lost a kidney. He's still walking around with only one kidney. He's just a middle-aged white lawyer who'd pass you by on the street in a shirt and a tie, but in this respect, in terms of what he did 40 years ago, he is a hero. There were a lot of heroes in those days. It was all wrenching, but in the end we did the right thing

(Did we, now.)

In a later column she writes

But it would be best for the Republican Party--and the country--if Republican senators were utterly brutal and moved to fire him before then. This would be a Christmas present to the country: Jim Crow's long, gasping death is finally over. If they do not move before Jan. 6 they certainly must fire him as leader on that date.

She goes on:

"... we believe completely in our hearts and minds that all races are equal and no one should be judged by the color of his skin. And then some guy comes along and speaks the old code of yesteryear and seems to reinforce the idea that those who hold conservative positions are really, at heart, racist. We are indignant, and we have been for a long time

In the Lott scandal our indignation reached critical mass. A lot of conservatives, many of them 50 and under, decided enough is enough, let's end this, let a new party be born. And by the way, in the particular case of Trent Lott, it didn't start yesterday. Stanley Crouch just surprised me by sending me a column he wrote almost four years ago for the New York Daily News. It was about a Lott appearance before the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-supremacist group. I said it was springtime and it's time to throw out the garbage, and Mr. Lott should go.

How inspiring. But I'm a little bit confused about one little thing and I sure wish Peggy would take the time to explain it. If Peggy felt so strongly about this topic, if she's been indignant for a long time, if Trent Lott represented the last, gasping breath of Jim Crow, then I would really like to know where in the hell she got off tendentiously lecturing Democrats like her hero Harold Ickes about how they had "lost their souls" because a few people in a crowd of 20,000 booed this despicable racist bastard at a tribute for a guy whose entire life was about social justice?

Why did she say that booing a known racial bigot at a memorial tribute for the man who was Jesse Jackson's Minnesota campaign manager in 1988, a man who in 1997 retraced Bobby Kennedy's 1967 national poverty tour (which started in Mississippi) was "just envy and revenge and resentment?"

Why does she demand that the GOP leadership be "utterly brutal" and fire Lott for his racist statements, which she admits had been out there for at least 4 years, (and we all know his sentiments haven't exactly been a secret for nigh on to 35 years now, don't we Peggy?) when just 6 weeks earlier she had the ineffable chutzpah to write the following:

Imagine Trent Lott dies, and there's a big memorial back home in Mississippi in some big auditorium. Half the Senate shows up to show respect: Trent was a nice guy. But they show up for another reason too: to show solidarity with democracy. To show we're all Americans together, and we respect the ballot together, and we are big enough to feel regard and respect across party lines.

[...]

When you're in politics not to live life but avoid it, you become especially susceptible to a kind of polar thinking. You become convinced you're with the good team and the good people over here. You become convinced anyone who doesn't want the same policies you want must be bad. After all, you're good, so if they disagree they must be bad. When you're polar like that you dehumanize the people on the other side. And when you dehumanize them--well, then you wind up booing them at a funeral..

Yeah, that's true. Trent Lott was booed at the funeral because some of the grieving Democrats there "became convinced" that Lott's known support for things like Thurmond’s 1948 campaign platform was "bad." They were downright "polar" about it. They "dehumanized" poor old Trent and wound up booing him.

But, just 6 weeks later, without even a trace of embarrassment, Peggy is indignant that Lott is even associated with the Republican Party.

Seriously, I just hope she can live with herself for turning the pain and anguish in the Wellstone family into a cheap, political talking point. I hope she will find it in herself to examine how she could use a totally righteous display of disgust at a man like Trent Lott, who stood for everything that Paul Wellstone fought against in his life, into a campaign strategy that deigned to lecture Democrats about the "goodness" of the man she demanded the leadership of her party "brutally" fire less than 2 months later.

Here's some advice for Peggy, in her own words:

...you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you've become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Let me be very candidly specific. ...You need to get a good psychologist and a good holy man or woman, a priest or rabbi or minister--or how about all three--and figure out why you're turning everything in your life into politics. Because I have to tell you what I know: Politics is the biggest, easiest way in all of America to avoid looking at yourself, and who you are, and what fence needs fixing on your own homestead.



digby 1/01/2003 10:24:00 PM |

 
Via Atrios. Responding to the earth shattering news that the Democratic Party has realized that the Republicans have an effective marketing arm, John Podesta announces in the NY Times today that the Dems are looking into setting up similar operations.
As Hesiod points out, this is just a tiny bit….uh….stupid. You don’t announce that you are countering a successful Republican political operation by copying it.

You say that “there is a huge wave of interest in Democratic ideas among grassroots Americans and that the party is actively helping to disseminate those ideas along with various interested parties from business and industry who are gravely concerned about the direction this administration is taking the country.” It’s spin, marketing, shading the truth, selling the product. It’s called propaganda. And you never admit to it. Ever.

Propaganda is defined by Miriam Webster as:
Pronunciation: "prä-p&-'gan-d&, "prO-
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Congregatio de propaganda fide Congregation for propagating the faith, organization established by Pope Gregory XV died 1623
Date: 1718
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

Setting aside this clumsy “announcement”, it’s clear that the Democratic media operation is non-existent, and in this day and age, that is pathetic. But, it seems to me that the real problem is not just that we don’t have liberal media outlets, or a unified Democratic message. The real problem is that we don’t understand what the modern media wants and what it needs.

I think that the mainstream media is actually fairly politically agnostic. Entertainment values are what motivate them and entertainment values are driven by emotion and sensation, not reason, the basis of rational political debate. But, these values are manifested in more than a race for ratings and careerist brown-nosing of the corporate boss (both of which are big factors, but not decisive ones.) Political news coverage is shaped by celebrity, insiderism, institutional cronyism, drama, stimulus, schaudenfraude, comedy, starpower and Washington zeitgeist. And, they are desperate for material. This need for a compelling story is a yawning black hole that constantly needs to be filled and that is something the GOP has learned how to manipulate.

Therefore, I believe we have to learn to present our policies in terms of conflict, courage, empathy, community, fun, heroic deeds and sex appeal and these “stories” must be told by people who know how to tell them in a stimulating way. We must learn how to lead the press where we want it to go by using seductive themes and dramatic narratives.

I am almost certain that Clinton survived the bashing he took because of his superstar charisma as much as his brains and toughness. Everything about him was interesting, either as a villain or a hero. He was a Master Celebrity and he made everyone pay attention. The media were far more interested in his Q rating than in his job approval rating. Up or down, they wanted him on screen. And he delivered. He was the first rock star president, for better or worse.

But, his presence and the focus the media put on him meant that the Democrats did not develop the media apparatus they should have when this new 24 hr cable universe came roaring into being. The Republicans did…

However, I do not believe that they could continue to beat us at this game if we applied ourselves to it. The only reason that the GOP has managed to dominate the media political discourse is by outright buying of outlets and broadcasting the political equivalent of "Battle Bots"; selling cheap, puerile schoolyard conflict on every single one of them. This attracts the kind of viewer who also loves to watch shark feeding shows on the Discovery Channel and any movie starring Steven Sagal which is hardly representative of the electorate.

But, up to this point that's been the only version of "The Political Show" on television. Being a political junkie, I watched in the beginning but quickly found that I hated the format. The pre-ordained positions, the ritual argument, the predictable escalation to screaming and finally the shaking hands and good natured laughter between all the participants as the credits roll just failed to interest me as entertainment --- these shows are like watching the WWF. A scripted narrative pretending to be real. (I'm all too aware that the consequences are very real, but I'm talking about the shows themselves.) Since they fail to inform about anything but a perfunctory analysis of daily spin, I don't watch much of it. There are others like me.

The CW is that Democrats don’t do well in talk radio or cable news formats because we don’t have the right combative style. We’re too dry and boring. The NY Times article says that we “talk down to people.” This may be true, but it’s really a much deeper problem than that. The reason we've been stymied is because we have been clinging to the idea that political media should reflect a rational discourse in which views are aired and debated with civility and mutual respect and that commercial entertainment values are inappropriate and dangerous to democracy. I agree. The problem is that ship sailed while we were standing on the dock talking amongst ourselves and patting each other on the back for our fealty to reason. It's over. Political journalism is now part of the entertainment media, at least on television and radio, and we are foolish if we don't recognize it and get on with it. If there were a great disaffected audience of rational thinkers who just want to be informed, then Jim Lehrer would have the highest rated news show in television. He isn't even close.

The fact is that people want the news to entertain them, in fact they demand it.

So, we have to find a way to provide it to them instead of letting the "Battlebot's" dominate the national consciousness with the only definition of our policies and our values that seems to get out there these days. And, I expect if the Democrats got serious and consulted with their richest contributors who run the real media that most Americans watch every single day in numbers that make O’Reilly’s look like a local weathercast that they could develop a "show" that makes Rush and his jowly cohorts look like those old kinescopes of Dave Garraway and that silly monkey.

The Democrats need to be open to radically new ideas about how to sell politics. Because whether we like it or not, it’s another media product competing in a 500 channel universe for the attention of an over stimulated populace. Liberals have to use our dominance in the world of art, communications and entertainment to translate what is already a liberal cultural environment into a liberal political environment.

The brain-dead Battlebot script is not the only script that can sell political ideas. But, it may be the only script that can sell Republican ideas.

Psst. John Podesta: Think Oprah. Think music. Think reality television. Don’t be a dumbass and diss the most exciting new medium around -- the internet. (John Podhoretz said the recent blogging phenomenon reminded him of when talk radio took off 10 years ago. That's food for thought, eh?)

digby 1/01/2003 06:59:00 PM |

 
OK. There’s no point in putting it off. My New Year resolution is to go ahead and start this up and let the chips fall where they may. Knowing myself, it is entirely possible that I will lose interest in it within a matter of days and will slink off into even more obscurity than that in which I already happily exist. However, I join the blogging fray today with more enthusiasm than I have usually have for resolutions, which generally last until about noon on January 1st when I compulsively begin to eat, drink, smoke, watch or read the things I had promised just 12 hours before to not eat, drink, smoke, watch or read. This is a very promising beginning, indeed. It is now 1:24 pm.

I have almost zero interest in web design, much less any talent at it. If this thing goes out of whack, Gawd knows if I’ll have the inclination to fix it. I have a pile of magazines and books next to my desk that tend to beckon when the computer gets uppity. Therefore, if something looks funky here and you are like most smart people and enjoy fixing things, please don’t hesitate to send me unsolicited advice. I wasn’t a math or tech geek, I was a history and lit geek --- the worst kind, almost useless in the real world. I’ve always depended upon the kindness of my more engineering minded kin.

And, I don’t have a comments section because I couldn’t find a free service like Haloscan or YACCS that was still available. If anybody has any ideas on that score, I’m open. Far be it from me to not have comments. They are, after all, my life’s blood.

Speaking of which, my many thanks to my hero, Atrios for publishing some of my more semi-coherent ramblings on his seminal Lefty blog these past few months. In this nascent medium, that’s kind of like having Eddie Van Halen invite you up on stage to join him in a guitar solo.

Happy New Year everybody. May the Mighty Casio shake the firmament and wake up the neighborhood.

digby 1/01/2003 01:24:00 PM |