Hullabaloo

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

 
Here I Go Again

Here's some rather obtuse analysis for you from TNR, which should know better:

We don't entirely agree with the reasoning behind Dick Morris's prediction of a Wesley Clark flame-out. But Morris does have a point when he says, "The Dean candidacy is the first creation of the Internet age. By contrast, Clark's is perhaps the last of the media-created candidacies."

A number of conservatives (and non-conservatives) have compared Clark to Ross Perot to foreshadow what they hope are the soon-to-be-exposed flaws in Clark's candidacy--namely, that he's a little short-tempered, nutty, and prone to conspiracy theories. But the real value in the analogy between Clark and Perot has less to do with the characterological flaws the men share than with what Morris rightly identifies as the media-driven nature of their campaigns.

If Dick Morris says it, you can be sure it's utter bullshit and this one is a doozy.

Here are just a few of Dickie's greatest hits:

"Eventually, France will cave to the U.S. position." - On the Iraq/war alliance, New York Post, February 4, 2003

"Republican members of the Senate want their own person controlling the floor so they can have an independent voice ... When they reconvene in January, Trent Lott will still be there for one good reason: The Republican senators don't want him to go." - New York Post, December 16, 2002

"(U)nless (GWB) starts this war on schedule in September ... he's going to lose Congress." - Fox News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, August 5, 2002

"None, none." - The Sean Hannity Show, May 13, 2002, in response to Sean asking if Dick has any doubt that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2008


Yeah, he's the fucking oracle of Delphi.

But his greater "point" (and that of TNR) is total nonsense as well. All campaigns are media driven campaigns.

The greatest political media creation is history is George W. Bush -- not Ross Perot and not Wesley Clark. Karl Rove managed to get over 50 million people to vote for a brand name in an empty suit for president. He further managed to turn this ventriloquist dummy into someone whom over 60% of the people believe is a "strong leader."

The Republican media operation managed the media so effectively during the last administration, with tabloid style manipulation and constant spoon-feeding of speculation and innuendo, that it created an environment in which the line between fact and fiction has narrowed to the point that our current president can lie blatantly about matters of life and death while the “press” meekly stands by and treats it as a purely partisan matter.

Politics IS the media. Rather than this election featuring “the last media campaign” I'm afraid we are really only seeing the beginning.

As I have said before, I agree that the internet is potentially a powerful organizing and communication tool. Lest people remain confused about the massive influence of the internet on ordinary Americans today, or the huge liberal movement it signifies, it would do well for them to read the PEW center report(pdf) on internet usage and attitudes on the Iraq war.

If you make the logical correlation between liberal politics, an anti-war position and internet usage, we are a long, long way from critical mass.

89% of all Americans reported that they get most their news from television. 87% of internet users report the same thing. In fact, only 17% of internet users reported that they get most of their news from the internet. 64% of those who got any of their news from the internet believed it was about the same as the news they got elsewhere. 76% said they got their news from American network sites, newspaper sites or US government sites. Only 18% reported that they regularly visited foreign and alternative sites.

6% said they got news from sites opposed to the war. 4% visited blogs.

In the days before the Iraq war, internet users supported the war by a 3 – 1 margin. They were more likely than non-internet users to think that the war was going well and that president Bush had made the right decision.

54% of internet users had said they sent or received patriotic e-mails or prayer requests with respect to the war. 10% received information from an organization opposed to the war. 5% communicated with an elected representative about the issue.

By the same token, while it seems terribly impressive that an estimated 70.1 million watched the first night of the Baghdad bombing on the eight major news networks: ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, it should be noted that the January 2001 Super Bowl attracted 79.5 million viewers.

Just the top 10 rated TV shows on prime time gain a weekly audience of about 200 million viewers, on average.

The fact is that most Americans are going to vote on the basis of what they see in the mainstream media and a large amount of that through advertising and quick cuts of news images. They are going to make a decision based less on specific issues and more on an emotional reaction to the candidate and the party. They are not going to be largely motivated by the internet, no matter how much we news junkies and bloggers would like to see that happen. That just isn’t the world most Americans live in.

None of this is to denigrate Dean’s accomplishment (or the draftClark people, for that matter.) And I see no reason why Dean cannot win a media campaign if he gets the nomination. His rolled-up-sleeves, straight talking approach and feisty willingness to speak truth to power is a very potent television image, if handled properly.

Because, let’s face it liberals --- it’s not his stand on gun control or balancing the federal budget that gets you all excited about this guy either. It’s his attitude and personality that turns you on.

That’s what I’m talking about and that’s how campaigns are won and lost in this country nowadays. If more people watched the super bowl than the opening night of the war, I think it’s fair to say that we’re going to need to run a “media campaign” if we want to win this one.

Not even “Shock and Awe” could get as many viewers as the thrilling contest between Tampa Bay and New York --- and that super bowl was the lowest rated since 1990.





digby 9/23/2003 11:24:00 PM |

 
They Remind Me Of My Maiden Aunt Sally

Thank you TBOGG for the link to the best laugh I've had in weeks:

Needles on the Beach's Prick(s) of the week: Master Ben Shapiro and his cadre of sad little Bushie Jungen:

But the perpetual adolescent in me would say that if you’re a 17-year old (who’s been in the biz for a couple of years) who frequents airports and worries about the miniscule chance that a terrorist will board his plane and kill him – you are a fucking loser. Might as well give up now, punk. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

What a fucking pussy. We – that is, those of us who were adolescents from 1953 to 1991 – lived under a modulating, but ever-present threat that our lunatic, lazy or brain-damaged ‘leaders’ were going to end mankind with the touch of a button. Not an airliner. Not a few blocks of a city. The WHOLE FUCKING PLANET. Now that’s fear, baby. Knowing that ‘duck and cover’ would ensure that we were atomically fused to the underside of a desk, or that Reagan simply could have thought he was ringing the butler instead of ending life as we knew it - man, it was a bracing time.

Read it all. You'll thank yourself.

* haha. Fixed freudian slip. Thanks p mac. Although it actually worked the other way too...


digby 9/23/2003 07:48:00 PM |

 
Non-stick Pans

Sullivan dutifully repeats the brand new shiny meme that Wesley Clark is a loopy nutcase a la Ross Perot.

I'm sure the kool aid kidz are lapping this stuff up, but it's not going to work for real, actual humans out in Murica.

See, they believed that Ross Perot was a nut because he acted like a nut on national television. He babbled like an idiot about half the time and even gave interviews claiming that George Bush tried to disrupt his daughter's wedding and that secret agents had scaled the walls of his compound. True, by the end of that campaign, Ross still got 20% of the vote, but apparently some people just like a screwball.

Clark may be a lot of things, but a screwball he's not. Nobody is going to believe he's a crazed kook because it's obvious when you see and hear him that he isn't.

The Republicans are trying out a lot of smear campaigns against Clark, Dean and Kerry because they believe that one of them will end up the nominee. (They know that Lieberman is highly unlikely to win, but they hedge their bets by repeatedly calling him the "good Democrat" so the grassroots will be sure to reject him.) As with the justification for the Iraq war, they are throwing everything against the wall and seeing what will stick.

Personally, I haven't seen anything particularly threatening yet.

"Dean is an NPR liberal" doesn't fit because he doesn't come off as a touchy-feely, new-ager, which is the common perception of liberals (except to Ann Coulter who sees us as evil agents of Satan.) Most people have long forgotten what a combative liberal sounds like so they don't really think they exist. Liberals are supposedly lovers, not fighters.

Kerry on the other hand is supposed to be an aloof, patrician blue nose but both his veteran and anti-war experience put him right in the middle of the raucous hedonism of the baby boom cultural revolution. He's actually one of the strongest connections there is to the turbulent 60's version of liberalism but because of his personality and gravitas they can't make that case either.

Clark as a crazed lunatic is belied by his articulate authoritative demeanor as well as his completely straightlaced patriotic biography. Nobody looks at this guy and thinks, "Strangelove." (Not as long as Don Rumsfeld is alive, anyway.)

None of their caricatures bear enough resemblance to the candidates to have any real salience with the public. It worked to some degree with Al Gore, not because he actually was a liar, but because his association with Clinton made it easy for people to make the connection, particularly since the "lies" were silly and personal, like Bill's. More importantly, there seemed to be an (unfair) desire amongst some of the less decent folks in our country to see Gore as a pencil necked geek, probably because of the way he spoke. Certain adolescent assholes enjoyed making fun of him. (Still, he did win the election anyway.)

I do not doubt that the Rove machine is working overtime to find just the right derisive smear against any possible rival. They haven't found them yet.

And, of course, their own boy is so target rich it makes me weep with joy at the prospect of turning their slobbering, lowlife tactics right back at them.

Josh Marshall has more on this topic.





digby 9/23/2003 04:05:00 PM |

 
Hack Attack

For any of you devious Rovian trolls out there who think you can use David Hackworth's "Perfumed Prince" accusations against Wesley Clark, think again.

Reporting for Duty: Wesley Clark

By David H. Hackworth, 9/22/03

With Wesley Clark joining the Democratic presidential candidates, there are enough eager bodies pointed toward the White House to make up a rifle squad. This bunch of wannabes could make things increasingly hot for Dubya – as long as they don’t blow each other away with friendly fire.

Since Clark tossed his steel pot into the inferno, I've been constantly asked, “Hack, what do you think of the general?”

For the record, I never served with Clark. But after spending three hours interviewing the man for Maxim’s November issue, I’m impressed. He is insightful, he has his act together, he understands what makes national security tick – and he thinks on his feet somewhere around Mach 3. No big surprise, since he graduated first in his class from West Point, which puts him in the super-smart set with Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur and Maxwell Taylor.

Clark was so brilliant, he was whisked off to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and didn’t get his boots into the Vietnam mud until well after his 1966 West Point class came close to achieving the academy record for the most Purple Hearts in any one war. When he finally got there, he took over a 1st Infantry Division rifle company and was badly wounded.

Lt. Gen. James Hollingsworth, one of our Army’s most distinguished war heroes, says: “Clark took a burst of AK fire, but didn’t stop fighting. He stayed on the field till his mission was accomplished and his boys were safe. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. And he earned ‘em.”

It took months for Clark to get back in shape. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn’t quit the Army to scale the corporate peaks as so many of our best and brightest did back then. Instead, he took a demoralized company of short-timers at Fort Knox who were suffering from a Vietnam hangover and made them the best on post – a major challenge in 1970 when our Army was teetering on the edge of anarchy. Then he stuck around to become one of the young Turks who forged the Green Machine into the magnificent sword that Norman Schwarzkopf swung so skillfully during Round One of the Gulf War.

I asked Clark why he didn’t turn in his bloody soldier suit for Armani and the big civvy dough that was definitely his for the asking.

His response: “I wanted to serve my country.”

He says he now wants to lead America out of the darkness, shorten what promises to be the longest and nastiest war in our history and restore our eroding prestige around the world.

For sure, he’ll be strong on defense. But with his high moral standards and because he knows where and how the game’s played, there will probably be zero tolerance for either Pentagon porking or two-bit shenanigans.

No doubt he’s made his share of enemies. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have allowed the dilettantes who convinced Dubya to do Iraq to even cut the White House lawn. So he should prepare for a fair amount of dart-throwing from detractors he’s ripped into during the past three decades.

Hey, I am one of those: I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a “Perfumed Prince.” Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong – the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time.

At the interview, Clark came along without the standard platoon of handlers and treated the little folks who poured the coffee and served the bacon and eggs with exactly the same respect and consideration he gave the biggies in the dining room like my colleague Larry King and Bob Tisch, the Regency Hotel’s owner. An appealing common touch.

But if he wins the election, don’t expect an Andrew Jackson field-soldier type. Clark’s an intellectual, and his military career is more like Ike’s – that of a staff guy and a brilliant high-level commander. Can he make tough decisions? Bet on it. Just like Ike did during his eight hard but prosperous years as president.

digby 9/23/2003 03:12:00 PM |

 
Priorities

I still believe in the dream of a progressive, liberal nation in which everyone has opportunity and security, freedom and equality. And, I would love to see our politics move beyond the canned soundbite and the market tested message so people can debate civilly and sincerely about policies and philosophy, vote their conscience and elevate the discourse, secure in the knowledge that no matter what, America as we know it will continue to thrive.

But, right now I am scared to death that things are changing so fundamentally that not only will I not see any more progress in my lifetime, but that this country is undergoing a radical and perhaps irreversible, right wing revolution that will reverse most of the progress of the last 100 years.

I wish it were 1972 again or even 1992 again and I could feel sanguine that the United States was going to toddle along, for better or worse, under a basic bipartisan consensus that recognized certain constitutional boundaries and limits that could not be breached. I wish that we had an independent media that was less focused on entertainment values and instead recognized that it had an intrinsically important role in democracy. I wish that we were not in the grip of a revolution in technology and communications at the same time as a radical group of idealists have seized power. I wish we had the luxury of choosing candidates purely on the basis of their commitment to a bottom-up revolution of the people and progressive ideas.

Unfortunately, it is not that time. The modern Republican party presents a clear and present danger to everything we hold dear --- the social safety net, the rule of law, civil liberties, consumer protection, a clean environment, international legitimacy --- everything. They envision a one-party state. They mean to completely and thoroughly change the way this country works.

It’s important to recognize that major revolutionary change can happen slowly at first and then all at once in a civilized democratic society through sophisticated propaganda and by undermining the principles of democracy. History provides an instructive example and one that I’m no longer going to shy away from.

One of the least appreciated aspects of the Nazi rise to power is that it is the only fascist government that came to power through legal means. After the Beer Hall putsch, Hitler realized that he would best be served by a combination of some street action for intimidation purposes, but mostly by growing the Nazi party and building legitimate support. He had some success through the 20’s but it wasn’t until the great depression that his support grew significantly and the Nazis won large numbers in the elections of 1930 and 1932.

However, the communists and the social democrats also saw significant gains. The traditional centrist liberal democratic parties had by now been marginalized to such an extent that politics in Germany were now totally polarized. (In the 1928 elections in Germany the social democrats (SPD) had formed a government with broad parliamentary support. It was a broad coalition that included most of the middle parties, and moderate right party the DVP.) By 1930, the country (for many complicated reasons) had become significantly radicalized.

Despite their gains in 1930 and 1932, the Nazis never gained a majority and ended up seizing power through a quasi-legal parliamentary maneuver rather than forming a legitimate coalition. And one of the main strategic reasons they were in a position to effect such a maneuver was that the newly empowered communist KDP had decided that their main enemy was the more moderate social democrat SPD rather than the Nazis. The Communists claimed that the SPD was a more dangerous enemy because it “looked” like a leftist party and therefore undermined the true Marxist vision and enabled capitalism.

They called the social democrats "Social Fascists.” During the period leading up to the fateful deal that made Hitler Chancellor, when the KDP weren’t arguing amongst themselves as to whether they should concentrate on staging a mass revolution or using the democratic system to gain power, they were consumed with subjugating the social democrats who offended their radical sensibilities.

There are many reasons for Hitler's rise, but it is clear that he would never have been in a position to do so if the opposing parties had coalesced to fight him from 1930 on. And again, there are many contributing factors – including, but not limited to, economic crisis, Nazi collusion with big business, a willingness on the part of various Weimar leaders to whittle away at democratic principles and Hitler’s masterful grasp of propaganda that appealed to the German sense of exceptionalism.

However, the radical left could have stopped him by seeing the danger clearly and aiming its fire at their real enemy rather than moderates in their midst in a self-defeating endless debate about strategy and ideological purity. Sadly, they paid a huge price when Hitler did assume dictatorial powers and manufactured a crisis that enabled him to clamp down on communists in his first act of brutal repression.

History never repeats itself exactly the same way and I don't suggest that it is now, but sometimes you have to shake your head and wonder if human motivations are biologically programmed to be dumb in exactly the same ways, over and over again.




digby 9/23/2003 01:46:00 PM |

 
Required Reading

The freelancing Dwight Meredith has written some excellent pieces for the fine blogs Lean Left and Body and Soul that everyone should read. (Don't read the second unless you are prepared to bang your head against the wall in total frustration...)

Bush's Little Black Dress and
Justice For All

Hey Dwight, where's mine?


digby 9/23/2003 05:06:00 AM |

 
Roll Tape, Please

Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."

Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

LINK

Bring it on.

digby 9/23/2003 04:45:00 AM |

 
Barney Fife at the UN

I sure am glad them dumb ferriners cain't read.

In words written as much for a domestic audience as for an international one, Mr. Bush is expected to make limited concessions giving the United Nations more control in Baghdad, as the allies would like. But he will keep real authority in American hands.

"There's a feeling that you have to assert that the United States is still in control, if nothing else for domestic concerns," said a senior administration official, who, like most of those interviewed, requested anonymity.

"We're going into an election year and the president has to project an image of power and authority," the official added. "There will be a lot of language implying that we're not going anywhere. We're asking for help, but not for anyone to take over."

LINK


digby 9/23/2003 04:17:00 AM |

Friday, September 19, 2003

 
The General Has Been Terminated

Joan Walsh says that Clark's candidacy is being foisted on the Democratic party by Democratic Big Shots. Cool. I should definitely get a slot on the DNC blogroll, now.

The rest of her screed is simple snottiness worthy of Lucianne Goldberg. She's "tempted" to call Clark's candidacy "doomed" after one day because:

...it would just feel good, in a way. A dead-in-the-water Clark candidacy would be a great rebuke to party big shots who are trying to foist him on Democrats because he's more "electable" than Howard Dean or John Kerry. We're going to see about that. It should be interesting."

We're just going to see about that, my pretties ... heeheeheeheehee!

It's funny. Today, I'm hearing very nasty things about Clark --- all of them from Democrats, none of them candidates. Walsh points to a letter in the Note from an "angry democrat" who says:

I am not a Dean supporter -- but I am angry that our party's leaders have anointed an alternative to him who seems even more ignorant and unprepared -- and that this supposed 'anti-war' candidate turns out to have been in favor of both the war resolution and Richard Nixon!! And let's not even talk about the Clintons. Today I am embarrassed to be a Democrat."

Interestingly, I got a handful of similar e-mails today striking a similar theme, one of them from somebody named "Sal" who said:

How can you support Wesley Clark when he's even stupider than Bush? I'm don't support any candidate yet, I'm keeping my options open. Howard Dean never voted for Richard Nixon at least! How much does the DLC pay you, anyway?"

I haven't had this much fun since I argued with Nader voters in 2000. (Oh, and did I mention that I'm a Democrat who, nonetheless, believes that George W. Bush is the messiah?)

Joan figures Clark's toast. One day in and it's over. He's just another Schwarzenegger -- nothing but a lazy, Austrian, weightlifting moron without the women problems (although the day is young....)

But, at least we won't have to endure that nasty campaign we are convinced he must have been planning with those horrible Clinton people.



digby 9/19/2003 04:38:00 PM |

 
Maidenly Vapors

Sullywatch catches the Prince of P-Town using a bad, bad phrase to describe a fine fellow traveler, Drudge. Oh my, my. And after calling me a "leftist homophobe" for saying the same thing about Sully himself, along with Lesley Stahl and Howard Fineman, for drooling and simpering over Junior's manly profile (the first time --- when he dressed up in fireman's suit.)


I really wish that Miss Manners would start a blog so we could have someone to consult about the appropriateness of certain political discourse. It gets so confusing.

I had been under the misapprehension that once Republican members of Congress called President Clinton a "scumbag" a "pervert" and a "rapist" among other things, that the GOP had joined the ranks of rappers and cast members of The Sopranos as far as crude, insulting language was concerned. Even the esteemed cheerleader frat-boy himself was seen on television calling a reporter a "major league asshole" and had been quoted saying he and his father talked about "pussy" on the golf course. This newfound willingness to say in public what Richard Nixon had only said in the privacy of the Oval Office, seemed to signal a loosening of the old fashioned edict that elected officials should be civil, at least in public.

Apparently I was wrong about that. Lately, I'm seeing a large number of middle aged Republican men blushing and fidgeting on television over what they say is very inappropriate language on the part of elected Democrats. They are working themselves into a complete tizzy over it.

Ed Gillespie was on CNN the other day practically having to call for the smelling salts he was so upset by the shocking phrase "miserable failure" being applied to the President. He could barely look at the camera he was so embarrassed to have to say such a thing in public. He held back a sob as he whispered, "it's political hate speech."

And just today, the shy and virginal Tom DeLay said "it is disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush then they ever did at Saddam Hussein."

But the brave, young debutante soldiered on. He looked the Democrats right in the eye and said, voice shaking, his little chin trembling, "I call on all the vociferous Democrat critics, from Kerry to Dean and from Daschle to Pelosi, to have the courage to tell their hero Ted Kennedy that he went too far."

I've heard that burning feathers will bring a tightly corseted maid out of a swoon. I would suggest that all the television anchors keep some at the ready, along with a large supply of tissues. The delicate debs of the GOP are likely in for a rough ride over the next few months.

I wonder what the American public is going to make of this newfound delicate sensibility on the right. Certainly, they have forgotten all about that unpleasant impeachment matter and the press are hardly likely to bring up such an unseemly topic. But, you still must wonder how this newfound diffidence and sensitivity will comport with the masculine, fighter jock image that has so captivated Kate O'Beirne and her hot flashing lunch bunch.

Is George W. Bush "Top Gun" or Blanche DuBois?

At the risk of sending Robert Novak to his boudoir with a migraine, I offer a taste of things to come Republicans.

Get out your handkerchiefs.

Jay Leno: "Today, retired General Wesley Clark announced he is running for president of the US. Pretty amazing guy. Four star general, graduated first in his class at West Point, supreme commander of NATO, served combat in Vietnam. What, he won the bronze star, silver star, the purple heart. Wounded in battle. See, I'm no political expert, but that sounds pretty good next to choking on a pretzel, falling off a scooter and dropping the dog."

Why, I never...




digby 9/19/2003 03:56:00 PM |

 
Rock the Donkey

Buzzflash and I both have hurt feelings that we weren't included on the "Kicking Ass" DNC blogroll, but I'll give them a plug anyway. (Me, I can understand ... but Buzzflash???)

Join the Carville/Begala $500,000 challenge.


digby 9/19/2003 01:40:00 PM |

 
Round Two

As I was pondering this problem with the cheese eaters last night, I remembered that our good friend Michael Ledeen was way out ahead of Tom Friedman in recognizing that the French are now an official enemy of the United States.

Last March, when the vin guzzlers first had the ineffable gall to stand in the way of an immediate invasion --- one which which we insisted was imperative because Saddam was blatantly lying about his massive cache of WMD and was preparing to use them any minute (ahem) --- Ledeen set forth his theory about France’s cunning plan to destroy America:

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States.

So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.

[...]

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

Radio Free France, anyone?

I'm surprised that Mr. Friedman hasn't yet made the connection that Ledeen made lo those many months ago. France is not just any old enemy of the US. It is protecting its terrorist partners in their mutual plan to destroy the United States.

(Just as obvious are the French people’s desires for freedom. Dr. Rice drew the obvious comparison when she observed that we liberated the German people from Hitler in WWII. It may be time to open a can 'o whoop ass on the dictator Jacques Chirac and give those Frenchies a whiff 'o freedom fries.)

Luckily, according to the NY Times today Colin and Condi also have a cunning plan in place -- the same plan, as it happens, that worked so spectacularly during the last UN negotiations.

Last winter, in the face of a threat by France to wield its veto power, the United States tried to line up 9 of the 15 Security Council votes to pass a resolution authorizing the use of force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. American officials said that if they had won the votes, France might have abandoned its veto threat.

President Bush then maintained that the United States did not need the resolution to go to war.

The big difference this time is that even French officials say France will not veto a new resolution.

"Powell is upset about the French, but the fact is they are not in a combative mood on this," a senior European diplomat said. "Behind closed doors, the French are saying they would never dream of vetoing. There is no fighting spirit here."

[…]

American officials discussing the strategy of trying to isolate France said it reflected mounting concern among administration officials that in their view, virtually every policy adopted by France in recent months has seemed to try to thwart American policies in Iraq and elsewhere.

"There are just a lot of bad feelings toward the French," an administration official said. "Every time they talk about multilateralism, we know that it's nothing more than a euphemism for constraining the United States."

Earlier this year, the administration was surprised when Russia sided with France over the war resolution. Germany's opposition had been well known. The other surprise was the American failure to enlist African and Latin American nations.
After that diplomatic setback, the administration adopted a policy of punishing France in symbolic ways.

In effect, administration officials say, the policy now is to enlist the Germans in negotiating a possible compromise resolution and to offer Russia a chance to take part in Iraq's reconstruction — as well as get a share of the lucrative contracts to be offered. Mr. Powell has repeatedly praised Russia and Germany for trying to work out a compromise.

A diplomat familiar with administration thinking summarized the American policy as "talk to the Germans, buy off the Russians and isolate the French."

Another was less polite, saying Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser, had characterized the approach as "ignore, reward and punish."

Now why is the administration leaking such things to the NY Times and gullible useful idiots like Tom Friedman? And why would we adopt the same exact strategy we used last time with such spectacularly bad results?

Well, perhaps it’s because the results we are seeking are not the ones we claim they are. Maybe we don’t really want the UN involved in Iraq (especially now that we’ve found out they aren’t going to pony up much more than Dick Cheney’s annual Hallibuton stipend.) Perhaps we are after the same results as last time for the same reasons: buying time, scapegoating, delegitimizing the UN and domestic politics.

Those damned French are refusing to do what is needed to reconstruct Iraq and that is why it is not succeeding. If Rove plays his cards right, in a matter of months the administration should be able to convince a majority of Americans that the French are paying terrorists rewards for every American they kill in Iraq.

But, Colin and Condi will bear any burden, take any amount of time necessary to ensure that we do everything we can to force France to stop supporting terrorism and live up to its obligations. It could take months, but they will not give up --- at least until things calm down enough for President Flightsuit Arbusto to triumphantly parachute into Baghdad with his harness cinched up so high that G. Gordon Liddy pops a Viagra and propositions Chris Matthews on live television.

They’re looking at around October, 2004 to officially declare victory over the Iraqi terrorists and their French partners.

At which point Wolfie and the Dicks will open up that bottle of Dom Perignon they’ve been hoarding in the basement of the Pentagon and privately declare Operation Elect the Moron a success.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that things will not magically improve in Iraq over the next year, in which case we will have to declare war on the Syrians.

France will not have anyone but itself to blame if that happens.



digby 9/19/2003 12:19:00 PM |

 
Crazies

As I have said many times, the neocons have always been wrong about everything. Until now, they were kept in a little corner where they couldn't do any catastrophic harm:

AMY GOODMAN: And you worked directly under George Bush

RAY MCGOVERN: I did when he was director for CIA and later I saw him every other morning for a couple of years in the 80’s when he was Vice President.

AMY GOODMAN: Doing what?

RAY MCGOVERN: I was one of the briefers who prepared the President’s daily brief and delivered it and briefed people one on one with the senior officials downtown.

AMY GOODMAN:Now one of the things we are talking about a lot and seeing a lot is that the same people that were there during the Reagan-Bush years and even before, the Wolfowitzes the Rumsfelds, Cheneys were there then. What was George Bush’s view of these people then?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, you know it’s really interesting. When we saw these people coming back in town, all of us said who were around in those days said, oh my god, ‘the crazies’ are back – ‘the crazies’ – that’s how we referred to these people.

AMY GOODMAN: Did George Bush refer to them that way?

RAY MCGOVERN: That’s the way everyone referred to them.

AMY GOODMAN: Including George Bush?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, when Wolfowitz prepared that defense posture statement in 1991, where he elucidated the strategic vision that has now been implemented, Jim Baker, Secretary of State, Brent Scowcroft, security advisor to George Bush, and George Bush said hey, that thing goes right into the circular file. Suppress that thing, get rid of it. Somebody had the presence of mind to leak it and so that was suppressed. But now to see that arise out of the ashes and be implemented. while we start a war against Iraq, I wonder what Bush the first is really thinking. Because these were the same guys that all of us referred to as ‘the crazies’.

This is what happens when you allow a spoiled, stupid prince with a daddy complex to take control of the most powerful country in the world. It's worth remembering how Lil' Cap'n T-Ball came to bring this entire group of nutballs into the highest reaches of decision making:

From Salon, How the neoconservatives conquored Washington by Michael Lind

They [the neocons] supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.

Then they had a stroke of luck -- Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.

The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.

It's Shakespearean. The question is whether it's tragedy or farce.




digby 9/19/2003 03:55:00 AM |

 
JAWS

Tristero tells Nicholas Lehman that he needs to stop assuming that Bush has ideas that are worth discussing.

Wha?? There's nothing impressive about what Bush said at all, except for the sheer stupidity of framing an argument so badly. The Middle East will never be a place that is either progressive and peaceful or violent and terrifying. The world doesn't work that way. There is never peace or violence; they must inevitably coexist. To frame the Middle East situation as Bush does is, at best, an invitation to an endless, fruitless, insane crusade (yes, that word) to eliminate evil. It can never be accomplished because evil, as Bush uses the term, is a worthless concept. Bush's reasoning is the reasoning of a moral idiot and you are an enabler of his idiocy by declaring it "impressive", despite the fact that you refute his point immediately afterwards.

You do this a lot, Nick. You seem to admire Bush's words and merely regret that his words don't apply very well to the situation. You are making a terrible mistake. Bush's premises are profoundly flawed.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is true of a lot of good writers who are trying to sort out just what in the hell is going on with this administration. They are rational people so they begin with the idea that Junior and the Retreads are pursuing some sort of logical ends. In order to try and organize what they see, I think they end up having to attach meaning to words and actions that simply aren't there in order to keep themselves from going crazy. I know that it is one of the constant pitfalls in my own thinking.

I have have to remind myself that they are like sharks, a predatory eating machine. They have a list of goals, many unassociated and many contradictory, but they just keep moving --- relentlessly biting off one item at a time without regard to the consequences. Logic has nothing to do with it.



digby 9/19/2003 02:51:00 AM |

Thursday, September 18, 2003

 
Holy Codpiece, Batman!

Mahablog says the Bushies are playing a six degrees of separation game with Saddam and al Qaeda:

What the neocons are trying to do is akin to a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. Much of the world is swarming with Muslim terrorist groups, and sometimes these groups work together, and sometimes they don't, and some individuals move between groups, and if you look hard enough you can always find this guy who knew this other guy who was in an al Qaeda cell, and the first guy met with somebody who knew Saddam Hussein ten years ago, according to another guy.

Hell, using this same technique, we could prove that George W. Bush was in league with al Qaeda. There are fewer degrees of separation between him and Osama than most other people on the planet.

This is correct. In fact, there are only two degrees of separation --

Bush - Arbusto investor Salem bin Laden - Osama bin Laden

Bush - Dana Rohrbacher - Osama bin Laden

Bush - Prince Bandar - Osama bin Laden

Still, as much as I like this theory, reader Dennis S. clued me into another that I find more believable. He believes that Junior himself has been convinced of a far more insidious type of conspiracy, one with which he is intimately familiar and one that he continues to study to this day.

Remember the old Batman TV series? How all the badguys would hang out together? The Riddler and the Penguin et al, plotting against Batman? President Dikhed thinks that since Osama and Saddam are both bad guys they obviously must hang out and plot against Commander Codpeice, superhero of the American Way.

I think this might be the real reason for the persistent yammering about a non-existent connection between al Qaeda and Saddam. To Junior, that is the way the world works.



digby 9/18/2003 05:20:00 PM |

 
Pushing Back

After reading today’s puerile little anti-French screed I am forced to conclude that anything insightful Tom Friedman ever wrote was a fluke.

He says the French are our enemy because they have not magnanimously offered to “assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.”

Yes. That’s the smart way to deal with the Bush administration. Put your best deal on the table and let them up the ante. They are soooo trustworthy and honest in their dealings that you needn’t fear that they will screw you. Being above board in all things is their watchword.

And the French are little pink bunnies who were born yesterday.

Friedman relays the following as if it were a sacred truth as passed down from Moses himself:

Let me spell it out in simple English: if America is defeated in Iraq by a coalition of Saddamists and Islamists, radical Muslim groups — from Baghdad to the Muslim slums of Paris — will all be energized, and the forces of modernism and tolerance within these Muslim communities will be on the run.

And we know this because we’ve already seen how cowed terrorists are by our magnificent military might and democratic motivations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The entire Arab world is trembling in fear and yet are simultaneously terribly impressed with our benevolence, kindness and generosity; they are particularly moved by the competence we’ve shown thus far in the post-war aftermath. Needless to say, like everyone else in the world, they are very likely bowled over by the expertise and skill of our intelligence services with their preternatural gifts for knowing if they’ve been bad or good (so be good for goodness sake!)

Just today we hear reports that Saudi Arabia is thinking of putting out feelers to buy a small nuclear bomb or two from our other close ally Pakistan.

Oh yes. The plan is working perfectly.

It doesn’t occur to Friedman that this magical kool-aid formula that he and the neocons are swilling by the gallon just MIGHT BE WRONG. Maybe this administration’s continued insistence on running things in Iraq after our blatant lies and mistakes leading up to the war are the very things that are making this beautiful flowering of democracy IMPOSSIBLE.

Nobody believes a fucking thing we say anymore, whether it’s about WMD or civil liberties or transforming Iraq into a non-drinking version of Tennessee. This is not France’s fault and it isn’t the EU’s fault and it isn’t the UN’s fault. It is the Bush administration’s fault and whether or not the French “want us to fail” is of little consequence. We are the one’s who are failing.

The question is whether France has an obligation to involve itself in a terrible mess, against the will of its own people, that they were on the record opposing in no uncertain terms and which they do not believe is going to be successful under the leadership of a bunch of bungling megalomaniacs.

Even more importantly the question is whether they might think they should try to put the brakes on this neocon fantasy called the Bush Doctrine before something really, really bad happens. Although it's somewhat in doubt that Friedman has bothered to read it, we can be sure that the leaders of France have, as well as the numerous underlying writings that fully explain its goals, something Tom Friedman should also do before he start throwing around stupid accusations about the French launching “Operation America Must Fail.”

Long before any such (non-existent) French perfidy was conceived, fellows like Charles Krauthammer were writing in his article Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World: "America's purpose should be to steer the world away from its coming multipolar future toward a qualitatively new outcome--a unipolar world" shaped and led by American power. Ben Wattenberg wrote: "We are the first universal nation. 'First' as in the first one, 'first' as in 'number one.' And 'universal' within our borders and globally.A unipolar world is a good thing, if America is the uni." link

It may be that the disagreements between Europe and the US aren’t about some unhinged French hatred for America, as Friedman seems to think, nor are they necessarily the natural consequence of European cultural hedonism leading to military weakness, as Robert Kaplan asserts in his unctuously condescending article, Power and Weakness.

It’s just possible that the French and others, based upon their historical experience as well as a clear reading of the intentions of the US government, have decided to push back for bigger reasons than thwarting the onanistic mid-east fantasy of a bunch of delusional neocons.

They may believe that enabling the US to run the world as a “hegemony” is not in their best interest. They may sincerely believe that a real multi-polar world is preferable, not because they are weak and flabby, but because they know that when a nation’s leaders start talking about “global military dominance” it has always translated into bad results for ordinary people, no matter who does it.

Maybe they have learned from their own mistakes.

Friedman would do well do at least consider that France’s intransigence is born of something a bit more nuanced than petulance, greed and bad temper (although they, like everybody else, have ample amounts of them.) The logical reason for their behavior is that they don’t trust this government and its newfound enthusiasm for using its huge military as far as they can throw it.

And in that they are joined by millions and millions of others all around the world, many of them right here in the Homeland itself. A few of us have read the history of Empire, too. We don't have to actually live it to learn its lessons.



digby 9/18/2003 02:17:00 PM |

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

 
Punch Line

Pandagon has a good post up about the ramifications of the delay in the recall.

I believe that allowing the voting public time to know the potential replacement candidates plays to Governor Gray's greatest strength. He is the master of "lesser of two evils" politics and that is the single most important political skill in California today. Even with 135 rivals, he still looks like the best choice.

If the Republicans had ever put up a reasonable candidate to run against him they probably could have won. Yes, Davis did run negative ads against the saintly Dick Riordan in primary season -- just as Jebbie ran negative ads against McBride -- but the California Republicans weren't the victim of chip implants in their brains that forced them to nominate Simon because of it. (And they say Democrats are stupid...)

I have to believe that there simply aren't any good Republican candidates in this state. Desperately embracing a crude, ill informed, overwhelmed cyborg as their savior pretty much confirms it.

One thing is clear. Arnold is not wearing well. In bars and living rooms across the state, the greatest guaranteed laugh of the night, across the board, is the sighting of his advertisement where the earnest young lady asks, "How do you plan to end the budget crises?" Arnold answers," Here's my plan. On day one open the books. Audit everything. TAnd then we'll end this crazy deficit spending."

I don't know if it's the accent or the substance, but whatever it is it brings down the house.


Update: Corrected Arnold's quote.





digby 9/17/2003 12:20:00 PM |

 
Lovin' Our Dear Leader

From the "imagine if Bill Clinton had...." files:

Via W. Post

State Department types were taken aback last week to find that a longtime diplomatic photo exhibit along a busy corridor to the cafeteria had been taken down. The two dozen mostly grainy black and white shots were a historic progression of great diplomatic moments, sources recalled.

There was an original political cartoon from the Jefferson era showing Britain and France pick-pocketing the Americans; there were pictures of negotiations with Indian tribes over land; President Woodrow Wilson at Versailles; former secretary of state Elihu Root somewhere; Roosevelt and Churchill signing the Atlantic Charter; former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze in cowboy boots at Jackson Hole; a splendid shot of the old State Department building; and a photo of President Ronald Reagan at a meeting with a very young Colin L. Powell seated behind him.

Then they were gone. And what was put up in their place? What else? A George W. Bush family album montage of 21 large photos of the president as diplomat. He's speaking at the United Nations and meeting with foreign leaders. There are several shots of Bush with first lady Laura Bush -- exiting a plane, touring the Forum in Rome and visiting Japan. (There's one of just Laura Bush and Jordan's Queen Noor at a U.N. conference.) There's one of Bush meeting in happier days with his very good friend Jacques Chirac, president of France, and another with his even better friend, Gerhard Schroeder, chancellor of Germany. There's a fine shot of him yucking it up in Beijing with former Chicom boss Jiang Zemin, aka the Robin Williams of the Middle Kingdom.

There may be a few spare headless statues lying around Baghdad that we would look mighty fine with a smirking simian's image on top. And, I'm thinking maybe the Lincoln memorial could be similarly improved with a "fresh new face."

Anybody who says that Laura meeting with Queen Noor isn't more noteworthy than Roosevelt and Churchill then they are nothing but America hating traitors --- which describes everybody in the State Department except for John Bolton.




digby 9/17/2003 11:04:00 AM |

 
Creepy SACEUR

TBOGG gives a good run down of the smear machine's opening salvos on Clark.

All I can say is if I'd known he spoke fluent Russian I never would have supported the commie bastard.

As TBOGG says:

So what we have here is a "creepy"- Jewish - Russian - speaking - moved - from - Illinois -l ike - Hillary - fellow - traveling - Rhodes - Scholar - like - the - Clenis - Christian - compound - assaulting - fire - abortionist running for President.

I can see how that would be troubling to the peoplewho have grown quite fond of our alcoholic - coke - snorting - baby - aborting - military - service - deserting - insider - trading - deathrow - prisoner - mocking - State - of - the - Union - address - lying - drunk - driving - bible - thumping - running - away - on - 9/11 - flightsuit - donning Commander in Chief.

I'm also looking forward to hearing more from the Jealous Generals ... anonymously, of course.

HESIOD has more, along with some good advice.



digby 9/17/2003 10:15:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

 
Fight Club

Kos seems to believe that Clark is getting ready to run a top-down dirty campaign against Dean based upon the fact that he's hired a couple of bare knuckle Clinton Gore operatives.

I think it's a bit premature to assume such a thing, but I'm no expert. Perhaps Clark read this and realized that the internet breakthrough that seems to be happening with both the Dean and Clark movements might be a bit overstated and decided he needed to hire some seasoned presidential campaign pros to take the campaign from the early grassroots to a professional media campaign.

We internet junkies, like the direct mail McGovernites discussed in the article, are a very narrow constituency. It's strategic mass marketing and tough counterpunching that will win this election, just as it has been for the last 30 years. A candidate can't do that without some rough and tumble guys with experience in his corner. (Rove certainly isn't going to be playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.)

So, let the games begin ... Dean and Clark are both big, tough boys. What doesn't kill them will only make them stronger.




digby 9/16/2003 10:18:00 PM |

 
Novakula Strikes

I don't know if he screwed the pooch or not, but Novak just unleashed the first major hit on Wesley Clark. He claims that they were trying to kick Clark out of the Army (for reasons unarticulated) until Clark appealed to Satan er... Clinton to give him his fourth star.

Shocking, shocking accusations. I certainly hope that they get to the bottom of the scandal by investigating which other nefarious people gave the miscreant his first 3 stars, not to mention his silver star and purple hearts.

I hope the U.S. Military is prepared to open up the sick, deplorable institution they've become and shine a little sunshine on the liberal patronage system that is the officer corps of the US Army.



Clarification: I heard Novak say this on Crossfire. I'll link when they publish the transcript.



digby 9/16/2003 02:09:00 PM |

 
Honorable Dignified Response

Via Media News: Amanpour says CNN was intimidated by WH, Fox during war.

CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour said on Tina Brown's CNBC show last week: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled (its Iraq war coverage). I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

FOX NEWS' RESPONSE: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

Evidently, Fox News takes their motto very seriously. Being Fair and Balanced requires them to point out the equivalency of the Bush administration and al Qaeda. Good for them.

Update: Jayzuz, if you don't read Atrios every damned five minutes you miss something like this from yesterday.




digby 9/16/2003 11:37:00 AM |

 
He's All That Without the Bag 'O (Poker) Chips

TBOGG points to an important admonishment by one of America's greatest moral leaders, one whom I'm privileged to hear and and read constantly here in Los Angeles, Mr. Dennis Prager:

Nothing is quite as symbolic of the narcissism at the heart of contemporary "progressive" policies than the belief that because there are non-Christian employees at a company, its Christmas party may not be called one. Who do 5 percent of the employees think they are that they feel empowered to demand that the other 95 percent not celebrate their party with the name that they want? And what kind of mindset denies a company the right to celebrate a national holiday?

Prager is Jewish, so he's being especially principled by saying this. That's what makes him so darned spectacularly caring and generous.

TBOGG rightly responds by asking whether any right thinking company should even employ such a hateful 5% and I have to agree.

But what I think is even more significant is Prager's brave willingness to take on the powerful liberal anti-Christmas movement in this country and expose them for the hateful totalitarians they really are. Finally, someone stands up for the 95 percent majority of devout Christians in the workplace who have been tortured by the fact that their annual drunken, gluttonous ass-grabbing and ass-kissing celebration is now called a "holiday" party instead of the precious religious observation it is designed to be.

Thank the dear Lord for someone like Dennis Prager who feels the immense and overwhelming pain of the masses at being marginalized by a bunch of America hating non-Christians. You'd better believe that every water cooler and lunch room in the country will be abuzz today. Forget overtime, this is what America's workers truly care about.


digby 9/16/2003 09:52:00 AM |

Monday, September 15, 2003

 
Lord Peerless

Isn’t it refreshing to read the words of a distinguished Independent who can see through the shenanigans of both Parties and expose them for the cynical manipulative jacknapes they are? His Grace, Lord Saleton, the Duke of Slate delivers a thorough dressing down to those nasty odiferous Democrats that would make even a heathen Jacobite realize that it is all so very silly to be a partisan. It’s much better to remove one’s self from the lower orders who muck about in the political mud, splashing it willy nilly on their betters.

I am, therefore, from this day forward, an Independent. I shall spend my days staring in the mirror at my remarkable visage congratulating myself on being a peerless, dispassionate observer of the hideous hoi polloi while remaining above the fray.

My newfound evenhandedness comes as a result of the great Lord Saleton’s brave revelations about the unseemly new proclivity of the Democratic rabble to accuse the Republicans of being dishonest while pretending that they are not even more dishonest themselves. Yes, they are actually doing that. I know it’s difficult to fathom but it will do our class no good to put our heads in our jewelry boxes and pretend otherwise.

The scope of Democratic perfidy was so shocking I had to have my butler administer a large draught of laudanum and Madeira just to keep my poor head from spinning. When I revived, I was eminently grateful that that His Lordship was sufficiently clearheaded that he was able to suppress these absurd ramblings in just a few short paragraphs:

In Florida, Al Gore originally asked for a recount only in counties in which he thought Democrats would gain votes. Moreover, to be precise, he wasn't for "counting" more ballots; he was for reinterpreting already-counted ballots until he came out ahead. Gore's lawyer, David Boies, argued that ballots should be interpreted as votes for Bush or Gore based on "the intent of the voter, not how the voter manifests his or her intent"—in other words, without rules. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a Gore surrogate, actually claimed, "The punch cards were wrong." Gore eventually moderated his position, but not until he had to.

And here I had thought that the knave Albert of Gore had asked for recounts in certain counties because there was no provision for a statewide recount in Florida law and asking for one would have necessitated appealing to each county in the state under an extreme time constraint. Wherever did I get the idea that precedent implied that applying for recounts in particular counties was predicated upon the idea that both parties would choose certain counties to serve as proxies for their support in the state as a whole? Merciful heavens, how misinformed I have been!

And I had also been under the misapprehension that he had asked that all ballots in the requested counties be recounted and now it is revealed that he only wanted already counted ballots to be “reinterpreted” until “he came out ahead.” My dear God, how can the man live with himself?

And then there is the vile Shylock, Mr David Bois, asking that the intent of the voter be the basis of interpretation. The rotten cur. Yes, the state constitution may have explicitly said that the votes must be counted so as to reflect the intent of the voter, and the scurrilous rogue Bois may have been talking about situations in which the ballots clearly showed a preference that the machines were unable to detect, but those of us who reside above the stinking morass of partisan politics know that he was really arguing that the recount should be conducted with no rules at all. That is the way “those people” think.

As for that most famous partisan General Markey, only a fool would believe that his statement didn’t reflect the totality of the legal arguments set forth in the various court cases. There was nothing more that needed to be said. The Democrats are, quite simply, liars and idiots.

But, Lord Saleton doesn’t stop there! He shrewdly points out that the Texas Republicans are only violating custom, not law, in attempting to redistrict to their advantage only two years after a court redrew the lines. Finally, someone points out that custom is no longer a guiding force in our culture. We modern Independents answer to nothing but the law and the rules. It’s true that Archbishop Thomas DeLay said quite plainly that he wanted to redistrict because he “wanted more seats,” but that is his privilege as head of the House of Common Republicans. Unless there is a specific law against it, there can be nothing wrong with it.

(And, Lord Saleton verrry cleverly uses the most devastating tool in his rhetorical arsenal. He says, “I can only imagine the cries of outrage I'd be hearing from my liberal friends if those were Republicans thwarting a Democratic legislature.” Checkmate, my little partisan friends.)

As for His Grace’s revelations about the despicable claims that His Highness is not legitimate, one can only say bravissimo! Just because the electoral college vote in the state governed by the president’s brother was decided by a mere 500 votes and the president didn’t win the popular vote and a divided Supreme Court decided the election in a legally dubious decision and the Republicans impeached a Democratic president on a party line vote just 2 years earlier, doesn’t mean that the Democrats should be unmannerly and accuse the Republicans of undemocratic actions and assuming the presidency through ignoble means. In any event, if the Republicans threw punch card ballots over the white cliffs of Dover would that give the Democrats leave to do the same? I think not.

Similarly, Democrats have absolutely nothing to complain of when the paid citizen gatherers of Viscount Issa managed to persuade the harried vassals of California to sign petitions (whilst carrying bags of nappies and victuals outside the market) to oust the evil Grayman of Davis from his unlawfully obtained governorship. After all, he did deserve it. He violated the rights of Republicans to vote for the governor of their choice by running advertisements in their primary. True, there is no law against it, and the technique was used by many Republicans in other states, but it is unseemly to violate customs merely because they are not technically unlawful.

We Independents do not believe that just because a law does not exist prohibiting certain behavior that we should nonetheless engage in such behavior. There is such a thing as right and wrong. And, while Republicans may have engaged in similar behavior, their states do not have similar recall laws so they logically cannot be held to the same standard.

Lord Fair and Balanced concludes his unbiased observations by revealing what is really important in this debate.

I'm not excusing the games Republicans play. But by projecting all evil onto Republicans, Democrats spread the same political disease: the notion that you don't have to be wary of lying or cheating unless the other side is doing it. Lying and cheating don't belong to Republicans or Democrats. We're all susceptible, and we're all guilty.

Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that's your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you're interested in which wing lies more, you're probably not very interested in the truth.

Indeed. If one is more interested in the lies of one side or another, one is simply inferior to those of us who are taking the High Road. We do not care about the silly prevarications of politicians, whether it be about the democratic system or weapons of mass destruction.

How tedious these little people become with their shrillness. Quiet please. Great minds such as ours must be serene and tranquil in order to remain above the fray. Please, please keep it down, children.

Would you care for a kumquat?




digby 9/15/2003 06:55:00 PM |

 
Religious Tolerance

Calpundit says that atheistic types should let up about religious symbols in the public square because it unfairly tags liberalism as being irreligious and hurts the Democrats for no good reason.

I might be persuaded to agree but only after we’ve truly tested the constitutional argument that religious conservatives have been making --- that the establishment clause has been misinterpreted. Their argument is that religious speech in general, not just Christianity, has been banished from state institutions and that this perverts the founders intention which was that America should be a country of religious pluralism not secularism.

Therefore, I would like to see the issue engaged in a different way. The next time a Judge Roy Moore wants to install the Ten Commandments in his courtroom or some high school senior wants to lead the school in a prayer I would encourage several people of different faiths to demand that their religion be treated no differently and observed in exactly the same manner. I think it might be especially helpful if Muslims, Buddhists, Rastafarians and Scientologists waged this fight since they represent a variety of ways in which American politics’ new public embrace of religion might be tested.

My gut tells me that the reason the body of law developed as it did was that judges and legislators knew from reading the history of Europe that it was far more practical to secularize the state apparatus than it was to try to get various religions to agree that each was equally entitled to a claim on that apparatus. In fact, it may be just that reasoning that allowed this country, more than all others, to enable religious pluralism and allow so many different faiths to flourish along side each other relatively comfortably.

Rather than just allow the Christians to unilaterally change that to their advantage however, let’s put the establishment clause to the test. If Judge Roy Moore would not object to having a statue of Heile Selassie next to his monument or a bunch of Hare Krishna’s selling books in the lobby of the courthouse, then I suppose I couldn’t really argue with his sincerity in making the claim that he’s not trying to unconstitutionally establish Christianity as the state religion.

If he does object then I think we’ll know that his agenda is really to establish his religion as the legitimate religious voice associated with the state. And, that is exactly what the establishment clause was designed to prevent.




digby 9/15/2003 01:11:00 PM |

Saturday, September 13, 2003

 
Neoconmen

Just to add my voice to the chorus, I'll agree that Wolfowitz's retreat on the issue of al Qaeda terrorists crawling all over Iraq is a media tactic.

I've told the story before, but I'll repeat it here (because, well...why not?)

When I was volunteering for the Clinton campaign in 1992, I happened to find myself alone with a very high level campaign strategist one night. I was gloating about the fact that Mary Matalin had had to apologize that day for a misstatement she'd made about our candidate.

This operative just shook his head and said, "Yeah, but she got it out there, didn't she?"

Since then, I have expected this kind of thing coming from campaign strategists, operatives and party tools. And both sides do it to some extent. It's their job to manipulate the media and it's a comment on the total incompetence of that media that they can get away with it.

But, until now there was a dividing line between those people and policy wonks whose reputation rested on their professional integrity. They simply didn't do this kind of thing for purely political purposes. Brad De Long has discussed this in terms of the economic advisors as did John DiUllio in his infamous Esquire article.

It's true that in the foreign policy realm, there have been many examples of wonks floating untruths for the purpose of leading the press in certain directions for policy reasons. But, this complete merging of domestic politics and policy among the professionals is, if not unprecedented, extremely unusual.

Wolfowitz, by showing his true stripes these last couple of weeks, finally and completely reveals that he is not the high minded neocon visionary that everyone assumed. He's a political hack.

In fact, it is beginning to become pretty obvious that the entire neocon movement isn't an intellectual undertaking at all. It's just another GOP con game.


digby 9/13/2003 01:33:00 PM |

 
Grandiloquent Putz

A big bravo to Natasha at Pacific Views:

I wrote a post a while ago suggesting that whatever our differences, Democrats shouldn't pick each other apart. I even repented of my former hostility towards the idea that I might be forced to vote for Lieberman if he wound up on the Democratic ticket. However, over the course of the Democratic debates, I'm reminded why I thought that way in the first place.

It isn't because I don't believe Lieberman is a 'real' Democrat. And I think, as I said before, that we need to drop that whole silly line of debate. It's because, on balance, I think he's a pompous windbag. And god knows, Democrats have to work like hell to shake that whole pompous windbag PR.

That really is the problem with Lieberman --- his politics aren't that much farther to the right than most of the major Dems. It's simply that he is unbearably sanctimonious. He makes William Bennet (especially these days) seem like a ring-a-ding-ding member of the Rat Pack.

Is it possible that Lieberman actually thinks that people voted for President T-Ball because of his phony spiritual pandering rather than his crotchgrabbing, frat-boy personality?

Whatever the case, he's completely out of touch with the current climate. He's only going to damage the party if he doesn't wise up.






digby 9/13/2003 12:35:00 PM |

 
Subliminal Wurlitzer Music

Atrios says of Bobo Brooks' latest column, "to the extent that it is coherent it's actually profoundly offensive."

Arthur Silber says "I guess there might be an interesting point in Brooks' topic somewhere, but he certainly doesn't manage to find it, or make it."

I think Brooks is actually doing something quite innovative with his first two columns for the liberal NY Times by subtly playing to the prejudices of his new audience in service of his old one. In both columns he presents himself in full patented "even handed" mode by ostensibly criticizing George W. Bush. But, in reality, he's implanting certain images and memes in the discourse that help George W. Bush.

In the first column he portrayed the muscular Bush administration as being unwilling to admit it was wrong --- but ending up doing the right thing nonetheless. Never complain, never explain. Just get the job done, dammit. Peggy Noonan and the girls sigh deeply and call for another Mojito. He's no jump roping Clinton. Real Men never apologize; they're too busy saving the world.

Today, in a twofer, he twists Dean's straight talking image and real record of accomplishment into one of a phony blue blooded aristocrat who was bred for leadership and merely pretends to be a regular guy. This is designed to sow doubts among his followers about his authenticity.

Then, setting aside his obvious mental deficiencies and life long failures, he uses the same WASP association to elevate the image of the real inbred Little Prince to show that his silver spoon actually well prepared him for leadership.

The first two Brooks columns have very creatively made Bush appear to be a strong, decisive leader, who by birth and experience was destined to lead the world -- a man unaffected by the criticism of the chattering classes, focused only on results. He's done this in a much more subtle way than the bludgeoning you find on Fox or the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but we should not mistake it for anything but the Bush marketing it really is.

And, by the way, his new audience isn't us. And it isn't really the readers of the NY Times. It's the news writers of the SCLM.






digby 9/13/2003 11:27:00 AM |

Thursday, September 11, 2003

 
Fire Him

Jayzuz.

Even the Soviets had more respect for the concept of inalienable human rights than this asshole does. At least they held show trials, fergawdsake --- a pretense of due process that acknowledged, however disingenuously, that a civilized society must offer a legal justification for imprisoning someone.

We don't even pretend to have principles anymore.



digby 9/11/2003 08:36:00 PM |

 
Grand Strategy

Matthew Yglesias has such a good post up today --- honest, heartfelt and smart. The discussion of his intellectual journey from cautious multilateral hawk to Grand Strategy neocon and back is one of the first pieces I’ve read that actually describes the salient difference between the two, and one which (for once) accurately describes the difference between most Democrats and the starry eyed idealists in the "grown-up" administration.

I certainly agree that Americans aren’t especially suited for unilateralism. Spartans we aren't. We’ve got other things to do than fight an extremely expensive perpetual war for global dominance. And our president hasn't exactly made a case for term sacrifice other than to shop til we drop.

However, I think he gives short shrift to the “much-maligned Clinton policy of crisis-management … keep the country strong, the alliances firm, and when something goes wrong to try to set it right.” I actually think it IS a grand strategy, in that it allows the US, through step-by-step example, education, commerce and leadership to lure the world to liberal democracy. It is the only way it will work in the long term. Force is on the menu, and will of course be necessary from time to time to protect ourselves or our allies. But, it alone cannot create the necessary environment for positive change.

The fallacy of the Bush Doctrine and the entire Neocon Grand Strategy lies in its internally illogical belief that democracy and freedom can be forced on others through the barrel of a gun.

It’s basically the difference between enticing someone into bed and raping them. They both end with the same basic act, but those who are the object of the first feel quite differently about the method of getting there than the second. It’s true that the charmed may feel manipulated, but they are unlikely to feel violated and angry. The difference, needless to say, is the difference between choice and coercion.

digby 9/11/2003 08:19:00 PM |

 
PoMo-tional Opportunities

According to Howard Fineman:

There is evidence everywhere that, at heart, George Bush’s re-election strategy will focus on touting his aggressive use of the American military abroad (and the government’s investigative powers at home) in the war on terror—while simultaneously (by presidential inference and surrogate attack) accusing Democratic opponents of being too wimpy by nature to handle the bad guys.

[…]

White House insiders I’ve talked to in recent days say, in sum, the following: that they plan to sell the president to the country based on what they see as his strength of character, his leaderly resolve and his sense of moral clarity—a man’s man, in other words.

That’s the main reason why I’m for Clark. Bush’s so-called strength is an image that’s been created out of whole cloth, with the willing acquiescence of a confused and shallow media. We should throw down the gauntlet and challenge this absurd perception. But, we have to do it right.

As much as I hate to deal with matters of life and death in this way, I’m afraid that we have no choice. The post-modern presidency isn’t really the problem. They’re simply taking advantage of the post-modern media.

This interesting book by Pippa Norris; The Virtuous Circle, Political Communications in Post Industrial Societies (pdf) discusses the current situation:

Focus groups and opinion polls can be seen as an effective way that parties can stay in touch with public opinion, and one which is more representative of the general electorate than reliance upon the opinions of local party activists.

Alternatively, the evolution of modern and post -modern campaigns can be seen as threatening the democratic process, widening the gap between citizens and their representatives. If parties and candidates adopt whatever message seems most likely to resonate with focus groups, if pollsters, consultants and advertisers rather than politicians come to determine the content of campaigns, and if ‘spin’ outweighs ‘substance’, then the serious business of government may be replaced by the superficial manipulation of images. ”Packaging politics”, Bob Franklin argues, “impoverishes political debate by oversimplifying and trivializing political communications.”

[...]

Some fear that the shift in campaign techniques may have a direct impact on civic engagement; if voters have become passive spectators of symbolic events staged in television studios rather than active participants in local party meetings and community campaigns. As discussed earlier, the most common concern is that post-modern campaigns turn off voters due the decline of face-to-face communications and the rise of practices such as negative news highly adversarial to government, horse-race journalism, and trivialization of campaign discourse.

The Dean and Clark phenomena are exceptionally good news, then. Instead of being passive spectators, the people have used one of the new technologies to facilitate the face-to-face communications that many believe are indispensable to counteract the increasingly deadening impact of the post-modern campaign.

But, if anyone believes that this is going to supplant the powerful mainstream news media by 2004 they are living in dreamland. For the coming election (and perhaps for the foreseeable future) political campaigns will have to be run, at least in part, as product marketing --- “packaging politics” as it’s referred to above. As long as huge sums of money are at stake in elections, as long as human beings are more engaged in their day to day lives than in the abstract and complex issues of national governance and as long as television remains the public’s primary entertainment and information medium, we are going to have to recognize that symbols, archetypes, images, soundbites, brands and metaphors are the means to sell the message.

And, I think we need to relax a little bit about it. Post modern communication isn’t immoral and it isn’t stupid. It’s just fast, fleeting and simple. The problem is that policy, politics and governing aren’t.

I don’t think there’s any turning back. We must accept this new reality and learn to work with it, while we try to balance it out with sincere grassroots democratic efforts like the Dean Meet-ups and the draft Clark campaigns. If we fail to do both we will lose, and the simple reason is that the other side is doing it already.

The hard core of the Republican party are, by and large, very amenable to appeals to authority. The dominance of talk radio and fundamentalist pulpits and it’s insularity from the chaotic give and take of real debate give the dittoheads the illusion of winning without ever having to fight.

But, the GOP’s dirty little secret is that they know that the majority of Americans are not by nature authoritarians --- they are individualists and communitarians. This goes back to the puritans and pioneers who settled this country. And it is why they have used the post modern media to portray the Republican Party caring about such formerly local concerns as education and why they spend so much time promoting their brand-name-in-a-suit as a particular archetype --- a manly, maverick warrior. The Party is branding itself as the New England Town Meeting meets the Western ideal and the Southern Cavalier.

They are remarkably successful at this largely because the post modern media is set up to deal with images, sensation and speed and the Republicans are willing and able to give them what they need. Not surprisingly they have also figured out that in this fast and fleeting post modern media world, dishonesty and rank manipulation are more possible than they’ve been since Hearst practically ran US foreign policy.

Unfortunately, it is happening at the very time when a radical ideology has overtaken the GOP that literally threatens American democracy and national security. This is the kind of dangerous confluence of events from which unanticipated, cataclysmic political changes are made.

We simply must become more sophisticated in our thinking about these issues. We have to realize that it is not enough to have the best ideas, the best policies or even the best candidate. We have to come to terms with the fact that in this high speed post modern world, we must begin to sell our politics in a post modern way.

In a world where a sub-sentient, fratboy can be successfully marketed as a strong, decisive leader to a significant number of independents and Democrats, I think it’s obvious that the Republicans are on to something.

Unless Clark turns out to be a complete bumbling idiot on the trail (which would be very surprising) I believe he is the best positioned, by way of image, biography and association (“packaging”) to expose the Bush “mystique” as nothing more than a chimera and at the same time begin to revitalize the outdated image of the Democratic party.

I’d like nothing more than to reject this simplistic formulation and have the candidates run solely on the issues. But, the brutal politics of the last ten years have convinced me that we must learn to compete in the post modern media. I'm not interested in tilting at windmills while the power crazed modern Republicans turn the country into a functional one party state.



digby 9/11/2003 07:50:00 PM |

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

 
No Cigar

TAPPED says:

One doesn't exactly expect last night's Democratic debate to receive fair treatment at the hands of the National Review Online, but Michael Graham's attack on Howard Dean goes beyond the anticipated:

Gov. Dean's claim that what he wants more than anything as president is to "restore the honor and dignity and respect that this country is owed around the world" may not inspire the typical union member or soccer mom, but to the internationalists of the far Left, it was right on key.

If only the "far Left" is interested in making America honored and respected around the world, then Tapped thinks a lot of new members are going to be signing up for the "far Left," including members of the Bush administration who are currently begging for help in various foreign capitals. It's especially odd because Dean's closing statement included a remark far more worthy of criticism:

Over a decade ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down without America firing a shot. And that was for two reasons. The first was that we had a strong military, and that's important. But the second is that on the other side of the Iron Curtain most people wanted to be like America and they wanted to be like Americans.

And in the two and a half years into this presidency, you would be hard-pressed to find a majority in any country in the world where people wanted to be like Americans again.

TAPPED says the North Koreans probably would. That's true, but the North Koreans live in hell.


*And did everyone notice that FoxNews cut away before the closing statements in the debate were even finished to have their partisan spinners immediately spin it in the most negative fashion they could find?

WTF?
digby 9/10/2003 04:11:00 PM |

Monday, September 08, 2003

 
Everybody's Talkin'

Kos posted this interesting California based poll on the recall showing Bustamonte holding on to his lead.

I would trust the California polls over the national polls on this question. This is a very fluid political situation in a very unusual state. The California pollsters are invariably closer to the mark here than any of the big national guys.

I have to say that in the last few days of doing business around LA, I have had (and overheard) more conversations with strangers about politics than I can remember since the Nixon years. (The impeachment featured a lot of covert whispering. You never knew when you were going to be confronted by a rabid, out of control, wing-nut Clinton hater ... plus the pornographic Starr Report was often "inappropriate" in public.)

I'm hearing almost across-the-board derision about Arnold, some of it disdainfully humorous and some plainly insulted by his lack of preparation.

This is all anecdotal in the extreme, I know, so take it with a grain of salt. It's just unusual in my experience for people to be so openly engaged.

I also happen to live just 4 blocks from Ahnuld's campaign headquarters. You'd think at least a handful of his supporters would show up from time to time in the local Starbuck's talking up their guy while standing in line for their soy latte's. I haven't heard anything but loud, vociferous Arnold bashing throughout the neighborhood. If Ahnuld can't get the desperate, brown nosing, Hollywood opportunist contingent behind him, he's got problems.

I also think Davis is making some headway with his "hair shirt and humility" tour. He looks tan and almost human. But I believe that the biggest thing that will help him was the appearance of Howard Dean, calling the GOP out. If it's followed up with more of the same from other candidates, along with the Big Guns --- Bill, Hill and Al --- I think he might pull it out.

The Democrats are starting to get riled up.



digby 9/08/2003 03:48:00 PM |

 
Kaleidoscope Eyes


RJ, over at Let The Record Show, found this unbelievable analysis of Junior's speech on MSNBC.

Now the 2004 election — little more than a year away — is shaping up as a referendum on Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war, the argument that he made in the year leading up to the invasion of Iraq that it would be too dangerous for the United States to wait until Saddam Hussein’s regime had developed weapons of mass destruction."

RJ says:

...is that what Bush said? No, what he said was that Saddam had endless supplies of WMD, poised at the ready, to attack us at any moment. The press are shaping up to be the chief revisionist historians.

That's for sure. Get a load of this bucket of crud, from the same article:

It will also be a referendum on America’s uncomfortable role as custodian of Iraq, a country whose citizens seem increasingly ungrateful for having been liberated from Saddam’s tyranny.

You invade and occupy a country that's been tightly controlled and highly repressed for 30 years, all hell breaks loose, the "uncomfortable custodians" stand around like a bunch of raccoons caught in the garbage and the citizens seem increasingly ungrateful for having been liberated.

The bastards.

The prism of Sept. 11 remains the key to understanding Bush’s policy. He believes he is deterring future attacks, not inviting more of them, by pursuing the occupation.

It seems to me that if Operation Iraqi Flytrap was his secret cunning plan all along, then he'd have been wise to have kept his piehole shut about it. Unless the terrorists are blind and deaf they're on to his little scheme now. Golly, I sure hope they don't decide not to cooperate. That would be bad.

(What's really weird is that the writer understands what the "prism" of 9/11 is. It's something about tilting the windmills of Rummy's mind where he left the cakewalk in the rain. I think.)

The electoral question for Democrats is: How can their presidential candidate profit from Bush’s agony in Iraq?

Those Democrats are always trying to profit from Bush's agony. It's so, like, totally unfair.

Supreme Commandante Flightsuit Arbusto would never, ever try to profit from the agony of others. Ever.

The assumption among all the Democratic contenders is that NATO countries and nations such as Morocco would be willing to chip in troops — if only a president other than Bush would ask them.

Morocco? WTF???

And yeah, maybe if the guy asking wasn't the smirking asshole who just told everybody in the world who didn't jump to attention when he whistled that they were "irrelevant" and "corrupt" they might chip in troops. Golly, they might even get some weird ferriners like Canada to join in.

The Democratic candidate will be at something of a disadvantage because Bush can control the timing of events, such as strikes on terrorist havens or announcements of the capture of key terrorist leaders.

uh huh. You betcha. Good point.

Democrats harbor deep distrust of what they see as Bush’s manipulation of the terrorism issue.

So, Bush controlling the timing of strikes at terrorist havens or capture announcements wouldn't be objective evidence of his manipulation of the terrorism issue. Democrats just see it that way. Interesting.

But as commander-in-chief, Bush will not always be the master of events — sometimes he’ll be at their mercy. He may again feel compelled to come to the American people and argue that their own survival is at stake in Iraq.

Ok. So, he's not just keeping these evil villains from attacking us on our homeland. He's keeping them from annihilating us. Except when he'll be at their mercy. Then he'll again be compelled to argue that our very survival is at stake.

In Iraq.

Smoking mushrooms on a cloud in the prism of 9/11, apparently.

Kookoocatchoo.







digby 9/08/2003 03:07:00 AM |

Sunday, September 07, 2003

 
Field Of Dreams

If you build it, they will come.

"There's a reason that foreign fighters are coming into Iraq. There is a reason that we're seeing evidence — not really yet completely clear evidence — of terrorists trying to operate in Iraq."

"They know that this is the central battle in the war on terrorism."
Condi Rice

Boy them Bushees shur r smart. Thank the gud Lord the Ayrab terrists finely kno wear thuh centrul battel is. Now we kin meat 'em on thuh battelfield and Genrul Bush kin kill 'em. Then we wull be saf.




thanks to bayard in the comments section


digby 9/07/2003 12:26:00 PM |

 
The Big Speech

Steno Sue's involvement is the big clue.

Josh Marshall wrote about this piece in the Washington Post last night and this morning amends his impression of the importance of the story:

Two points seem clear to me.

1) The chaos in Iraq has opened the place up to serious infiltration by all manner of bad-actors from around the region -- a development which is not a justification for administration policy, but an example of its failure.

2) The administration is far from weaned of its propensity for using manipulated or just plain bogus intelligence to advance its policy or cover its tracks. One veteran journalist/sage whose take on things I never discount tells me this morning: "Yes, the more I think of it, the more the timing is suspicious, and reminiscent of the last Sept. 11 'celebration.' Ridge saying there is a new Al Q threat in the US (but not issuing an alert, because they know that alerts are now politically counterproductive). The Wolfowitz opeds on terrorism. I'd watch for Bush to make a reference to the Post article, or at least to its contents, in his speech tonight. The main difference this year is that they are using the Post rather than the Times to do their leaking."

Sounds right to me.

"Terrorists are in Iraq just like we always said."

"Iran also harbored them."

" They killed 3,000 Americans."

"We will kill them before they come over here and kill us all in our beds."

"The UN must give us lots of money."

"Support the troops."

"I have a big codpiece."

"May God bless the United States of America"





digby 9/07/2003 11:03:00 AM |

Saturday, September 06, 2003

 
The Postman

Dwight Meredith writes in:

I saw your post on the Big Meanies. Now you have to admit that it would be unpatriotic and just wrong during a time of war to refer to the President and his party as “spineless” or as a “shitstain,” or as the “Coward-in- Chief” or as the “Waffling Asskisser-in-Chief.” Real Americans who love their country do not criticize the President at a time of war, right?

See also: Spoons, Sullivan, Levy, Drezner and, most importantly, the Manchester Union Leader.

Yes. Those Democrats are way out of line.

I just happened to see Bob Novak make his patented wail about the terrible "Bush Bashing" on Capitol Gang. (He says it at least once a week in response to virtually any criticism of Junior.) He was very unhappy when Mark Shields reminded him of the Marquess of Queensbury rules under which the Republicans operated during the Clinton years.

He disingenuously replied, in typical weaselly GOP fashion, that he was talking about presidential debates and that Bob Dole had criticized Steve Forbes. Then he stuck out his lower lip and pouted for the rest of the show.

(On the Estrada abomination, when it was pointed out for the 6,456th time that the Republicans also blocked Clinton's judges, Kate O'Beirne made the usual tiresome argument that the big difference is that they'd never used the filibuster. As usual, it's the breaking of arbitrary dealines and bureaucratic procedures that really makes the difference to Republicans. Principles, apparently, are for losers.)


I also received a very interesting e-mail from a reader responding to my post of the other day about Paul Wolfowitz's shameless patriotic pandering. She says:

Wolfowitz gets all weepy in the WSJ about Christy Ferer going to Iraq to thank the troops for fighting terrorrism. Left out of Wolfie's article and your comments was the fact that Ferer's late husband, Neil Levin, was a Pataki patronage appointee as insurance, then bank superintendent before getting the plum and quite-high-paid job as head of the Port Authority. He died in the World Trade Center attack.

Wolfowitz used one Republican-connected WTC widow to add cheap emotion to his atrocious op-ed, but most of the rest of the WTC survivors are a lot less thankful for what the Bushies have done to them, their families and their country. And, naturally, you don't see them getting a government-subsidized, spin-producing trip to Iraq. Hopefully, we will see them embarrassing the Bushies and their New York bootlickers like Pataki at next year's convention.

I have felt for a long time that the most potent political force in America right now are the families of 9/11. It's a lot to ask, considering what they went through, but I hope they realize that they have in their hands the ability to change the course of American history.

Nobody can touch them, not even Karl Rove or Tom DeLay.




digby 9/06/2003 05:08:00 PM |

 
Gotterdamerung

This single act of hubris may be Karl Rove's downfall.

It's dicey to try to create a soviet style propaganda film in this post-modern, ironic day and age.

It's just plain stupid to make a laughably bad one.


....they actually have President Timothy T-Ball saying, "People can't have an AWOL president!"

unbelievable.





digby 9/06/2003 03:33:00 PM |

 
Bobo’s Shame

I said below, that I wondered if Bill Kristol was having trouble looking himself in the mirror these days and then lo and behold, I come across this transcript of David Brooks, fellow “reasonable, temperate, believable” conservative, on The News Hour and I realize that somebody is giving out mind altering drugs at Gertrude and Irving’s kaffe klatches. Something is seriously wrong with these people. Get a load of this pile of road apples (emphasis throughout is mine):

DAVID BROOKS: The story that was in the Washington Post by a great reporter by the name of Tom Ricks was that Colin Powell had gotten together with the joint chiefs gone around Rumsfeld, gone to the White House, and persuaded that. My reporting has persuaded me, though Ricks is a fantastic reporter, that that was not true.

JIM LEHRER: Rick covers the Pentagon for the Washington Post. He is a superb reporter.

DAVID BROOKS: And I'm convinced it started with the president who may....

JIM LEHRER: Started with the president...

DAVID BROOKS: After the bombing of the U.N. building, decided to internationalize it, went through an interagency process. Paul Wolfowitz played a key role. I was -- read documents given to Donald Rumsfeld before any of the Colin Powell meetings allegedly took place in which Rumsfeld signed off on the U.N. wording of the U.N. Resolution. I think this all preceded any end run around Donald Rumsfeld. I think it started with the president and was worked by the administration for some of the reasons Mark talked about--

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with what Mark said? The policy is in tatters and that's why they had to--

DAVID BROOKS: They made an adjustment. It evolved in the way they planned months ago. That's their line. I believe what happened was they realized things were going badly -- not only because they didn't have enough troops and I don't think we are ever going to get French troops. They hoped to get Pakistani, Indian, and Turkish troops. But because they need more money and I think that's an underreported part of the story, they need more money to support Iraq and that's not going to come from France or Germany or those countries - it's going to come from the IMF and the World Bank and the Treasury Department played a major goal in going to the U.N. so they could hopefully get some money from those institutions.

JIM LEHRER: The Treasury said, hey, wait a minute, we can't afford this on our own.

[...]


DAVID BROOKS: Let me disagree in part. This is so important, this is the future of American foreign policy for a generation. We should not think dollars and cents here. We should think like George Steinbrenner when he buys a slugger, he buys six sluggers because he is just going to throw a lot at the problem. I'm afraid the Bush administration and the Congress is thinking dollars and cents when this has to be done right for the Iraqi people. We need to spend what we need to spend. We can talk about the tax cuts and how we are going to fund it later. But I think the administration so far is being penny pinching and not spending what it needs to get the electricity up, to get all the other problems solved that can be solved with money, of which a lot of them can be.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think politically they can get away with that? Do you think the American people would support what you just said whatever it takes, do it?

DAVID BROOKS: Everybody from Howard Dean to Jesse Helms or whoever is on the right now says we cannot cut and run. We cannot fail at that. Democrats have different ideas how to proceed, but everybody agrees except for Dennis Kucinich, that we cannot cut and run. This has to work out or else U.S. national interests will be harmed across the board.

(ed. How fucking convenient this argument is. "We've made this mess and now there's no choice but for you to help clean it up." That may be true, but it certainly doesn't make a very good case for leaving this miserable failure of a president in office any longer than we have to.)

[…]

MARK SHIELDS: This is not a mistake but an error of historic proportions.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

DAVID BROOKS: No, absolutely not. They made some misjudgments; they thought there were going to be refugees, that there were going to be food shortages, there turned out not to be, but they under-estimated the extent of Baathist terrorism after the war and now they're making adjustments by bringing in other troops, by reconfiguring the troops and most importantly by training the Iraqis. One of the problems that has been going on in the past several months since the war is that you walk into the headquarters where Paul Bremer sits, there are no Iraqis there. The Americans are running the government as if there are no Iraqis. And it's important, and they're beginning to make this adjustment, too, which is giving Iraqis real power, and that's another thing they're changing.

[...]

DAVID BROOKS: Some people, some of your friends pretend they listen to you and don't. This administration listens to you but pretends they don't. They pretend they are so far above their critics they don't have to hear but then they're really listening.

Good boy, Bobo. Now, sit up pretty.

First, David Brooks should no longer be considered reasoned, temperate or anything else after this completely ridiculous attempt to paint President Vacuous as somehow leading the administration to change course. This is about as believable as Timothy Bottoms’ version of Bush as John Wayne saying, “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!"

Everything we know about Bush suggests that he would rather chew straight pins than change course. It will take a lot more than Brooks' word to make me believe that he “led” the administration to do anything other than help him hitch up his codpiece.

And, I suppose that Thomas Ricks might have been fed a bill of goods by the Joint Chiefs and Colin Powell, but let’s just say that since it’s the White House that's got a credibility gap the size of the grand canyon, I’m going to go with the Republican generals rather than Karl Rove and the editorial board of the Weekly Standard.

This absurdity of the Treasury Department making the case for the UN because of the need to secure loans from the IMF and the World Bank is simply crapola. They have been in Iraq since May making assessments and have been expected to make the necessary loans from the get-go. We have more than a little influence with that group. If there has been an impediment it comes from the Republican party. All they needed to do was have John Snow walk over to the capital building and chat up Jim Saxton.

This is all part of the absurd new meme being tossed about by Wolfowitz and others that this appeal to the UN was part of their plan all along and everything is going just swimmingly. The IMF and the World Bank said early on that they would need some indication that the UN recognized the new government of Iraq. Now, Wolfie and his minions are saying that this UN move is just a natural and expected step in the way to bringing the flowers of democracy to Iraq. In fact, we’re ahead of schedule!

Meanwhile, the bombing and killing of American troops and UN workers and clerics and innocent Iraqis, and the pourous borders and the missing WMD and Saddam sending out tapes exhorting people to resist --- IS IRRELEVANT! Commander Codpiece's astute and unique grasp of foreign policy nuance and concerns in the treasury department are the reason we're going back to the UN after calling them a bunch of useless losers just a few months ago.

Yeah.

David Brooks is a shill. He pretends to be (slightly) disagreeing with the administration and speaks in measured tones, but in the end, he manages to get every single image and talking point out there that the administration wants. Even “Bush the crackerjack leader among men.” How impressively servile.

All liberals should be put on notice to find another “reasonable” conservative that we can trot out when some mannequin like Paula Zahn asks if there are any conservatives they like. (Besides, as Paula did when Al Franken named Brooks, the media starlets are likely to confuse him with David Brock, so it doesn’t really work anyway.)

I nominate Joe Lieberman.

Finally, you’ve got to love Bobo’s inability to name a far-right fringe politician now that Jesse Helms has retired. It's hard, I know.

It's hard because there is no far-right "fringe" in Washington anymore.

They’re all in the administration and the Republican leadership.




digby 9/06/2003 02:33:00 PM |

 
You Can Believe Me Or You Can Believe Your Eyes

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

[…]

Bush's defenders say the administration's rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein's involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein's secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. "The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn't do that," said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. "They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem."

Ooooh. The "intellectual argument." I guess they are talking about those nasty Birkenstocked elites again. Real people just wanna kick some Ay-Rab asses. It don't matter who done it, them ragheads is nothin' but one Big Problem. Yee - hah!

Golly, one might conclude from reading this that Bush’s campaign strategists see such ignorance, prejudice and racism as opportunities to advance their agenda. How typically Republican of them.

But, you've gotta love this:

Key administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was involved in the 2001 attacks. "I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading hawk on Iraq, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Aug. 1.

Well, I’m not sure even now that I can fully grasp just what a lying, mendacious, intellectually incoherent piece of shit Paul Wolfowitz has turned out to be.

2 days after the attacks Wolfowitz said:

"I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign."

Even a year later he was still spouting much the same line.

And, why did he say this? What led him to think that “ending states that sponsor terrorism” would end the threat from al al Qaeda? Was he simply lying straight out or did he actually -- stupidly -- believe it?

I think, sadly, that it may have been the latter.

This nonsensical theory came about because of his and other neocon fellow travellers' close association with one of the most crazed nutjobs in Washington, somebody who should have been placed in the far fringes of tinfoilhat-land and was instead operating as a “fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (alongside other kooks like Michael "Ghorbanifar go-between" Ledeen.) That person was Laurie Mylroie and her obsession with Saddam Hussein had led her to the completely insane and ridiculous thesis that international terrorism could not exist without Iraq's sponsorship, as she reiterated just 2 months ago in testimony to the 9/11 commission.

This is the caliber of thinking Paul Wolfowitz admires and writes glowing book blurbs about.

It has become clear that if Paul Wolfowitz had exercised just a little bit more taste and discretion in his choice of dinner party companions (like Chalabi the conman and Mylroie the paranoid obsessive), we would likely not be in Iraq today. (Josh Marshall has more on the complete destruction of credibility of one of the shining lights of neconservatism, whom he calls the "Comical Ali" of the neocon collapse. Ho. )

With people like this in charge, it is easy to understand why Americans are completely confused and deluded about our foreign policy.

It's going to take a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic candidates for president to educate the country about this. They must repeat it over and over again.

And, it's another reason why whoever becomes the nominee is going to be irreparably hamstrung by a vote in favor of the war. Voters may allow a Republican frat boy to be stupid on national defense, but they will not allow it of a Democrat. That's just the way it is.





digby 9/06/2003 01:52:00 PM |

 
Bowl Him Over With A Feather

Avedon Carol says:

"Markets are a great way to organize economic activity, but..."

Couldn't you just fall over laughing? Just like I usually do whenever I see that Alan Greenspan line Pfaff quoted the other day, about how when the Soviet Union fell he just assumed it would "automatically establish a free-market entrepreneurial system."

Hey, I only read comic books, but these people think they live in one.

Hahaha. In fact, I even know which comic book Alan and his little friends think they live in. It’s called “Atlas Shrugged” and has kept dreamy romantic schoolgirls and market fundamentalists of all ages atwitter and breathless for decades.

Read the whole post. It's a timely reminder of why we got all those pesky, intrusive regulations in the first place. And, it wasn't a perverse, liberal compulsion to make business owners lives difficult.

The article to which Avedon refers also says:

Mr. Greenspan said that after 1989 he - or ''we,'' as he put it - discovered that ''much of what we took for granted in our free-market system and assumed to be human nature was not nature at all, but culture. The dismantling of the central planning function in an economy does not, as some had supposed, automatically establish'' market capitalism.

It explains a lot about what has happened to the ex-Communist world since 1989 that men and women with the influence of Mr. Greenspan, occupying posts of great power, should have held so egregiously naive, or historically and culturally ''deaf,'' a belief as did Mr. Greenspan.

What in the hell is wrong with the intellectuals of the right? Has it simply become habit to disregard anything that doesn’t fit their narrow worldview and ideology?

Or are they just, as the recent Berkeley study found, so psychologically resistant to uncertainty, attached to dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity that they are simply incapable of being true intellectuals.

I don’t know, but it’s pretty clear that the ivory tower think tank culture of the right needs to do some serious reassessment if they plan to run the world. Their incompetence and naïveté is as breathtaking as anything we’ve seen since Russia in the 20’s.





digby 9/06/2003 01:16:00 PM |

 
Big Meanies

Gawd, I love Republicans. I really do. If they didn’t exist, you’d forget what the kindergarten schoolyard is like, and that would be a shame.

Here are yesterday's talking points as faithfully and robotically mouthed by GOP hacks from sea to shining sea:

"The one thing they were unified on was their negativity and their attacks on the president."
Ed Gillespie, GOP chairman

Oh, my dear Lord, can it be? Can they be so dastardly and despicable as to attack the president during a presidential campaign? Are there no depths to which these treasonous, un-American bastards will sink?

By Gawd, they won’t get away with it. Not by a long shot.

The Republicans are going to whine and stomp their tiny little feet and sob until the big nasty Democrats just stop it, stop it, stop it! It’s against the rules to be so mean!

And, it will work just great, too, because the American people have forgotten all about that unfortunate eight years, 24-7 of non-stop GOP harping, screaming, chest beating and slobbering about Bill Clinton. Now that the dignified Republicans are in charge, all those years of obsessing about the shape of the President’s manhood and his corrupt, murdering ways and his feminazi wife and his Commie connections are lost in the mists of time.

Today, alls I know is that the Democrats are icky and bad for bashing that nice young man, George W. Bush. Why, I've heard that some low class Democrat even called him a "major league asshole," can you believe that?

They'd better quit it … or else.




digby 9/06/2003 01:07:00 PM |

Friday, September 05, 2003

 
Lukewarm Water

I don’t always agree with Joan Walsh but I think she is on to something important in today’s Salon Column.

I wrote last fall that I thought the Senate resolution giving the president carte blanche to invade at will was a serious, perhaps fatal, error on the part of the Democratic Presidential Wannabe Club.

The moral reason was obvious. Dick Cheney made it quite clear, two months before the vote, that the administration planned to attack Iraq, no matter what. It was immoral to give Bush a blank check to do that for their own craven political purposes. This was a vote on a matter of life and death, not “bring your daughter to work day.”

The political reason was that the base of the party was going to be slow to forgive. This was clear from the enormous outpouring of e-mails, letters and phone calls coming into Senators’ offices; record numbers by all accounts. As my own Senator, Diane Feinstein said on the floor of the Senate:

People have weighed in by the tens of thousands. If I were just to cast a representative vote based on those who have voiced their opinions with my office - and with no other factors - I would have to vote against this resolution.

Naturally, she voted for the resolution, ostensibly because of the supposed grave imminent threat Saddam presented to the US that we in the peacenik hoi polloi just didn’t seem to grasp.

...the same hoi polloi who knew very well that invading Iraq was a long held wet dream of radical neocons who were opportunistically using 9/11 as an excuse to advance their agenda... the same hoi polloi who could see with our very own eyes that the Bush Doctrine, published and distributed for every American to read, advocates muscular unilateralism and the emasculation of international institutions and the rule of law. You didn’t have to be an insider to know that the administration’s late blooming "commitment" to getting UN approval and international support was nothing but window dressing to buy time.

As Walsh says in her article:

Frankly, I found it equally incomprehensible how someone could support the war as Gephardt did, and now pretend that he didn’t know the president had no plan and no international cooperation to get it done. I knew that, sitting behind my desk in San Francisco, raising my teenaged daughter. Why didn’t anyone tell Gephardt, the savvy House minority leader?

Walsh doesn’t say it, but here in Santa Monica I knew our Senator Diane was voting for it because she was afraid that she’d be labeled a coward by the Mighty Wurlitzer if she didn’t. Continuing to live in the past, and making political calculations based upon the closed, insular advice of political consultants who have outlived their usefulness, the Democratic leadership believed that the conditions of 1991 were again at play and they would not let themselves be caught out this time. Always fighting the last war, as usual.

Walsh says it is "unseemly" for the contenders who voted for the resolution to now pile on the Bush administration. I don’t think it’s unseemly, it’s just not credible. It showed a remarkable political obtuseness not to recognize that when the base of the party is worked up enough to call and write in record numbers, something is in the air besides the smell of patchouli oil. These were Democrats, not anarchists or Naderites. That kind of political tone deafness is a disqualification in my book. At a time when the electorate is closely divided, you’d better pay attention to your base.

The vaunted Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation further confused the issue by advising Democratic candidates to go around the country saying “I’m for the war, but with reservations” because that’s what their polls told them that many people felt.

Apparently, they didn’t realize that the people who felt this way were looking for leadership on the issue not equivocation. By saying they were for the war but with reservations, voters were simply saying that they supported the president by default in a time of war (and media cheerleading), but they knew in their gut that something wasn’t quite right.

It was the candidates job to identify and articulate where that feeling came from. When the Democrats appeared to be just as uncomfortable and confused as they were, swing voters went with the guys who seemed sure of themselves. You can't blame them.

But, most importantly, the consultants failed to realize that by taking this position the democratic leadership was telling the energized base to go fuck themselves. The results were predictable:

Here’s what the Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation said in their post-mortem of the election:

On Election Day, Republicans won by 4 points in voting for the House of Representatives (51 to 47 percent). That produced a gain of just 4 seats in the House. In the Senate, Democrats went from a one-seat majority to being in the minority. That represents a swing of 4 points away from Democratic performance in 2000 (even), actually the switch of around 2 percent of the voters, not a seismic change.

[…]

This imbalance of energy and direction produced a unique electorate, which would have been noted election night, had the traditional exit polls been available. The 2002 electorate was more Republican and much more conservative than those that showed up in the Presidential election of 2000 and the off-year election of 1998. Republicans were greatly energized by their campaigns, while Democrats were not.

If the Democrats had had the balls to say what they knew very well was the truth, we may have won the mid-terms and kept George W. Bush from hurtling forward with the Iraq war when the rest of the world balked at his bullying ways. At the very least they would have had a principled and coherent position from which to run. It was a huge failure of nerve and it explains the predicament the Wannabe Club finds itself in today.

Hence, grassroots support for Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.* The others look like presidential pretzels trying to explain themselves, now that things have gone wrong. Many of us predicted it would be so.

*I don’t mean to ignore Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun. They also objected to the war and I admire them for it. Their voices are worthy of respect and all three of them have followings that should be valued in the Party. But, they have little chance of gaining the nomination for reasons unrelated to the Iraq war.



digby 9/05/2003 02:11:00 PM |

Thursday, September 04, 2003

 
Two More Straws

There are so many political and policy atrocities associated with the modern GOP and this administration that it becomes hard to feel anything more than a sort of resigned acceptance and hope that the historians will place them in their proper place in history beside other failed radical experiments.

But, every once in a while something comes to light that begets an emotional charge of such white hot anger and outrage that I find I’m shocked and awed once again at the sheer lack of decency and any claim to honor these people have, particularly after having to listen to their phony pretensions of patriotism and virtue.

Two such cases came up just recently and I wondered once again how low they can possibly go. Pretty low, apparently.

First, I simply cannot wrap my arms around the fact that the White House "sexed down" the EPA assessment of the air quality around ground zero. That they would knowingly place the people involved in the rescue and clean-up operation in long term health danger is simply so disgusting that I find it hard to imagine that any public safety worker in this country could ever vote for the Republicans again.

Remember, the people most likely to be affected by the bad air quality around the WTC after the attacks were cops, firefighters, municipal workers, rescue units and military personnel. The heroes of 9/11, the ones Bush so shamelessly exploited day after day after day --- the ones that Peggy Noonan and K-Lo and Coulter got all misty and moist over.

Thanks guys. And by the way, Fuck You.

Would it have been too much trouble for the party of personal responsibility to give unspun information to citizens of the site of the most deadly terrorist attack in the nation's history so they could decide for themselves how to mitigate the risk of serious long term consequences? The workers would have gone to work anyway, guaranteed, but they might have used more sophisticated equipment and might have discouraged people with respiratory problems from going into the area until it was completely cleared. Gosh, maybe they would have had themselves medically monitored more closely. That would have been terrible.

The only people who likely would have held back are those who work in the Stock Exchange, and there we find the real reason for the lie. Because a bunch of rich traders might have stayed home rather than expose themselves to long term lung damage, Bush and his cronies decided to throw them to the wolves, too.

Good thing you got those tax cuts boys. You're going to need them to pay for your health costs.
Vote Republican. They care.

The other story that made me erupt with righteous indignation is the story this morning in the NY Times affirming that the White House authorized the bin Laden family “evacuation” from the US during the time that flights were suspended after 9/11.

This story has been out there from early days and those who placed any credence in the story were derided as dupes and 5th columnists.



With all that honor and dignity swirling around the oval office, you would have thought that somebody would have been concerned about whether it was right to spirit a bunch of Saudis out of the country rather than “protect” them from the supposed howling mob by putting them in protective custody until matters became clearer.

Meanwhile, the FBI was rounding up thousands of Middle Eastern men all over the country, many held for months on end with no legal representation, even eventually trumping up charges of thought crimes against a handful of dumbshits who failed to be born into rich Saudi "friends of Bandar" families.

This seems like a big story to me --- one that should rightly have the entire beltway awash in gossipy speculation.

Let’s be clear. One of the more fanciful conspiracy theories to emerge immediately after 9/11, the one charging the Bush administration of protecting the Saudi royal family and the family of Osama-bin-fucking-Laden turns out to be TRUE!

Ok. It isn’t as big of a deal as fundraising at a Buddhist temple or a DNA stained dress. I understand that. But, you would think that Tweety and the rest might find it just a little bit intriguing that our president authorized the escape of intimates and family members of the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Wait...

Look! Over There! Arnold's shaking hands at a fair!

Britney Luvs Bush!



never mind...





digby 9/04/2003 04:45:00 PM |

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

 
Last Refuge

Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division who comprised the eastern flank of the force that fought its way to Baghdad last April.

[…]

America's troops and our coalition partners are determined to win--and they will win, if we continue to give them the moral and material support they need to do the job. As the president said recently, our forces are on the offensive. And as Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane said in congressional testimony, "They bring the values of the American people to this conflict. They understand firmness, they understand determination. But they also understand compassion. Those values are on display every day as they switch from dealing with an enemy to taking care of a family."

I saw the troops in Iraq, and Gen. Keane is absolutely right. I can tell you that they, above all, understand the war they are fighting. They understand the stakes involved. And they will not be deterred from their mission by desperate acts of a dying regime or ideology.

[…]

Young men and women from across America rushed to the trio, eager to touch them and talk to them. One soldier, a mother of two, told Christy she'd enlisted because of Sept. 11. Another soldier displayed the metal bracelet he wore, engraved with the name of a victim of 9/11. Others came forward with memorabilia from the World Trade Center they carried with them into Baghdad. And when it was Christy's turn to present Gen. Tommy Franks with a piece of steel recovered from the Trade Towers, she saw this great soldier's eyes well up with tears. Then, she watched as they streamed down his face on center stage before 4,000 troops.

To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.

Cue the plaintive wail of a lone trumpeter playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as through my patriotic tears I grab blindly for a barf bag and my passport.

I’ve read enough gushy patriotic drivel in the last 2 years to tide me over until Armageddon and I thoroughly expect the Mighty Wurlitzer to play Sousa and Lee Greenwood on a loop during the presidential campaign. However, the above piece of manipulative treacle wasn’t written by a delusional codpiece worshiper like Peggy Noonan. It was written by one of the foremost intellectuals of the neocon movement and the premiere architect of the hallowed Bush Doctrine.

It’s none other than Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz himself, expelling a steaming pile of saccharine pap in order to avoid explaining how his every prediction about the postwar occupation was wrong. Read the whole thing. You'll find not even one word of substance in the entire embarrassing sermon.

I’m sure the AEI Ladies Auxiliary and “Bush Is A Hottie” groupies get all teary eyed at the mere mention of 9/11 widows and brave fighting men on the “front,” but thinking people are supposed to demand a little bit more from the leading designers of our foreign policy. He’s writing in the Wall Street Journal, after all, not the Toby Keith fanzine.

And, please spare me any more adoring profiles of Wolfowitz, extolling his virtue and good intentions, much less his intellectual integrity. This pathetic appeal to emotion exposes him as either dangerously naïve and childlike in his thinking or so ideologically driven that he is willing to say and do anything in service of his goals.

Remember, these guys have always been wrong about everything. It is their special talent. They thought Kissinger was a dangerous appeaser with his weak kneed wussy détente. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall they were agitating for a stronger military presence in Europe to check an inevitable resurgence of communism. If they’d had their way we would have invaded Russia, for Gawd’s sake.

Typically, now that they have been proved to be both baldly dishonest and dramatically incompetent, they are falling back on their old favorite --- rank sentimentality and gooey patriotic tributes to the troops.

The scoundrels are scurrying to their last refuge much sooner than I would have thought possible. Get out your trowels and shovels because we are about to be buried in patriotic clichés. It's all they've got.



digby 9/03/2003 12:48:00 PM |

Thursday, August 28, 2003

 
Ahmad's Ugly Secret

Josh Marshall hints about a dark episode from the mid-90's featuring our favorite Iraqi cocktail party guest. I'm guessing this is it.
digby 8/28/2003 05:37:00 AM |

 
Keeping Track

The fabulous Mary over at the Left Coaster (and also Pacific Views) alerts me to a Truth Squad compilation of Administration lies leading up to the war. Bookmark this baby for future reference.

I honestly think that one of the keys to the Bushies' "success" is the sheer volume and magnitude of outrages they perpetrate. It's exhausting keeping up with them and the resultant static makes even a hard core news junkie like me want to pick up a cheap novel or mindlessly watch TVLand just to keep my head from exploding.

I salute those who have taken on the immense project of keeping track of the truth. It's going to be important in the coming months.




digby 8/28/2003 01:37:00 AM |

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

 
Oldie Goldie

Andrew Northrup at The Poor Man, does an excellent job of deconstructing this Weekly Standard hit job on Clark (regarding his comments on Meet The Press about the effort to connect 9/11 with Saddam Hussein immediately after the attack on the WTC.)

However, it is important, I think, that we remember that this kind of parsing of extemporaneous speech to make it appear that someone is "slick," rather than just humanly imprecise is a Wurlitzer tactic that goes back to 1992. They take a comment and spread the idea throughout the media that it was deliberately misleading and further that it represents a character flaw on the part of the person who uttered it. Tucker and Sean and their ilk snidely hammer the accusation to a Dem talking head who then spends his entire time (when he isn’t being interrupted) explaining the statement to prove that the intent was not what these guys are saying it was.

We look defensive, they sound confident and the public is confused. Eventually they believe that there must be something to the charges because the endless parsing of it sounds lawyerly, desperate and boring. The charge gets dropped and another, similar, charge is leveled and the process begins again.

It is the death of reputation and credibility by a thousand small smears.

Therefore, I think we have to respond in two different ways to such charges. In print (and on blogs and elsewhere) we should analyze the charges in detail and keep an accurate, truthful record of the entire episode.
But, on television and for quotes in the print media, Democrats should never allow ourselves to get mired in such detail. We need to get past our need (as rational people) to defend with the facts and, instead, attack with the truth.

For instance, when a Democrat is confronted by Tweety or Scarborough about Clark’s “lie” on Meet the Press, he should not allow himself to get involved in the minutiae of the charge and instead should simply point out that it is well documented that the administration set out to tie Saddam to the WTC attack, without evidence, from the earliest hours of the event. Talk about the “unassailable” Bob Woodward’s account in Bush At War and Rumsfeld’s directive to “pull it all together” just 5 hours after the Pentagon was hit.

Of course, big shot Republicans put out the word all over the media about Saddam being behind 9/11. Everybody knows that. The TRUTH is that:

... Perle, Woolsey, Gaffney, and Kristol were using the same language in their media appearances on 9/11 and over the following weeks.

”This could not have been done without help of one or more governments,” Perle told The Washington Post on Sep. 11. ”Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don't think that can be done without the assistance of large governments.”

Woolsey was more direct. ”(I)t's not impossible that terrorist groups could work together with the government...the Iraqi government has been quite closely involved with a number of Sunni terrorist groups and -- on some matters -- has had direct contact with (Osama) bin Laden,” he told one anchorman in a series of at least half a dozen national television appearances on Sep. 11 and 12.

That same evening, Kristol echoed Woolsey on National Public Radio. ”I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There's a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

The “facts” in this matter are that Clark made an extemporaneous statement on television that has been widely interpreted incorrectly. He corrected it on the record. All of the Democratic candidates are going to do that from time to time; it is part of public speaking. But, using this minor bit of confusion to imply that he was untruthful or misleading is just another example of the Wurlitzer’s coordinated “dazzle ‘em with bullshit” attack strategy.

It is what killed Al Gore in the press last time and we simply have to stop letting them dictate the terms of the debate that way. One way to do that is to stop being defensive and stop miring ourselves in detail before the public. It makes us look geeky and weak next to the bellowing neanderthals. We must ignore their taunts and remind ourselves that going after our guy is calculated misdirection. We need to keep the audience looking at what we want them to see, and not let the other side direct the show.



digby 8/27/2003 03:58:00 PM |

 
The New York Times Is Fair and Balanced, Too!

Atrios makes note of the factual but incomplete graf in today's New York Times article about Bush's speech today. It says that Bush never directly tied Saddam to 9/11; he merely claimed that Saddam and al Qaeda are of the same ilk. Atrios replies:

While Bush did never directly claim that Saddam had a direct role in the attacks of Sept. 11, he has said far more than that they "are of the same ilk." He has claimed several times that they are active partners.

And he has made manipulative associations about Saddam and 9/11 over and over again.

"Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people and to all free people.

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks.

The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, show what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons."

Please. His speechwriters put those images together for a reason. They wanted people to associate 9/11 with Saddam Hussein.

And how about our good friend Condi? Notice the artful turn of phrase she uses here:

No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on Sept. 11, so we don't want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clearer, and we're learning more," Rice said.

That was in September of 2002.

How about Bill Kristol on September 12, 2001 from NPR:

I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There's a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

And then, there's the
mother of all pieces of evidence, the smoking gun, the proof that the administration sought to directly tie Saddam with 9/11:

According to an account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin last September, Rumsfeld was ”telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks” five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon.

Martin attributed his account in part to notes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the ”best info fast” to ”judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should ”go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not”, the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying.

Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting Sep. 15-16 of the administration's war council at Camp David provided by the Washington Post's Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the ”I-was-there” style for which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is unmatched, is famous:

”Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: 'Is this the time to attack Iraq'”?

Powell objected”, the Woodward and Balz account continued, citing Secretary of State Colin Powell's argument that U.S. allies would not support a strike on Iraq. ”If you get something pinning Sept 11 on Iraq, great”, Powell is quoted as saying. But let's get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq -- if we can prove Iraq had a role”.

Upon their return to Washington, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz convened a secret, two-day meeting of the DPB chaired by Perle. Instead of focusing on the first steps in carrying out a ”war on terrorism”, however, the discussions centered on how Washington could use 9/11 to strike at Iraq, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal.

Is this stuff just bullshit then? Not worth mentioning? If they're going to point out that Junior never "directly" tied Saddam into 9/11, the least they can do is also point out that some in the administration were determined from the very beginning to use 9/11 to justify an invasion of Iraq.

I'm sure I remember the New York Times always pointed out in its later articles about the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton did not "directly" lie when he said he'd never had "sexual relations with that woman." The dictionary meaning of "sexual relations" is sexual intercourse and he actually had oral sex with her. They were always very, very conscientious about making that clear even though everybody on the planet knew that he was implying that he hadn't had any kind of sex with her. I'm pretty sure they did that, didn't they?



digby 8/27/2003 01:11:00 AM |

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

 
Taunting the Bull


"Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or Saint Louis or Los Angeles,"

Wow. I thought that the wingnuts playing the Wurlitzer might say something like this, but it’s pretty damned provocative coming from the President.

If he meant that we were fighting terrorism abroad so that someday Americans will no longer have to fear terrorism at home, then his speech writers worded it very badly. Because this could easily be read as another version of “Bring ‘Em On,” only instead of daring Iraqis to kill American soldiers in Iraq; he’s daring terrorists to kill American citizens in America.

That isn’t flypaper. He’s not saying that we’ve drawn the terrorists all to the same place so we can kill them more efficiently. It’s taunting the bull.

Imagine you are bin Laden or some other terrorist nutball and the President of the United States says that by attacking Afghanistan and Iraq he’s keeping you from attacking the US. You’re a loser. You are so weak that as long as we "confront" you abroad you can't commit violence in New York, St. Louis or Los Angeles.

It’s very disconcerting to have to rely on Osama bin Laden and a bunch of fundamentalist holy warriors to be restrained and sophisticated enough to recognize that the President of the United States is just trash talking. It would be extremely unfortunate if terrorists took his statement as a dare to prove him wrong.



digby 8/26/2003 11:47:00 PM |

 
Correction:

I wrote in my post below Waiting For Wesley, that the Esquire article from which I excerpted a long passage had not made the rounds of Blogovia. I was wrong. It appears that the article had been discussed at some length by several bloggers, one of whom -- the great Nitpicker --- even excerpted the same passage that I claimed hadn't been blogged!

ooops.

I'd read the article at the time but didn't blog it for a number of extremely complicated reasons (Actually, I just didn't get around to it.) I ran a technorati search for links before I wrote the post and only found a small handful of blogs that mentioned the article so I was under the mistaken impression that it hadn't been discussed in any depth. I'm thinking now that maybe the article wasn't yet on-line at the time it was being talked up.

That's what I get for not Googling...

Apologies to anyone else who posted on the story much earlier than I.

Still .... it's a good time to bring it up again, no? Clark's about to announce.

Update: Here's another fine post by Antidotal from weeks ago excerpting the passage in the Esquire article.

Great minds think alike --- but some are a little more on the ball than others. Mea culpa.



digby 8/26/2003 09:32:00 AM |

Monday, August 25, 2003

 
They should have gone for Tom Selleck


Everyone seems to be confused by the fact that Ahnuld isn't doing better in the polls but the reason is completely obvious.

They cast the wrong guy.

This is another example of Republicans failing to understand popular culture. Sure, people are stupid enough to vote for an inexperienced movie star. And, this recall election was a perfect opportunity to slide one in because of the very short campaign.

But, didn't it occur to anybody that the only reason it would work would be because the star's established image fit the role already?

I would imagine that if you polled every casting director and studio executive in Hollywood, you couldn't find one who would have (willingly) ever cast him as governor in a serious film. His best role is a monosyllabic robot, for God's sake, and they kept his lines to a minimum for a reason. He can't act.

If the state voters had wanted a robot for governor why would they have bothered to recall Gray Davis?



digby 8/25/2003 05:19:00 PM |

 
Waiting For Wesley


I am a little bit surprised that this incredible article in the August Esquire about Wesley Clark hasn’t made the rounds in Blogovia. Anyone who is intrigued by the possibility of the general getting in should read it.

I've written several enthusiastic posts about him in recent months, and I’ve been very interested in a Clark run since the day I saw him testify before the Senate the lead up to the Iraq resolution vote. Not only was his analysis absolutely on target, he was tremendously self-assured, well spoken and telegenic. I thought at the time that he would make an excellent candidate. I didn’t know if he was a Democrat but he was clearly not a neocon.

If anyone is interested in reading just how prescient Clark was that day, you can read the transcript here :

(And if you are interested in reading some really disrespectful Republican nastiness, pay special attention to the “questioning” of these generals by patriotic Senators Bunning and Sessions.)

This statement is particularly interesting in light of recent events:

I think that there is a substantial risk in the aftermath of the operation that we could end up with a problem which is more intractable than we have today. One thing we're pretty clear on is that Saddam has a very effective police state apparatus. He doesn't allow challenges to his authority inside that state. When we go in there with a transitional government and a military occupation of some indefinite duration, it's also very likely that if there is an effective al Qaeda left -- and there certainly will be an effective organization of extremists -- they will pour into that country because they must compete for the Iraqi people; the Wahabes with the Sunnis, the Shi'as from Iran working with the Shi'a population. So it's not beyond consideration that we would have a radicalized state, even under a U.S. occupation in the aftermath.

[…]

If we go in unilaterally, or without the full weight of international organizations behind us, if we go in with a very sparse number of allies, if we go in without an effective information operation that takes us through the -- and explains the motives and purposes and very clear aims and the ability to deal with the humanitarian and post-conflict situation, we're liable to super-charge recruiting for al Qaeda.

This appearance and his testimony before the House informed my thinking quite a bit on the Iraq invasion. He believes in multilateralism, as frustrating as it can be, not so much because it spreads the risk, but because it gives leaders and politicians of other countries a stake in a positive outcome. That translates into long term commitment, something that is absolutely essential to dealing with terrorism, failed states and nation building. This article written right after 9/11 strikes just the right note between righteous fury and intelligent, deliberate analysis

And as illustrated in the quote above, he was concerned from the very beginning about the potential negative consequences of an occupation in Iraq and how it would affect our efforts to combat al Qaeda. There were others, like Bob Graham, who also voiced this concern, but I never heard any one else theorize that terrorists would pour into Iraq after the war and transform it into a radicalized state under US occupation.

His comments not only reflected an informed strategic military worldview, as you would expect, they also showed a very complex and sophisticated analysis of the global political implications of where the administration was taking us. It was obvious to me that Wesley Clark isn’t just smart. He’s brilliant. Overachieving Clinton-brilliant.

(Meanwhile the President of the United States was either babbling, “They live in caves…we’re gonna smoke ‘em out"" or he was speechifying in phony flowery words and phrases that were so inauthentic that there were times you wondered if he even comprehended what he was saying.)

Like most Democrats I believe that the President of the United States should be very smart. According to beltway CW, this is an absurd view held only by overeducated, Volvo driving, Birkenstock wearing liberals who are the lowest form of American life and should be ignored if not imprisoned.

It would seem that the sad pathology of the inner city that disparages education and good grammar has strangely overtaken the Republican Party and many of those who make their living commenting on politics. It is now considered gauche in these circles to be “too” smart. The common understanding is that Americans prefer a leader who symbolizes their own mediocrity.

So, the big money Republicans simply market a slow but recognizable brand name and tell the apparatchiks not to mention that he is walking around stark raving naked. All that takes is cash and they have plenty.

We Democrats, however, have to find candidates who are not only brilliant, passionate and eminently qualified, which the base insists upon, but we must also pick someone who has appealing looks, an unassailable personal biography, an engaging personality, Southern roots and a heroic, masculine image so that the clueless swing voters and the giggling bimbos of the press have something to keep them sufficiently entertained during those long boring speeches with all the big words.

Clark is smart, to be sure, but he’s got all the other good stuff, too.

He’s got a very high Q rating and handles the press with the aplomb of a film star. He has a winning smile and an easy laugh. He knows how to speak in simple terms about complex issues. He is a proven military hero, a respected world leader, a southerner and a self made man who worked hard and succeeded at everything he tried.

In other words, he is the man who George W. Bush is pretending to be.

A genuine, traditional, all-American, patriotic winner.



* Word to the wise, draft Clarkers. You’ve got to show some pictures and footage of Clark in uniform. Those 4 big stars are a symbol of Clark’s experience, integrity and leadership. We need to work that mojo. In post modern America it’s all about the symbols, metaphors and memes.


That's what I'm talking about

And, since nobody else has done it, I’ll post this little anecdote from the Esquire article. Even cynical, pragmatic old me got a little bit of a chill down my spine when I read it. It’s a great story and every Clark supporter should spread it around the water cooler and the dinner table:

In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo.

Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire.

Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: "At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. [Three members of the team] were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside."

It is not until one reads Holbrooke's book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn't go.

It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies; it is not until one meets Wesley Clark that one understands the degree to which he held Milosevic accountable.

For more on General Clark, visit
the Clarksphere
the Wesley Clark weblog
draft clark
the Clark Coalition

And for a tittilating bit of DC scuttlebutt on the Clark campaign, check out HoyPuhLoy

digby 8/25/2003 06:20:00 AM |

Sunday, August 24, 2003

 
Leave No Child Behind

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has told the BBC the US military is hoping to release children it is holding there.

The BBC's Gordon Corera, in Guantanamo Bay, says the US's interviews with the three children - aged between 13 and 15 - reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan.

General Geoffrey Miller who leads operations at the camp is seeking to have the children released in recognition of their age and co-operation, our correspondent says.

"These juvenile enemy combatants were impressed, were kidnapped into terrorism. They have given us some very valuable intelligence. We are very close to making a recommendation on their transfer back to their home countries," General Miller said.

Special treatment

The children have been kept separate from the 700 adults being held at the camp, located on the southern Cuban coast.

They have been held with no access to a lawyer or understanding of what will happen to them, our correspondent adds.

But the children have been given access to games, even videos, as well as an extensive education programme.

This has led to the belief that they can be rehabilitated

Calling Mr. Kafka, Mr Franz Kafka. Please pick up the white courtesy telephone.

Is anybody beginning to wonder what in the hell is really going on down there? Why do I have a feeling that our pride in our vaunted Western values may be a tiny bit misplaced these days?

This is absolutely, fucking sick. If the most powerful country on earth is so vulnerable that we have to lock up some 12 year old Afghan kid in a goddamned concentration camp then this whole thing is hopeless.

The Camp Commandant has apparently come to the professional judgment that these kids can be rehabilitated so at least we won't have to give them a secret trial before we kill them.

And they've had video games!




digby 8/24/2003 03:37:00 AM |

 
First Principles

Bill Simon Jr., one of the best-known Republicans in the recall election for California governor, dropped out of the race today, saying that the defeat of Gov. Gray Davis was more important than his personal ambitions.

Mr. Simon had come under intense pressure from fellow Republicans in recent days to withdraw from the contest to avoid splintering the Republican vote

[…]

… on Friday, the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a group of wealthy conservative Republicans, unanimously endorsed Mr. Schwarzenegger and urged Mr. Simon, Senator McClintock and Mr. Ueberroth to step aside. Also on Friday, the Republican leader of the State Senate, Jim Brulte, warned that there were too many Republicans in the race and that some would have to drop out to avoid handing victory to Mr. Davis or Mr. Bustamante.

We had a little dust up, if you recall, during the last election when the Democrats put the heat on Bob Torricelli to resign 36 days before the election so that they could replace him on the ballot with someone who could win. The Republicans went into their patented phony ape-shit mode, screaming about the rule-‘o-law-blah-blah-blah, sore-loserman, blah, blah blah.

The reasons as to why this action was so outrageous numbered in the hundreds.


Sullivan said that the health of the body politic required that Torricelli should have been forced to stay on the ballot so he could be ritually humiliated.


George Will fulminated that “election laws are supposed to be exacting so they can prevent just such last-minute frenzies by people frightened of losing. Yet today Democrats are asserting this principle: Anytime--even just 36 days before an election--a party has discouraging polls about a candidate, that party can replace him.”

Jonathan Last boldly asserted that “the Democrats haven't just become Nixon, they've become the exaggerated liberal nightmare version of Nixon: Today Democrats are what they believe Nixon was.”

But, despite their varying objections, there was one overriding matter of principle that every last Republican agreed upon, --- a matter so serious and of such fundamental importance to our system that any legalistic hairsplitting or judicial interpretations of it are, by their very nature, antithetical to the practice of democracy.

This principle is not, you understand, that old liberal clap trap about “counting all the votes” or “whoever wins the most votes wins” or even something silly like “short of incapacity or corruption, office holders who have been certified in a legal election should be allowed to serve their entire term.” These are nice concepts but they don’t carry any serious philosophical weight.

No, Republicans hold that the single most important principle upon which our electoral system rests is the sanctity of the arbitrary deadline which under no circumstances shall ever be overruled, even if it conflicts with another arbitrary deadline, is incomprehensibly vague or was instituted by the legislature for purely administrative purposes that had no bearing on anyone but a couple of election workers in outlying suburbs (if anyone can even remember why it was instituted in the first place.)

If an arbitrary deadline is on the books it is sacrosanct under any and all circumstances and no court in the land has a right to tamper with it.

This is because a deep and abiding fidelity to bureaucratic timetables that mean absolutely nothing is the very foundation of our democracy. You can look it up.

It explains why we hear no similar indignant outcry from George Will about “last-minute frenzies by people frightened of losing” at the sight of another weeping conservative being muscled out of the recall on a daily basis. (Lock up your horses, Uberroth.)

You see, the GOP outrage at the Torricelli matter was never about the fact that national Democrats so desperately wanted to keep that seat that they strong-armed their weak candidate to step aside to make way for a stronger contender. The Republicans admittedly did that very thing today in California, so they onviously don't have a problem with it. And, it certainly wasn’t about a corrupt politician being forced to stay the course and face the music --- after all, his opponent had been calling for Torricellis resignation for a solid month before he actually did it.

No, the egregious violation was going past the sacred 51 day deadline for replacing a name on the ballot. When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the right of the Democratic party to have a candidate in the race superceded this holy edict (the other side argued that the Democrats had to forfeit the race), the Republicans erupted in righteous fury at the Nixonian dirty tricksters.

Lucky for them that this is California and not New Jersey. There aren’t any more hallowed deadlines that prevent them from forcing the non-muscled Austrian GOP candidates drop out of the race so that the Republican Party can take a mulligan and try again to win the seat they legally and legitimately lost 9 short months ago.

Hell, here they could put the thumb screws to Larry Flynt and Gary Coleman just for kicks right up until the polls open --- just 45 days from today.



digby 8/24/2003 02:14:00 AM |

 
I Gotcher Trademark Infringement, Right Here





Where DO the Bushies get their ideas, I wonder?












digby 8/24/2003 01:45:00 AM |

 
They Get It

TAPPED, writing about the terrific Dean blog pinpoints not only what is so good about it, but what is important about it:

Tapped has thought for a while that the great unacknowledged secret of the Dean campaign's wildly succesful blog -- at least during this slowish news month of August -- is that it has a heck of a lot more in common with Parade Magazine and US Weekly than it does with Slate. The Dean Blog is as goofy and cheesy and low-brow as the American people themselves...

The Dean people understand something that the rest of the Democrats just can't seem to get a grasp on.

Politics and popular culture have converged. The Bushies know this and very effectively market their "product" as a shit-kickin' moron. They know their audience.

Dean's bloggers know theirs too.

In both cases, they are successful because they are entertaining. In the dense and dangerous internet jungle or the maze of the 500 channel sushi menu, being boring will kill you.



digby 8/24/2003 01:25:00 AM |