Hullabaloo

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

 
Stop Making Sense

by digby


That dessicated waste of space Kate O'Beirne is on Hardball right now screeching for the laudenenum because "liberals don't know how to act at funerals!" Oh lawdy, lawdy, lawdy Miss Mellie, I do decleah these Democrats are so ungenteel! Why, they were talkin' politics and singin' and dancin' and actin' all Negro and everything!

I personally find it absolutely outrageous, OUTRAGEOUS! that Republicans are attacking Coretta Scott King and her family this way. Why, she is an American icon! How dare they! Do they really think that African Americans don't know how to behave at a funeral for one of their own? How very white of them.

Kate O'Beirne isn't fit to wipe Coretta Scott King's shoes and criticizing her on the day of her memorial service is disgusting. What kind of unfeeling ghouls have Republicans become??


Update: Oh and I think they need to apologize to the Reverend Lowry. He is a man of the cloth and a friend of the deceased. Are they saying that leaders of the African American church are less worthy of respect than the white churches they are so proud of representing? It sure sounds like it. Republicans, it seems, only respect the church when its leaders "behave" the way they deem appropriate.

Update II: Matt Singer writes:

If you haven't read about it elsewhere, President Bush apparently looked a bit sheepish at Coretta Scott King's funeral service today. Why? Because two speakers had the gall to talk about the values the Kings stood for: fighting poverty, fighting racial division, standing up for working Americans.

Yes, it had to be unpleasant for poor little President Bubble Boy having to deal with something other than his hand-picked sycophants. He's probably never even heard this stuff before.

Typically, his supporters' knee jerk response is to rhetorically lynch African Americans.

Update III: Check out Americablog if you would like to know a little bit about the man who Kate O'Beirne and her fellow funeral etiquette harpies are taking to task for being inappropriate at King's funeral.

For shame.


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digby 2/07/2006 02:54:00 PM |

 
Spooked

by digby


ReddHedd has the full deconstrution of John Dickerson's juicy new memoir of his role in the Plame case today, so I will just give you the link to follow if you haven't already been there. I just want to make a couple of observations.


Dickerson says that this push-back by administration officials was highly unusual:

What struck me was how hard both officials were working to knock down Wilson. Discrediting your opposition is a standard tactic in Washington, but the Bush team usually played the game differently. At that stage in the first term, Bush aides usually blew off their critics. Or, they continued to assert their set of facts in the hope of overcoming criticism by force of repetition.

[...]

At this point the information about Valerie Plame was not the radioactive material it is today. No one knew she might have been a protected agent—and for whatever reason, the possibility didn't occur to us or anyone else at the time. But it was still newsworthy that the White House was using her to make its case. That Scooter Libby and Karl Rove mentioned Plame to Matt was an example of how they were attempting to undermine Wilson. They were trying to make his trip look like a special family side deal not officially sanctioned by the agency. No one at a high level in the government was worried enough about the veracity of the uranium claim to send a "real" special envoy. And no one at a high level ever saw Wilson's report when he returned. Later we would learn that Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had been warned by the CIA that the uranium claims were shaky and that Wilson's wife was one of many people involved in the decision to send her husband.

I've always thought there was something quite unusual about the fact that they copped to the 16 words. This is a group that never admits to doing anything wrong ever. yet, they did it this time in an apparent effort to contain this story. According to Dickerson's recital, they were close to panic.

What was it about Wilson that had them so spooked that they would break with their highly successful methods? It's true that it was an escalating battle between the CIA and the White House over who was oging to get blamed for the WMD failure. Why didn't they just blow off their critics, get Tenent to take the fall, repeat their mantra like robots and move on?

I suspect that it has to do with Niger forgeries, but that's a guess. The IAEA had long before debunked them, but considering the infighting, Wilson's connection to the CIA may have made them very nervous. (Still no word on that, hmmmm?)

And maybe it's just the fact that there were no WMD. If I had hyped the danger as much as they did, I might have been spooked too. But they got over it. They quickly pulled themselves together and developed a better strategy. Just before the Special Prosecutor was appointed, the Financial Times reported:

"We let the earthmovers roll in over this one."

Or so they thought.



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digby 2/07/2006 11:24:00 AM |

 
Trust Them

by digby


Or else:

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.

"He's [Rove] lining them up one by one," another congressional source said.

Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.

Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

I guess we are supposed to believe that an administration that will strong-arm its own caucus on a fundamental constitutional question of the separation of powers would never spy on its political rivals.



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digby 2/07/2006 09:20:00 AM |

 
Cartoon Violence Bake Two

by tristero


A very interesting discussion about the previous post on the cartoon riots. Just a few quickies and then I hope the cartoon riots quickly become history for all of us.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article on the history of the protests. As one would expect, the story is far more complicated than the Wag the Camel scenario. In fact, the protests were encouraged first of all not by Saudis, but by secularists in Egypt who wished to shore up their pro-Islam cred as secularists have come under pressure from radical Islamists. These protests then got out of hand. One more example of how impossible it is to tame a maelstrom. And of not recognizing that you're dealing with a maelstrom.

In comments, Michael said that I have no idea what art is for. That is absolutely true, and I've been thinking passionately about art, and studying it, for as long as I can remember. More to the point, however, is whether that is a question worth answering, except perhaps provisionally, through specific examples. I don't think so.

Mona, and some others, were unequivocal in defense of the paper, in advocating that the West teach the Muslims a lesson about free speech, and in rejecting of any argument that rioters have a claim to the moral high ground. To say the least, I strongly disagree with most of this, I'm sure I'm not alone in my disagreement, and I see no reason to repeat the arguments I've already made. That said, Mona's argument, combined with those who considered the cartoons "satire," spurred an interesting angle I hadn't considered before.

If I think of nasty satire, I think of Voltaire flaying Spinoza's Leibniz's optimism or of Philip Roth's Tricky Dixon in "Our Gang." But it's striking: The objects of satire are often - always? - respected authority figures or ideas within the culture of the satirist. WITHIN the culture, not OUTSIDE the culture. Even in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, the object of satire is not really the third world country to which Bill Boot has been booted by an editor who confused two Boots. It's the British press's hopeless, corrupt reporting from such countries. The satire was directed directly at institutions that were part and parcel of Waugh's upper class British Twitworld.

In contrast, as I see it, Islam is not part of mainstream Danish culture. Mohammed has no genuine cultural authority the way, say, the royal family might. To call the cartoons satire, therefore, seems to me inaccurate. It's simply ridicule, and ridicule of a figure from a culture that, from within Denmark - the satirizing culture - is Other. Danes are heeping scorn and humiliation on someone's religion, someone who is not Us. Someone who doesn't look like us, doesn't act like us, doesn't think like us, isn't as rich as us. And just can't be us.

Mona and those who believe the cartoons really are satirical probably don't see it this way, I suspect. To them, it's pretty simple: Muslims should act like everyone else and take their knocks like everyone else. If anyone's excluding them, making them peculiar and Other, it is Muslims themselves, by acting like jerks and failing to understand the importance of free speech. No excuses: Muslims are just like everyone else and if they don't behave decently, we need to be teach them some lessons.

My objection to this argument starts with the firm belief that there is a utopian, mistakenly optimistic premise behind this kind of argument of equality. The playing field for Muslims is not equal in Denmark. Even if they behaved exactly the same way as their non-Muslim neighbors, they'd still be judged non-Danish. Right now, Denmark, like other Scandinavian countries, is grappling with the rapidly changing nature of Danish identity. The children of Muslim immigrants are far from being thought equally "Danish" as the children of those who can trace their ancestry back to some 12th century ancestor. Muslims in Denmark, and in the Western world in general, are not often in positions of authority, the religion is not dominant in the West, nor are Muslim citizens in many positions of power. So, if satire is an assault on authority within the satirist's culture, as I think it traditionally has been, there's nothing [or little] for the Danish cartoonists to satirize in Islam and Muslims. But there are some - many - who will find much to scorn and ridicule in those who they think can never be part of Danish culture. And those folks will find much to hate in the Other. (You might object: What about Satanic Verses? What about it? Yes, it satirized Muslims and the Qu'ran, but Rushdie was raised Indian and Muslim. The satire was within his own cultural milieu.)

So let me revise an earlier sentence. As I see it, Islam is not part of mainstream Danish culture yet. It will be some day. given current trends. And when it is, the ethnocentrism, the racism, that is so egregious is these cartoons (and, yes, I've seen them) will be muted. That's because Danish cartoons that will actually satirize Islam will be different in kind than these cartoons. They will make less use of ethnic stereotyping, for one thing. But right now, the paper that published the cartoons was up to a lot more than simply dispensing the indisputed (to the West) moral lesson that free speech is good. The paper was also teaching a lesson - "We" know better than the Muslims. AND the paper was holding up to ridicule not authority figures within its culture, but the beliefs and authorities of the most abject members of its culture.

It's may be laudable to imagine a time when Islam can be treated satirically and with the full viciousness Tim Robbins lavished on the rightwing in "Bob Roberts". But it's a serious mistake to think now is the time.

Let me add some boilerplate caveats, which should be obvious, but apparently aren't to some folks. I do not advocate banning any kind of speech and nothing above can be construed as doing so without twisting the obvious meaning of what I wrote. I deplore what the paper did, not the publishing per se, but the whole shebang. But they had the right to do it and I wouldn't restrict them from doing so. Being friends with the editor, now that's a different story.

Simply because the cartoons are blatantly offensive, and intended to be, in no way excuses the utterly insane reaction in which people have senselessly died. Those deaths lie at the feet of the cynical bastards within the Muslim communities that incited people to riot (and with some, not all, of the rioters), not the paper or the cartoonists.

While many details can and should change - yeah, the art argument was off topic in post 1 - I still think my first post on this crazy mess got it right. What's behind the cartoon riots are very deep, very troubling notions that cause perfectly sensible people to think it is the West's job to teach the non-West lessons in how to behave, or to think that when the West behaves like a first year medical intern with no social skills, the appropriate response is a bullet or a bomb. To get out of this insane murderous dance, the first tiny step must be to put away all those gut reactions and do some serious thinking about what is going on and why.

That is why we need a far freer press than we have, or Denmark has. We simply have to know what is going on. All of it, even the ugly bits. That is why before we can even begin to understand how sensibly to deal with the any of the disparate Muslim communities in the world, we sure as hell need to find out a lot more about them and stop pretending they are an equal part of the Western world or so repellent or backwards they need us to teach them how to behave.

That's it. No more posts on these damn cartoons, I swear!
tristero 2/07/2006 07:46:00 AM |

Monday, February 06, 2006

 
Process Talk

by digby


Via Armando over at Kos I see this statement from Tom Vilsack today:

Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk.

The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security.

. . . "If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did," Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters. "And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."

There are many things about this statement that are bullshit. I don't have to lay them all out for you. But I would like to expound on one aspect of this statement that drives me crazy: it's a process answer.

A process answer is saying what "we should say" instead of just saying it. Nothing drives me more nuts than a politician who talks process instead of engaging voters directly. In this instance it's a backstab equal to anything one of those run-at-the-mouth strategists says to the NY Times to boost his cool factor among the mediatarts. He's positioning hemself as a "reasonable" centrist on national security, but he clearly has nothing to offer on the subject at hand so he just talks about what "we should be doing."

A lot of politicians do this, in different ways. Even Howard Dean used to do it when he said "we should be appealing to those guys with the confederate flags on their pick ups --- they don't have health care either." I wanted to shout "Great! Do it. What's the pitch?" The pitch never came. That's the rub with these process discussions. Just saying that we should do something or we need to do something is not the same as doing it. And it's a big reason why people are confused about what we stand for.

If they think that we should be tougher on national security, they shouldn't say "we can't win elections until we reassure people that we can keep them safe." They should say, "here's how we'll keep you safe..." If Vilsack really thinks that Democrats will lose if we don't support unconstitutional domestic spying programs then he should just say, "I think the program is probably legal and I support it." A winning message is a winning messsage, right? Why all the navel gazing?

I suspect that he knows most Democrats don't support his stance. But then perhaps he ought to think about how to convince us that we are wrong on the substance of this argument instead of appealing to us on this issue of "winning." Maybe we can be convinced. Or if he doesn't actually believe that the program should be supported but thinks he has to go along with it or Democrats will lose, then he could try persuading Republicans that the program is wrong. Either way, he will have given a clear message instead of trying to signal some sort of defeatist "this is the only way we can win" argument to the base while sounding like a half baked philosopher to the opposition. It's this meaningless "we must convince people" process mush that will ensure that nobody knows what in the hell he actually believes. And that's the biggest problem most Democratic politicians face.



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digby 2/06/2006 08:21:00 PM |

 
It Could Be Anyone

by digby

Crooks and Liars has a clip from Glenn Greenwald's appearance this morning on Washington Journal in which he mentions that many conservatives are concerned about this. He brought up super conservative Bruce Fein's opinion that this could be an impeachable offense.

But he didn't have time to mention a couple of things that I think are worth looking at in this vein. The first is this group that calls itself Patriots To Restore Checks and Balances who have formed an alliance with the following groups to protest the government's increasing encroachment on Americans' civil liberties:

Brad Jansen
Adjunct Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
American Civil Liberties Union
American Conservative Union
Americans for Tax Reform
American Policy Center
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Free Congress Foundation
Libertarian Party
Gun Owners of America
Second Amendment Foundation


The press release I linked above says this:

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

Where are these guys today? Shouldn't they be called to testify before this committee and give their views? Are these "hard-core, doctrinaire" conservatives (as Greenwald elegantly calls them) just another branch of the Karl Rove Eunuch Society? I thought they always considered themselves to be something more than party hacks and second rate cronies but perhaps I was wrong.

Grover Norquist, as I have pointed out before, should be concerned about this for more than theoretical reasons. Perhaps he thinks he's safe because he is the ultimate insider. But he should ask himself whether the fact that other insiders consider him a security threat might just put him in the crosshairs.

Grover Norquist has for some years now been promoting Islamist organizations, including even the Council on American-Islamic Relations; for example, he spoke at CAIR's conference, "A Better America in a Better World" on October 5, 2004. Frank Gaffney has researched Norquist's ties to Islamists in his exhaustive, careful, and convincing study, "Agent of Influence" and concludes that he is enabling "a political influence operation to advance the causes of radical Islamists, and targeted most particularly at the Bush Administration."

But if Grover Norquist is indeed a convert to Islam, it could be that he is not just enabling the Islamist causes but is himself an Islamist. (April 14, 2005)

Grover looks like just the sort of guy they'd be likely to tap, don't you think?

This really isn't a partisan issue. Any American could fall under this illegal spying scheme and there is no oversight by anyone to determine whether it's legal, necessary or useful to national security. It could be political enemies... and it could be political friends who some believe have suspicious ties to "the enemy." You just don't know. That's the problem.

And knowing how these people operate --- as Grover surely does, having been a part of the dirty tricks apparatus for more than 20 years --- you can bet they are doing whatever they think is advantageous to their cause. I would think that keeping an eye on "unreliables" like Grover with his Muslim wife and libertarian leanings could be seen by the administration as important.

And as I noted in this earlier post, they don't just spy on their enemies; they spy on their friends too. To make sure they don't stray ... if you know what I mean.


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digby 2/06/2006 03:40:00 PM |

 
Shorter Wiretaps

by tristero

It's Watergate "done right:"

I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants.

tristero 2/06/2006 03:17:00 PM |

 
How We Will Win The War On Terror

by digby

The oceans no longer protect us. The terrorists are coming over any minute to kill us all in our beds. They are a ruthless enemy who hide in caves until they suddenly decide to strike without mercy. But they have an achilles heel. They are all suffering from serious memory problems. Unless they see it in the paper they forget that we are tapping telephones. Then they slap themselves in the forehead and say "Oh no! I've been calling my friend Mohammed in LA planning that awesome terrorist attack and like, totally fergot that the infidels are listening in. Fuck. Man, Zawahiri is gonna to be so pissed."

This is why it was so horrible that that the NY Times revealed the program. It jogged the terrorists' memories and now they won't use their phone and e-mail accounts anymore. Until they forget again, that is. So, shhhh. Loose lips sink ships.

So says Alberto Gonzales.



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digby 2/06/2006 01:36:00 PM |

 
Cartoon Violence

by tristero

Note: I'm not sure the following is entirely cooked. Consider this three quarters baked. Or less.

Mahablog has a bunch of links to opinions about the cartoon riots. And links to some opinions about the opinions.

In a different post, Barbara links to Juan Cole's comments on the matter and as always they are interesting. Juan believes, among other things, that there something akin to an economic thing at work here. That's 'cause Muslims, many if not most, live in Third World countries and communities. In short, in part it's the rich and well off ridiculing the poor.

Maybe.

But as I recall, during the Satanic Verses flap (which in many important ways, I think, the cartoon riots do NOT resemble), Khomeini was in the midst of some serious domestic problems - bad economy in Iran, enormous number of deaths in a futile war with Iraq. Rushdie's book was the perfect deflection. Similarly, Saudi Arabia had some very good reasons to stoke the controversy. During the recent haj, some 350 Muslims died. Now if the cartoons were published in September, why in late Jan/early Feb is there suddenly such shock, shock? In short, the cartoon riots are part of a Wag The Camel strategy.

Maybe.

And maybe Atrios is ultimately right, that the right to ridicule Muhammed must be defended, but the decision to do so is open to serious question. Especially given how tense things are presumed to be between the West and Islam.

But while Atrios' take is as close to mine as I've read, what seems behind all the craziness is pretty deep stuff, deeper than a first glance might seem. I'm gonna go through my steps in coming to my own somewhat different conclusion, complementary to Duncan's.

I must confess my Inner Contrarian was the first to react. No, not less but even more offensive cartoons! The world needs more mockery of Muhammed and Islam, I thought. The more they're mocked, the less power the mockery has and that's good for everyone. The more it's mocked, the less sensitive Muslims will become to every slight. The worst thing to do in this situation is to declare ridicule off limits. It makes Islam above human reach, like the acts of Zgriertwrw (the substitute word for the name of the US president, whose name has become too holy to be uttered by non-Republicans).

But then I thought more about Art and Morality. Soundbite version: It simply isn't art's job to teach anyone a lesson.

True, it's not art's job to be polite. If it was, there wouldn't be Michelangelo's David, let alone the poems of Baudelaire, or the late recordings and performances of John Coltrane. And it is certainly not art's job to make a culture less sensitive and passionate.

But then I flipped that all around and a glimpse of a personal opinion on this mess started to occur to me. If it is not art's job deliberately to console, it also is not art's job intentionally to piss anyone off. The dissonances in Monteverdi's madrigals were not deliberate provocations, as many thought. It's simply what he heard. Stravinksy wasn't trying to cause a riot with Le Sacre. He was furious, not happy for the publicity. An artist, if s/he's really an accomplished artist, doesn't seek to anger. What a monumentally trivial objective!

In the case of the cartoons, it seems as if they were commissioned for moral reasons, to illustrate a point of view, propagate an ideology - freedom of speech impinged upon by Muslim objections. Their existence was not drawn from some internal kind of inner aesthetic impulse (people have argued for hundreds of years what's meant by that kind of a drive and I'm not gonna go any further now to define what I mean) but from without.

In short, the cartoons are art to teach a lesson. But while the artist can control his/her brushstrokes, the reaction to art cannot be controlled. In moral art, the reactions are often far from ones the artists desire. Put another way most of us who've read the Inferno stop right there. I'm sure the good parts are wonderful, but I think I've already read the really good - ie, lurid- parts.

And that's sort of like the problem with my initial impulse. I, too, wanted to teach those sumbitches a lesson - who, exactly? I dunno, those sumbitches. And that's just like the newspaper that originally published the toons. But, as I thought through what I was saying, I realized it's not my business to teach anyone a lesson and that thinking it was is nuts. Gut feelings are very often not good.

Now, perhaps a bit of a digression but it really isn't. A bit of detail on the use of moral themes in art.

Some great artists have conciously worked with moral themes in art today, to try to come to terms with it. One of the greatest masters of the trend is - irony of ironies - the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. His masterpiece, "Breaking the Waves," (don't rent it, see it in a theater where you can't escape) is both a deeply moving affirmation of Catholic faith and a harrowing, pornographic rant against the superhuman sacrifices required to live a life truly in imitation of Christ. You can easily conclude that art as the mediator of morality has not been deconstructed but eviscerated in von Trier's work. But you can just as easily see in the fate of Emily Watson's character the redemptive, sacrificing love of Christ and the good that can flow from it. And that's just for starters in trying to approach this amazing, impossibly aggravating film.

Von Trier's film is shattering, insane, magnificent, fiercely ambiguous, sublime. By intent, Lars makes you seek your own sense of morality within the structure and actions of the film. And just as intentionally, you are doomed to fail. This isn't a paen to relativism or amorality. Rather, for von Trier, it's something like the point of the Book of Job: the moral compass of humans is too puny to grasp God's greatness and thoughts. But while you're on this doomed journey of moral discovery, you just might think to wonder how your sense of good and evil gets shifted and twisted and turned inside itself. And if there is a "good" in the film, it's that sense of wonder. An aesthetic sense. The sense of art. It's an exhausting experience to watch Breaking the Waves. And unforgettable.

By contrast, the Muhammed cartoons are, morally dull, even by their own admittedly less high-falutin' standards. And the reason is obvious after a bit of thought. The intention behind them is not to work out some kinky artistic/personal problems. No, the intentions behind the cartoons were those of the self-righteous Western mediocrity and they couldn't be clearer - let's show Them free speech is a good thing.

Wow, that's taking a controversial position! But much to the amazement of the Danes, they found that it actually was. And this is what makes the cartoons indefensibly awful, even stupid. Unlike Stravinsky, for whom teaching moral lessons was the last thing on his mind; unlike von Trier, whose control is simply awesome over fiendishly complicated moral themes; the cartoonists and their editors set out, like the naive, idealistic Kevin Costner in the Untouchables, to do good. They got their asses handed to them.

So here's the point of this long digression into von Trier, aesthetics, et al.

Why do the cartoon riots remind me of Paul Wolfowitz and George Packer, who seemed to have nothing to do with it? For a very simple reason. The same perverse sense of entitlement and exceptionalism underlies the anti-aesthetic impulse of the editors: Let's do some good! This is not to argue for a crude Scowcroftian realism, but rather to protest, strongly, against the insanity of making simplistic moral/political statements either in art or in foreign policy. A lot of the time, they just make things worse. A lot worse.

So to sum up. Yes, on the level that most often should be addressed - the practical level - Atrios is right and that's as far as anyone needs to go. Of course, the rioters are, at best, grossly overreacting and at worst, have been driven insane by those that provoked them to overreact. Of course, free speech needs defense, and of course commonsense propriety was in short supply in the newspaper's newsroom. But underneath these self-evident truisms lies a sad truth that bears some thinking about. The events of the cartoon riots, in all their mad senselessness and fatal tragedy, reflect - epitomize - some of the worst but most virulently widespread presumptions of our time: the arrogance and shallowness of white boy moralizing; the maniacal self-destructive sense of sheer helplessness that descends into pointless murder, destruction, and horror.

As I see it, both the decision to commission and publish the cartoons and the riots that followed simply defy comprehension not because one couldn't predict the consequences but because one could, with depressing ease. Unless they come to their senses, the white do-gooders are gonna get us all killed in their crusades. And the recipients of all this do-gooding are gonna do the exact same thing when their fury at the do-gooders is cynically stoked and channelled into senseless destructiveness and murder.

In short, no more cartoon riots. No more cartoon editors. No more cartoon evil cavemen. And no more cartoon American administrations. It's time not to listen to what our gut says, it's time to give it some alka-seltzer and get it to shut up so we can think.
tristero 2/06/2006 01:35:00 PM |

 
First Rate Burglary

by digby

I'm beginning to wonder if the Democrats might not have some information that the administration has done domestic surveillance without a warrant. They keep asking. Pointedly. And Gonzales keeps saying that he isn't "comfortable" acknowledging the question.

It is indisputable that the admnistration has engaged in surveillance of political groups. We know this. It has been verified. We also know that they believe that political dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. The president says so himself.

Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suspect that this administration would use this illegal surveillance program for purposes other than that to which they have admitted, particularly since they consider political dissent to be bordering on treason. This is, remember, an administration that has made a fetish of the politics of personal destruction. The gathering of "oppo research" is the life's blood of their political strategy and it goes all the way back to the Big Kahuna.

From Bush's Brain:

At a seminar in Lexington, Kentucky, in August 1972, Rove and Robinson recounted the Dixon episode with considerable delight. They talked about campaign espionage, about digging through an opponent's garbage for intelligence --- then using it against them. Robinson recounted how the technique had worked well for him in the 1968 governor's race in Illinois when he "struck gold" in a search of an opponent's garbage. He found evidence that a supporter had given checks to both sides in the race, but more to the Democrat, Sam Shapiro.

"So one of our finance guys calls the guy up the next day and told him there was a vicious rumor going around," Robinson said, according to a tape recording of a seminar. "The guy got all embarrassed and flew to Chicago that day with a check for $2,000 to make up the difference," he said.

This was the summer of the Watergate break-in, with the first revelations of a scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency.The Watergate burglars broke in to the Democratic National Committee offices on June 17 and the whole business of political dirty tricks was rapidly becoming a very sensitive subject. Both Rove and Robinson recognized that. They even specifically mentioned the Watergate break-in at the seminars, not as a reason to avoid campaign espionage, but as a reason to keep it secret.

"While this is all well and good as fun and games, you've really got to use your head about who knows about this kind of thing." Robinson warned.

"Again in those things, if it's used sureptitiously in a campaign, it's better off if you don't get caught. You know, those people who were caught by Larry O'Brien's troops in Washinngton are a serious verification of the fact that you don't get caught."

Remember: Watergate was about bugging the Democratic National Committee. The "3rd rate burglary" was to replace an illegal bug that had been planted on the telephones of prominent Democrats.

The lesson of Watergate for the chagrined Republicans was that they needed to be more forceful in assuming executive power and they needed to be more sophisticated about their campaign espionage. This is what they've done.

Anybody who even dreams that these guys are not using all their government power to spy on political enemies is being willfully naive. It is what they do. It is the essence of their political style. This is Nixon's Republican party and they have finally achieved a perfect ability to carry out his vision of political governance: L'etat C'est Moi. If the president does it that means it's not illegal.


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digby 2/06/2006 12:10:00 PM |

 
The Eunuch Caucus

by digby

I've been digesting this morning's hearings and I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans' abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles ("The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse") now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush's political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.

I've watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminineces Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.

Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.


Update: Oh, and don't get excited about Huckleberry Graham's "tough" questions. This is his schtick. Going all the way back to the impeachment hearings, he has done this. He hems and haws in his cornpone way how he's "troubled" by one thing or another until he finally "decides" after much "deliberation" that the Republican line is correct after all and he has no choice but to endorse it.

Update II: Matt Yglesias notices the same thing and wonders why the senators don't have a hunger for pwoer. I say it's because they are craven, bedwetting cowards who are afraid of Karl Rove and addicted to stealing from the American people.


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digby 2/06/2006 10:36:00 AM |

 
Declaring War

by digby

I'm watching the NSA hearings and it occurred to me: did the UK and Spain "declare war" on terrorism or al Qaeda? After all, they have been attacked as well and I wonder if they are operating under wartime conditions or wartime laws. Dores anyone know whether we are the only country in the world that considers itself "at war" with terrorism in the literal sense of the word?



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digby 2/06/2006 09:31:00 AM |

Sunday, February 05, 2006

 
Question Of The Day

by digby


From today's New York Times:

One who attended was George Terwilliger, a deputy attorney general in Mr. Bush's father's administration, who said that questions over the spy program were "not so much a debate about the law as about the tactics that are necessary to combat the type of violent enemy we've never confronted before."

He added, "I hope the A.G. will make that point very strongly, that there is no precedent for what we're dealing with here."

I'm hearing everywhere that the Democrats are skittish about pursuing the NSA scandal due to the GOP's aggressive framing of the program as necessary to protect the American people. It is indisputable that Republicans have been very successful at portraying themselves as strong and Democrats as weak on national security for more than 40 years and have used this issue aggressively in the last two elections. Indeed, the only time we won the presidency since 1964 was during times when national security was not on the agenda (or their president was forced to resign in disgrace.) They have appropriated certain master narratives about heroism and courage to define Republican leadership which they sell as necessary when the country is under threat --- a threat which they also insist upon defining as existential (communism and terrorism) and which always requires brute force rather than strategic cunning or intelligent maneuvering. (Remember that at the country's most dangerous moment in the last 50 years -- the Cuban Missile crisis --- the hawks insisted that the only answer was to launch a pre-emptive strike while cooler heads insisted on trying to figure out a way to step back from the brink.)

So, knowing this and knowing the Rove has been telegraphing that they plan to pull out their wellworn playbook once again, I'm throwing this out to you readers today to mull over and discuss. Since the Republicans have been successful in winning elections on national security, how should Democrats deal with it?



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digby 2/05/2006 11:23:00 AM |

 
This Is More Like It, Mr. Keller

by tristero

Normally, in articles like this one, another dispatch from the front lines of the extreme right's War On Brains. a quote packed with the usual lies of the extreme right is reproduced without context or fact checking. This gives the reader the impression that the facts are basically right and therefore what the fanatic is saying may be a reasonable, even if unusual, opinion to hold:

"I got tired of people calling me and saying, 'Why is my kid coming home from high school and saying his biology teacher told him he evolved from a chimpanzee?' " Mr. Buttars said.

This time around, however, the reporter, Kirk Johnson, was permitted to be a genuine reporter and report the whole truth, not just be a quote puppet. The very next paragraph reads:

Evolutionary theory does not say that humans evolved from chimpanzees or from any existing species, but rather that common ancestors gave rise to multiple species and that natural selection — in which the creatures best adapted to an environment pass their genes to the next generation — was the means by which divergence occurred over time. All modern biology is based on the theory, and within the scientific community, at least, there is no controversy about it.

Yes, exactly. The only thing that's remarkable about this is that this kind of apropriately critical attitude is rare. The lies that the extreme right and radical christianists spew out as a matter of course can only be stopped from polluting the discourse if they are met immediately and head on.

This article has the right idea. Someone might wanna inform their colleagues at the Book Review that reviewers and essayists, too, are obligated to know enough about their subjects to separate fact from fiction and not be seduced into a bogus equivalence of value by rightwing lies no matter how confidently asserted.
tristero 2/05/2006 07:27:00 AM |

 
Brokeback

by tristero

Daniel Mendelsohn is right.

An while you're at the NY Review of Books (NOT the Times Book Review), check out, among other great pieces, Thomas Powers' review of James Risen's book, "State of War."
tristero 2/05/2006 02:13:00 AM |

Saturday, February 04, 2006

 
Why The Fight Against IDiocy Matters

by tristero

It always amazes me when a practicing scientist and nobody's fool thinks "intelligent design" creationism is not his or her problem:

Our energy is misdirected if we fight harmless beliefs in angels or intelligent design. There are antiscientific illusions with far more serious repercussions for society. Among these are the continuing belief in ballistic missile defense; or an irrational fear of terrorism when alcohol, automobiles or suicide pose much greater risks. On these fronts, you will find practicing scientists engaged.

The front against creationism is fought mostly by science philosophers, because intelligent design is fodder for their discipline, and by science educators, because creationism infringes on their professional activity.

He makes some good points, but he is utterly wrong.

The reason is this: although I can see how someone might develop an argument that, say, fear of terrorism is irrational, I disagree. At the very least, it's quite arguable whether a substantial level of fear of terrorism once your town has lost some 3000 citizens in a single day is rational or not. The comparison of terrorism stats with alcohol deaths, et al is specious - for many reasons, this seems apples to oranges to me.

Reasonable people cannot disagree about "intelligent design" creationism. It's garbage, the same way Star Wars is garbage. But it is not a harmless folk belief. Far from it.

ID is a carefully crafted strategy, extravagantly funded by the most extreme elements of the religious far right, to undermine science. Destroying science is but one front in an openly declared struggle to replace the American republic with a theocracy.*

And indeed, to drive the point home as to how important it is for scientists to combat fake science of the IDiotic variety Atrios points to an article with excerpts from a memo that actually circulated within NASA. There is much that is distressing in this article, but it is this part I want to focus on here:

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.

Get it? This fight is not about what kids learn in high school. This is a knockdown drag out fight - no, this is a culture war - in which the extreme right is trying to re-define science as just one more set of religious doctrines. This crap about the Big Bang, discussed in all seriousness in a government document!, comes from the the wackiest fringes of religious fundamentalism, people who think all of particle physics is a lie and what constitutes the universe are not quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on, but Jesus. I kid you not. This bizarre comic strip is not a parody.

Ominously, the notion that somehow science is just one more set of equally believable opinions about the world, no different than say, astrology, has just been made legitimate in the Times Book Review:

neo-Darwinists [sic] emphasize natural selection, a god-like mechanism

This is so utterly wrong I'm at a loss for words. The reviewer not only doesn't know a damn thing about modern evolutionary science. He doesn't even know basic theology.

Thomas Aquinas hedged his bets, saying that astrology might have a deterministic interpretation when applied to people in large populations, but that individuals, in communion with God, are freed from the bondage of the group. This aptly parallels the relationship between Newtonian mechanics

It does not.

quantum physics, in which individual particles are allowed the luxury of free will.

This is bullshit, even in an informal sense, even in an attempt at wit.

Popular astrology, with its simplistic emphasis on sun signs and their psychological traits (e.g., Geminis are fickle; Virgos are meticulous), is a wan replica of traditional astrology.

Bullshit. "Traditional astrology" in terms of accuracy and validity is just as bogus and arbitrary as "popular astrology." There are just more levels of bogosity.

But astrology can also be seen as early science, an attempt to understand nature.

Bullshit. That would mean that any and all creation myths or crystal ball gazing are just crude, early forms of science. This entirely misrepresents what science actually is, and how it differs from creation myths and crystal ball gazing.

Modern man can choose from a veritable smorgasbord of Type 1 errors: string theory, neo-Darwinism, cosmology, economics, God. Astrology is as good as any...

Bullshit. This reviewer doesn't know the first thing about any of the topics in his list.

There has been a great deal written about the faked memoirs of James Frey. The Times itself has printed editorials deploring the author. But somehow, a genuine peabrain who hasn't met a fact or an idea that he can't scramble beyond any recognition - is he, perhaps, this guy using a pseudonym? - was permitted to review in the Book Review, and the paper published it without bothering to run it past a single scientifically literate person who would immediately spot the omnipresent fraudulence.


*I have documented every single assertion, and every single adjective within these assertions far too often to repeat them. Anyone seriously interested in the details is welcome to pick up Forrest and Cross's "Creationism's Trojan Horse" which goes into enough detail for most laypeople. Any comments attempting to excuse or advocate for the "worth" of "intelligent design" creationism will be ignored by me in the comments. Even before Dover, that was not an argument intellectually honest people could make with a straight face. After Dover, there are no excuses to give it the time of day.

[UPDATE: Mark in SanFran over at Kos] fills in some details of the science, and some background information on the reviewer of the astrology book.]
tristero 2/04/2006 02:24:00 PM |

 
Michael Berube Is Professor Keef

by tristero


It's now official. There's no point in denying the rumors any longer; we knew they were true long ago. Our very own Michael Berube is none other than the Keith Richards of Academe. Congratulations, Michael! No false modesty now, you've earned it. You deserve the title. I hold my lighter to the sky in your praise.

Who sez Berube's Herr Professor Keith, the inimitable virtuoso of chalk in Open G? No greater an authority than David Horowitz does. Yes, THAT David Horowitz (and I'll be fried in Crisco before I'll give him a link). David says so in his new book called The Professors, listing the 101 most dangerous college profs in America.

Close that slack jaw, buster. It's real, I saw it with my own eyes last night in a store (didn't buy it, natch). Think I could make something like that up? No one in their right mind could begin to imagine a book about academics that endanger America with their ideas. (Um...Better move right along before anyone notices...)

And in said tome, betwixt pages 71 and 73, we can learn all about the evil Berube, his darkest, his grooviest, his most Keith-iest transgressions:

1. How he supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban but then relapsed into standard leftist opposition to war when it came to Iraq.

2. How he teaches a class in creepy postmodernistical deconstructionalistical what-have-you, during which Berube makes the case that sane laws and ethics devolve from people and not from attempts to discern the commands of a divine, supra-human will. Never you mind that sounds a lot like the argumentation in the Declaration of Independence. David Horowitz says this is evil. And David knows a lot about evil. (eh... well, as I was sayin')

3. Michael Berube dilates in class. That's right, it's there in black and white in David's book, look it up. Michael Berube dilates in class.

Who knew? In fact, I've met Prof. Berube twice for dinner and concerts and I never guessed. Again and again, I stared straight into the eyes of one of the most dangerous professors in America. He stared back. I stared. He stared. We both stared. I could swear he never dilated. Not once.

Now, you might ask, "Did he ever get up, excuse himself, and say, 'I'll be right back, gotta dilate' " ? He did not.

The closest I came to seeing anything remotely like dilating occurred just after dinner. Professor Evil, with a sideways glance worthy of Cary Grant in Notorious, reached into his sports jacket and pulled out a dangerous looking metallic device, flicked it open with a wrist motion that bespoke hundreds of hours of intensive practice, mashed a few buttons and then muttered some cryptic words into it that sounded suspiciously like, "Hey, howru? Jamie ok?"

But everyone knows that's "dialating" and Horowitz was quite specific. Berube dilates. Daily. And in class, no less.

So it's official, Michael Berube is fookin' dangerous. And, just as Keith is proud of his reputation as the Bad Boy of Rock, Michael, too, should take this as a badge of honor. I'm thrilled to know one of the most dangerous men in the country. Let me say it ever so loud and proud. I want the world to know:

I stand completely behind Michael Berube.

(Obviously. Because if I stood anywhere else, who knows what I might get hit with when he dilates?)

Will there be an award? Will Michael unite with his old band at the ceremony, will the songs sound as fresh as the day they prematurely split, and will they reunite for one last tour of triumph, selling out Albert Hall and the Garden? Stay tuned.


PS As mentioned, I didn't buy the book and I didn't have much time. So, perhaps there are more of my buddies listed, both in the blogosphere and in MeatLand. To all of you, my heartfelt congratulations.
tristero 2/04/2006 06:14:00 AM |

Friday, February 03, 2006

 
Ripping Them Off Again

by digby


Just in case you missed this Diary over at Kos earlier this week, I urge you to read it. Mary Beth Williams of Wampum has put together a series of posts outlining a whole other dimension of the Abramoff scandal, namely his involvement in running a slush fund to obstruct an accounting of the Bureau of Indian Affairs --- an accounting ordered by the federal court in the biggest class action suit in American history.

The story is complicated and amazingly disgusting. Apparently, there is just no limit to how often and how thoroughly this country can fuck over the Indians.

Here is a post at Wampum with links to all the posts Marybeth has done on this subject. This is fascinating, amazing work. If the fine folks at Wampum didn't take themselves out of the running for the Koufaxes, this would be a major contender for best series.


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digby 2/03/2006 07:58:00 PM |

 
Stickin' It To DeLay

by digby

I'm sure all of you already know about the Ciro Rodriguez race down in Texas that the luminaries of the blogosphere are backing. He sounds like a perfect netroots candidate and there could be nothing more thrilling than ousting a preznit Bush kissing Democratic shill.

I think that one of the underdiscussed reasons for supporting this, however, is to stick it to Tom Delay and his scumbag lackeys in the Texas legislature who resdistricted in 2002, (something with which Kos reports today the quisling Cuellar was personally involved.) Delay himself, in what may well be remembered as one of the greatest acts of hubris in American political history, redistricted himself out of a very safe majority and may just go down because of it.

I had great admiration for the Texas Dems' true grit when they left the state to avoid a quorum. (I wrote about it here, in one of my early tributes to Lord Saletan's sniffing condescension about partisanship)Those guys and gals had some guts to do what they did and I salute them for it. It would be beautiful poetic justice if we were able to take back a couple of those seats --- especially the seat of a "Democrat" whose sole function in life is to give Junior bipartisan cover.


Update: From Crooks and Liars

Delay: This effort is being driven by the left wing groups like Common Cause, Democracy 21, the ACLU and others...their ultimate goal is public financing of campaigns and total isolation of elected officials."

And don't forget the ultra-left wing center of the vast Left Wing Conspiracy: the Bush Justice department.



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digby 2/03/2006 03:06:00 PM |

 
Lovely Rita

by digby

Dear Gawd. I didn't think it was possible to drag down the quality of Hardball any further, but the addition of Rita Cosby is a new low. I'm sure she's a very good tabloid crime reporter. People seem to like her. But her take on politics is so shallow she is making Tweety and Tucker look like intellectual heavyweights. She clearly spent too much time at FOXNews not entirely paying attention. The result is a lethal combination of knee-jerk wingnutism and tabloid silliness. I guess this is an MSNBC attempt to boost her profile, but it's cringe worthy even by "making a drunken fool of yourself at a dinner party" standards.



Update: I take it all back. Matthews is just as silly and stupid as she is. (Why did Americans like Hugh Grant playing the prime minister in "Love Actually" rather than Billy Bob Thornton's creepy American president? Because we all love Tony Blair, that's why! Jayzuz....)


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digby 2/03/2006 02:47:00 PM |

 
Pundit Putz

by digby

Atrios linked today to a very insightful post by the man who wrote "What Liberal Media?" I urge you to read the whole thing if you are interested in the cozy, insider nature of political reporting you see coming out of Washington. Nobody gets it better than Alterman.

Alterman wrote a similarly insightful column last week in which he took mushy triangulator Joe Klein to task for his insulting mischaracterization of liberals and the facts, even as he plays a "liberal" columnist on TV and in the pages of TIME:

Among the most egregious offenders against journalistic standards and simple honesty for the purpose of abusing liberals is Time's Joe Klein, who is, amazingly, the most liberal commentator currently employed by America's highest-circulation newsweekly. (Klein's animus toward liberals coupled with his cavalier treatment of inconvenient facts could hardly be in greater contrast to that of Newsweek's high-profile liberal columnist Jonathan Alter, whose solid reporting and tempered idealism serves as a kind of remnant and reminder of the long-defunct liberal Establishment.)

To take just one recent example, a Klein column posted January 8 accused Democrats of "playing too fast and too loose with issues of war and peace." Now look who's talking:

Klein writes, "The latest version of the absolutely necessary Patriot Act, which updates the laws regulating the war on terrorism and contains civil-liberties improvements over the first edition, was nearly killed by a stampede of Senate Democrats." In fact, this "stampede" was led by four Republicans.

Klein writes, "A strong majority would favor the NSA program...if its details were declassified and made known." In fact, when an Associated Press poll asked Americans if the Bush Administration should be required to get a warrant before wiretapping, 56 percent answered affirmatively.

Klein writes, "Until the Democrats make clear that they will err on the side of aggressiveness in the war against al-Qaeda, they will probably not regain the majority in Congress or the country." This statement ignores that the Bush Administration diverted resources from capturing bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda to send them to Iraq, where no such threat existed but where one has since been created. It also ignores the fact that Republicans received a minority of the Congressional vote in 2004, as well as in the presidential votes of 2000, 1996 and 1992.

Joe Klein is everything that is wrong with the allegedly liberal punditocrisy. His anachronistic establishment politics are wrongly seen by many, including many elected Democrats, as the "reasonable" middle ground for which we must strive in order to attract some ephemeral centrist voter who exists only in their imaginations. He is the embodiment of the now wholly irrelevant DLC experiment. With none of the down home common touch of Clinton or the earnest idealism of Gore, he is nothing but a big bowl of warmed over 90's centrist hype in a time where battles lines are by necessity, sharply drawn. He's the political equivalent of reruns of "Mad About You."

Every time he is seen as representing any form of winning liberalism, we lose. He obviously hates real Democrats, the vast majority of whom do not agree with anything he has to say, and his hostility to what we believe contributes mightily to the disdain and fear that the Democratic establishment feels toward the grassroots. He represents nothing but the clubby little world of highly paid poltical pundits who have as much in common with average Americans as Madonna does.

And he is a thin-skinned prick. Here's is his response to Altermann's criticisms, via Alternet:

"Eric Alterman is simply not a serious person --- and I'm writing about a very serious issue," says Time columnist Joe Klein, in response to Eric Alterman's recent ad hominem attack in The Nation, wherein he dubs Klein one of the mainstream media's "most egregious offenders against journalistic standards and simple honesty."

"I don't want to address Eric's remarks because they're not worth addressing," Klein says. "This guy just spews opinions without having any information or doing any reporting. You just did something Alterman has never done, for example, actually calling me to do some reporting!"

In the course of generally noting, "The punditocracy's ignore-except-to-attack attitude toward liberals," Alterman dissected a recent Klein column that Alterman claimed "accused Democrats" of playing too fast and too loose with issues of war and peace. He then criticized Klein for his perceived "animus toward liberals coupled with his cavalier treatment of inconvenient facts."

"That's typical of his essential narcissistic laziness," Klein responds. "Alterman has been personally attacking me for years. It's what he does instead of working … He's so peripheral, I forget he's in the business until someone calls or emails me his latest attack!"

[...]

"I'm not nearly as smart as Eric, to have opinions without bothering to report first," Klein counters. "Instead let me react by speaking to the facts. After all, I've lived my life by seeking out facts and then reporting them. One advantage I think I have over other columnists is that I do reporting."

Klein says he will "have a lot more to say on this (NSA) issue next week -- but first I have to learn more about it."

Asked for an example, Klein says, "The notion of calling it wiretapping is questionable, I think, although I'm still not entirely sure.

"People like me who favor this program don't yet know enough about it yet," he says, "Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."

According to Klein, the NSA employs a "powerful front-end computer program that can scan computers and cell phones and access all previous communications." Then, he says, analysts look for patterns in the calls and emails.

"Once they've gone through that process," he explains, "Then they go to the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) special court."

In Klein's analysis, "the liberals are reacting to this issue in their usual reflexive way. Meanwhile, George Bush and others in his administration are being very cynical."

The political flap over the NSA actions, Klein says, could be easily resolved. "All that's needed is an updating of the FISA Act or the Patriot Act." But this is unlikely to happen, Klein believes, "because George Bush is spoiling for and creating a fight on this issue, since he thinks it's a fight he will win in the court of public opinion."

As for his fight with Eric Alterman, Klein's willing to forfeit. "Who cares, really?" he concluded. "He's written lots of inaccurate, foolish stuff about me before. It's just silly. If it were someone who actually KNOWS stuff or caught me in an inaccuracy, then I'd be concerned. But Eric? He can say what he wants."

Yes, well, there is no need for Klein to be concerned because he holds a very important perch as a faux liberal in the punditocrisy, a highly paid profession that specializes in pushing the "liberals are icky" meme that serves the Republicans so well. He's a good lapdog "liberal" and he and all his lickspittle cohorts are killing us.



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digby 2/03/2006 01:53:00 PM |

 
It Would Be A Cakewalk. After All, More Soldiers Speak Spanish Than Persian, Right?

by tristero

To hell with Tehran. Real men covet Caracas. Doesn't it seem like the Bush administration is deliberately being as obnoxious as possible so they can start a war somewhere, anywhere, it doesn't matter, just as long as there's some bang bang? Where do you find people like Donald Rumsfeld?

"I mean, we've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," Rumsfeld added. "He's a person who was elected legally _ just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally _ and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others."

There have been increasing signs of hostility between Washington and Caracas, and on Monday Chavez said Venezuela's intelligence agencies have "infiltrated" a group of military officials from the U.S. Embassy who were allegedly involved in espionage.

Venezuelan authorities, including the vice president, have accused officials at the U.S. Embassy of involvement in a spying case in which Venezuelan naval officers allegedly passed sensitive information to the Pentagon.

It was not the first such charge by Chavez.

I have a favor to ask. Occasionally, I've tried to understand Chavez but can't. The mainstream press in the US has been worthless (worse than usual and that is not a good sign, frankly). There were a few interesting articles in the New York Review of Books - no fans of the Bush administration - from which I took away the impression that Chavez must have been born in Macondo. It sounded like he was completely nuts but that somehow, through a thicket of immense corruption, life for some poor people in Venezuela were marginally improved under Chavez for the first time.

If anyone has any suggestions about a knowledgeable article or book to read on Chavez, please drop the reference in comments.

In any event, when I start to agree with commentators about how vicious and uncivilized it is to use rhetoric that reminds people that Nazi admirers have no business in the US government and that anything in their past is fair game to humiliate them and get them out of it, i just have to read something like these remarks from a high Bush official to recall precisely the nature of the fight we're in. Bush's vicious discourse cannot be ignored, minimized, deflected or muted. It must be met head on. Always.

As Zappa sez, The meek inherit nothing.

(By the way, I'm gonna predict 10 comments or less.)
tristero 2/03/2006 08:16:00 AM |

 
America's Nominee For The International Monty Python "Walking Up And Down The Square" Competition

by tristero

Who else?

With the United States beginning its February presidency of the Security Council, John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, reported the failure of his first effort from the chair, to get the 15 Council members to begin meetings promptly at 10 a.m. "Starting on time is a form of discipline," he said. "I brought the gavel down at 10. I was the only one in the room, though."

tristero 2/03/2006 05:45:00 AM |

 
A Belated Open Letter To George W. Bush

by tristero

Dear George,

In your recent TV show, you read

[E]ven tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will...

Given that you only listen to what fellow Republicans have to say, I can only quote the immortal words of your Vice-President, Richard Cheney:

Go fuck yourself.

Love,

Tristero
tristero 2/03/2006 04:16:00 AM |

 
Tom v. Tom

by tristero

My friend Peter Swales is one of the most important historians of psychoanalysis in the world (I must return his calls). Among his greatest recent achievements is research into the real Sybil, the publication of whose case (but NOT her real problems) eventually spawned an epidemic of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) diagnoses about 10 or 12 years ago, a travesty that seriously wronged a lot of emotionally vulnerable people.

Well, Peter, I love you dearly, but Tom Friedman just proved that MPD is real and it's not pretty:

Oh, come on, Friedman, get real! The president throws a few paragraphs your way and you go all weak in the knees. Show some spine, man! You need to trash this thing. You know these guys are not serious. This is a president who once called for putting a man on Mars and then just dropped it. You assumed they were going to do the Iraq war right — remember? Look where that got you, you moron. You should have listened to your wife!

Yeah, I know all that. But here's what else I know: Mr. Bush is going to be president for the next three years. We do not have three years to lose — not on climate change, energy efficiency or improving math/science education. I am not going to sit around for the next three years just trashing these guys and praying that some Democrat gets elected and does all the right things. We don't have time, you moron!

[snip]

There's no pain-free solution. Remember how President Kennedy ended his May 25, 1961, State of the Union speech calling for a moon shot? He said: "I have not asked for a single program which did not cause one or all Americans some inconvenience, or some hardship, or some sacrifice."

Pigs will fly before Bush says that.

You may be right. And if he fails to carry through with this energy initiative, I'll be the first to rip him for it. In the meantime, I prefer to give him a new reputation to live up to. You never know. ... And by the way, pal, you got a better horse to ride right now? [Emphasis added.]

If you think I'm gonna enter an argument between two Tom Friedmans, you must think Mama Tristero raised a fool. But I do want to point out that little phrase I boldified:

You never know. ...

Hmm...Didn't I hear that like a few years ago? Didn't a guy named Packer or something just say exactly that to excuse his inexcusable naivete?

Dear Tom,

I do know.

Love,


Tristero
tristero 2/03/2006 03:54:00 AM |

Thursday, February 02, 2006

 
Karl The Whistleblower

by digby


So it turns out that the CIA told Cheney and Libby back in June of 2003 that the Niger claims were bogus. (Via Crooks and Liars)

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."

Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.

I guess that blows ole patriotic whistleblower Karl Rove's excuse out of the water, too. Remember how all the wingnuts said he was just warning the press off a bad story when he spoke to Matt Cooper?

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility.

Here's what Karl said in case you forgot:

"not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked. Karl Rove lied. But that is no reason for reporters not to believe him now, of course. It was just the one time.



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digby 2/02/2006 03:03:00 PM |

 
Reflexive Cheating

by digby

So the House Republicans tried to rig their own election. It just doesn't get any better than that, does it?

But, after all, it's what they are trained to do from the time they join the Party:

Everyone who watched this summer's race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent's "homosexuality"; rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don't; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

It's so much a part of their make-up that it's hardly even remarked upon. Their friends in the media don't seem to find it worthy of mention either. Republicans believe that stealing elections is perfectly moral and right. They do not believe in democracy. That's why they talk about it all the time.



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digby 2/02/2006 11:06:00 AM |

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

 
Bring On The Screeching Harpies

by digby


These missing Cheney e-mails are very intriguing. This is particularly so because we went though a similar event during the Clinton administration and the Republicans went completely apeshit over it. In 2000, it was revealed (through the machinations of Judicial Watch) that some emails had not been properly archived and it was suspected that some of Monica Lewinsky's had not been turned over as a result. Dan Burton held hearings and the Independent Counsel, Robert Ray, was assigned to look into it.

Judicial Watch ended up filing an ethics complaint against Ray for declining to follow it up but it was clear from the get that it was another bogus witch hunt, as all the Clinton scandals were. But in the course of it we all found out what kind of an archiving system the White House has for maintaining emails:

... whenever a White House staffer clicks "send," a message reminds them that a copy of their missive is being sent to records management.

When it comes to saving e-mails, the White House is held to a higher standard than the private sector, and even Congress.

Companies that have a policy of saving e-mails usually do so only for three to six months, according to records-management consultants. Many companies consider them the same as phone calls, and don't archive them unless they are equal in weight to a written communication.

But the White House is different. It saves its records for posterity. After President Clinton vacates his office next January, at least 30 million stored e-mails will be deposited with the National Archives, an unfathomable mountain of data ranging from "how about lunch?" to speech drafts, to perhaps more juicy communications.

Now Fitzgerald says:

We have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

And here I thought the grown-ups from the private sector with their fancy pants ways were going to fix all those technical problems.

Whatever the case, there is ample precedent for a full-on congressional hissy fit and a thorough special counsel investigation. The Republicans held fiery hearings on this matter just months before Clinton left office, so great was the urgency, and there was absolutely no evidence that any emails of the president were involved. But because there might have been an email from Monica to the president that said "I wuv you" that hadn't turned up yet, they grilled the entire White House counsel's office for days.

There can be no complaints from the Republicans about Fitzgerald investigating this. None. The precedent was set just five and half years ago --- by them.



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digby 2/01/2006 10:06:00 PM |

 
Schwarzenegger's Got Cash Troubles. It's Time To Hit Him Hard.

by tristero

The lying piece of Nazi-admiring trash California has the misfortune of having as a Governor doesn't have any money in his re-election fund. That's good news.

Democrats should drive him into personal bankruptcy and revisit in lurid detail all those nasty personal issues Schwarzenegger deflected when he was campaigning the first time. They should start right now and not stop, even after he's been driven from office and he's sold his last Hummer.

I know. I'm letting him off easy.
tristero 2/01/2006 09:56:00 PM |

 
Useless

by digby

Sometime back I was in the minority here in the blogosphere when I argued that I understood why NARAL was staying with its backing of Chafee:

I understand that we all need to stick together, but if I were NARAL I'd be getting very, very concerned about some Democrats' willingness to "soften" their stance on the issue of choice because it's allegedly hurting the party --- you know, moral values and all that. I might just think it's smart to show some muscle. There is no way I'd blindly trust anyone in this environment to fight this battle for me.

There is a great example of how this works over the long haul and it comes from the grandaddy of all single issue groups --- the NRA. They are certainly an indispensible and active part of the GOP coalition as they've always been, but they have plenty of Democrats on their side now too. And they did not get to where they are by being good little GOP soldiers. They fought every single battle on the gun issue alone and they insisted on every candidate they backed being on board. When they started their campaign it was not the default mainstream position in either party.

And they backed plenty of Democrats over Republicans if they had to. Sometimes they backed the losing candidates because they were in urban elections where the Republican couldn't win without endorsing gun control. And if there ever existed a red state Republican who was for gun control you can bet that the NRA would back a Democrat who was against it --- even if control of the Senate depends on one seat (which is not the case for Chafee.) In Illinois, for instance, Governor George Ryan was elected to office in 1998 over an NRA-backed Democrat. In the last election they didn't endorse either senate candidate in Oklahoma because both had a 100% rating with the NRA. The issue was off the table and so were they. More often they support NRA Republicans over NRA Democrats, but that's just smart politics considering who presently owns the government. They keep focused like a laser on what matters to them and they have done this during good times and bad for the GOP.

But does anyone believe that even though they are a single issue "special interest" that the NRA doesn't help the Republican party in the most substantial way possible? They've pretty much killed us in the rural areas and turned the red states blood red. They've won. Except in big cities, this issue is dead. Republicans have nothing but respect for them --- even if they backed a Democrat or two along the way. They know what they brought to the party.

If the NRA had been in NARAL's position this past week, they would have ripped their support from Lincoln Chafee so fast it would make Trent Lott's hair crack. They know when to pull the strings. Chafee chose his gang of 14 cred over his pro-choice cred. That's all you need to know about him. He has shown himself useless to the cause and should be dropped immediately. This is a seat that can be picked up by a real pro-choice Democrat who isn't running as a bowl of lukewarm water.

I honestly can't understand what in the hell they were thinking. It's one thing to back Chafee to make the Democrats not take you for granted. It's quite another to continue to back him after he failed a monumental test. Now Chafee knows they won't press him when the shit comes down and Democrats see them as a spent and useless force. What a spectacular strategy. When forced childbirth becomes the law of the land, I'm sure they'll be able to sleep nights knowing they cleverly backed a man who played them for fools.

Jane is all over this one (as I'm sure most of you know.) I'm very disappointed in NARAL --- as well as all the other groups to whom I've long been giving money in anticipation of these Supreme Court battles. I don't know if this was winnable, but goddamit, I expected them to pull out all the stops --- and that means, at the very least, pulling support from pro-choice Republicans whose only purpose was to step across the aisle in battles like this, trading a vote for a red state Democrat who would lose his seat if he did it and making the vote bipartisan (and, therefore, "winnable" in the eyes of the media.) That's it. They are now officially not worth the coathanger flyers their names are printed on. And unless NARAL gets a clue, fast, neither are they.



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digby 2/01/2006 06:33:00 PM |

 
Dear Me

by digby


I'm sure most of you have noticed that the Republicans, the media and now even the military have been spending a lot of time on the fainting couch lately and I have to admit that I'm getting concerned for this nation's security because of it. This isn't happening just because their whalebone corsets are laced too tight. It's because the angry left has been saying some very ... how can I put this ... inelegant things and that makes it nearly impossible for our manly leaders to guard democracy and protect us properly. Think about it.

The Republicans have rightly been in a tizzy about our oafish ways, notably heaving their matronly breasts in indignation at the shocking behavior of the Democrats on the judiciary committee who churlishly badgered Samuel Alito about his perfectly innocent association with a lovely alumni group that consisted of all the best people. Why, they molested that nice Mrs Alito until she broke down and wept at the unfairness of it all. (Little Lord Lindsay nearly mussed his Beaver) Just how are Republicans supposed to defend this country from evil killers if Democrats behave so boorishly in a political debate?

And that's not all! Why, just the other day a group of hooligans invaded a meeting of the Washington Post Temperence Society and engaged in hate speech! Right out in the open with no regard for anyone's feelings or anything. The vicious ringleader of the ill-mannered brutes, Jane at firedoglake, has written in one of their grubby little "alternative" newspapers that calling for the firing of an ombudsman for refusing to do her job is just part of the give and take in a freewheeling democracy. Hah! It's nothing but anarchy! (Somebody should have given the dowager Brady some laudenum in the first few minutes to dull the pain of hearing all that foul language. I understand he burst into tears and had to be led away when he saw some of those crude four letter words. As an ex-sportwriter, he's never heard such vulgarities. )

And now today, I hear that the Pentagon Ladies Embroidery League has called for the removal of a horrible "tasteless" cartoon featuring a wounded soldier in the Washington Post that they find much too dreadful to bear. Why, seeing such a thing is almost as bad as being wounded themselves --- worse! It's just so, well... insensitive. It's hard enough trying to eradicate evil and tyranny in our time. But this! Is there no humanity left?

These brave and tough defenders of freedom in the Republican party, the media and the military don't deserve this kind of treatment. It hurts their feelings and shocks their delicate sensibilities. Again, I ask you, how are these people supposed to defend us from the evil islamofascists who are trying to kill us in our beds if they are swooning with shock at our ill-bred criticisms? Free speech isn't a suicide pact, you know.



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digby 2/01/2006 02:33:00 PM |

 
Second Thoughts

by digby


When I saw that Cindy Sheehan had been arrested I was sort of disappointed that she'd decided to do any kind of stunt. My feeling was that she didn't need to because she is a living symbol of anti-war sentiment all by herself and would have made a statement just by being there. This government is always so protective of their King and his pageants that I didn't find it all that surprising that she would be removed for wearing a t-shirt.

This morning, while listening to president Bush spit the words freedom and democracy as applause lines, I read Glenn Greenwald's latest piece, which reminded me that I'm beginning to lose my awareness of being a frog slowly being brought to a boil. Sheehan did not break the law, she has a perfect right to wear a t-shirt in the capital and her arrest was an outrage. These things matter beyond politics or strategy.

Sheehan was wearing a shirt that had the number of American deaths written on it. It was not vulgar or disrespectful in any way. It is as much an expression of support for the troops as the one for which Mrs Young was ejected (and for which she was not arrested, despite the fact that unlike Sheehan she resisted and called the police "idiots.") And all this concern "for the troops" plays out as this failed president used them as both a prop for his unpopular policies and a cudgel to silence his critics:

Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor. A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison . put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country . and show that a pledge from America means little. Members of Congress: however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our Nation has only one option: We must keep our word, defeat our enemies, and stand behind the American
military in its vital mission.

Nice trick. Speak with candor as long as you support me. It's the same trick that rhetorically conflates dissent with treason, using the phrase "aid and comfort." In this case, his speechwriters very deftly forced the entire congress to leap to its feet to applaud their own irrelevance --- they ended up cheering the assertion that "second-guessing" in "hindsight" is unpatriotic and that their only option is to do as he orders. Nice democracy we've got here.

Rick Perlstein reminded me that it was Coretta Scott King who raised Martin's consciousness about the war in Vietnam. She was speaking out about it for two years before he was, marching in her first peace march in 1965. Perhaps it was because she, like Cindy Sheehan, was a mother. Or maybe she was just more willing to expend moral capital on a cause that can be marginalized as unpatriotic.

From Perlstein:

In Taylor Branch's new At Canaan's Edge about that 1965 march: "Martin Luther King commended the draft of Coretta's address, but canceled plans to speak himself. (She exhorted the crowd never to forget that democratic commitment made America a historic great nation: 'This is as true in spite of the bombings in Alabama as well as in Vietnam.')."

It is a sad irony that on the very day she died, the president cheaply invoked her great contribution at virtually the same moment his government was silencing the woman who carries her message today. Arresting Cindy Sheehan for asking how many more American troops must die on the same day that Coretta Scott King passsed away is perfectly emblematic of the bankruptcy of every soaring tribute George W. Bush makes to freedom and democracy.


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digby 2/01/2006 12:17:00 PM |

 
Tristero Hearts Mahablog

by tristero

This is spot on:

There is another Left, one that is more serious about good government than it is about making posters. And that Left is serious about winning elections. It’s also serious about building progressive coalitions that can have a real impact on making and enacting policy.

The Left Blogosphere, more than anyone else, speaks for the mainstream Left. And we are the descendants of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The GOP wants to make us out to be the same old New Left of the 1960s, and there are plenty of people (International ANSWER, Ralph Nader, etc.) who are ready to oblige and play the role of the cartoon “pinko commie left” in front of news cameras. But IMO that’s not who we are. Not most of us, anyway.

I anticipate getting comments about how we should support other lefties instead of Bush. But though its corpse is still twitching the New Left is dead. And its baggage is holding us back. Cut it loose, I say.

The point Barbara is making seems to me similar to one many of us, including most importantly Paul Krugman, an honorary Blogospherian, have been saying for years: Many of us out here in Left Blogosphere are actually moderate liberals. Angry as all hell, it is true, but moderate liberals nevertheless. We are "Left" the way anyone to the left of Louis XIV is Left. We have nothing in common with the Ward Churchills out there even if we wouldn't quit ACLU if they defend him, just as we didn't when they defended Oliver North).

We are not the radicals. To force women who wish to terminate their pregnancies - for whatever reason - to use coathangers - that's radical. And unspeakably cruel. To refuse to recognize, both legally and publicly, a couple in love - that's radical. And narrow-mindedly cruel. To base foreign policy on the president's "gut" and an obviously untenable unilateralism - that's radical. And stupid. To get a team of unscrupulous lawyers trained in the black arts of sophistry (ahem!) but ignorant of American history to gut the Constitution and argue that a president is just an ominipotent monarch under a different name - that's radical. And utterly un-American.

That's why I'm blogging. It's not to advance a "leftwing agenda." Unless preventing Social Security from being gutted by rightwing maniacs is considered a leftwing agenda. Unless demanding that the US president behave like the president of the United States is supposed to behave towards the victims of a devastating hurricane is a leftwing agenda. Unless insisting that the nation's schools teach science and not cynical lies is a leftwing agenda.

These are some of my issues. If I thought marching and protesting could help them today, I would march and protest. But I think there's something we can do that's more effective to counter Bush and Bushism. That is to help build a genuine second-party that will stand up against these scoundrels and provide this country the intelligent, genuinely strong leadership it deserves. And that will require a different kind of left - the left of blogs like Mahablog. (And it will require a lot more than just blogs, to say the least, but we have to start somewhere!)

I think the timeframe we have to create such a party is vanishingly small. Even the NY Times editorials are sounding like an hysterical blogger from a few years ago, hinting of the dangers to America of totalitarian rule, fascism, whatever you want to call it from Bushism. In any event, the US democracy may, just may, right itself when Bush's presidency is over. But if the next president is anything like this one... God help us.

Another president like Bush and even the most cautious amongst us will be forced to conclude that the project of American democracy - or at least the version of it I learned about and, yes, admire - is over. That would not be a Good Thing. Barbara's clear insight gives me some hope that good, substantive ideas about what to do - and good people to do them - are percolating up to a place where they can have some genuine impact.

[Update: This post has elicited some angry comments. To respond briefly, I'm genuinely puzzled. I fail to see how one could understand what I wrote as casting aspersions or caricaturing folks on the left who fought the Klan, or got their heads bashed in protesting the Vietnam War. How could I? I, too, marched, but to mention that sounds ridiculously patronizing. And to say "the left did great things" is to say something so obvious, it's even more insulting. Of course, that's true. And for me to fulsomely praise those who personally confronted the Klan? Praise doesn't go far enough, certainly not my praise. In a just world, those encomiums would come from 1600 Pennsylvania.

But the problem in the US today ain't about left vs. right, at least not as I see it. It's about the extreme right versus everyone else: left, right and center.

I'm amazed that this is so difficult to express without infuriating people who are some of the very last people to whom I would address any disparaging comments. Did I really imply that the Democratic Party should move even more to the right? I don't think so, I think that's a terrible idea, in any event. How could one find that in what I wrote? I thought I implied that the politcal discourse in the US is so far right already that even moderate liberals like Krugman are considered too far left to be taken seriously.

In any event, the strong negative reaction in comments was truly unexpected and therefore fascinating. If its purpose was to spur second thoughts about what how I perceive the present mess in the US, considered me so spurred. I doubt I will change my mind much, but I'll try to understand your points a little better. That may sound like mushy liberal hogwash, but I can't see what good purpose either ignoring or disparaging what you wrote could possibly serve.]
tristero 2/01/2006 10:03:00 AM |

 
Dean's World (The Blog) Hearts Andres Serrano

Thanks to the always useful bag 'o links at the Daou Report (and his own blogging is great), I came across this most amusing post:

Remember "Piss Christ," the piece of "art" consisting of the image of a crucified Jesus Christ submerged in the author's urine (with a government grant, no less; your tax dollars hard at work!), and how upset Christians got about that?

Well, compare and contrast.

[Link to the recent uproar over the caricatures of Muhammad on display in Denmark.]

You know, the art community is always congratulating itself for being "daring" by mocking Christ, but this is territory that's apparently a bit too scary for them, as art mocking Muslims is exceedingly rare.

First of all, as a card-carrying (well, we don't have cards, but you know what I mean) member of the downtown New York avant-garde scene, I do indeed remember Serrano's Piss Christ with a tremendous amount of affection - that's right, affection. Who wouldn't look back fondly to an issue and a time when one of the Great Questions Of Our Age was whether it was right for the NEA to fund an artist who peed on a crucifix and took a picture of it? (Not that the NEA actually funded Piss Christ, they didn't. See below.) Can you believe that once - before Monica, before impeachment, before Bush and the attendant horrors - anyone had the mental space to give a damn? Those were the days...

Back then, Serrano was one of those mediocre artists who was more tolerated than respected. He was an indifferent craftsman, as someone once noted in print, that is, his photographic technique was pretty amateurish, given his own aspirations. And his subject matter was pretty lame - a big pic of a nude woman in bondage, wow, how original! - but which gained a certain offensive je ne se quois when a SoHo gallery chose to display it in their window and created a ruckus (Tris, you spoke French, Cara mia!).

In short, no one cared too much what he did. Until, that is, he, Karen Finley (whose career at the time was not doing terribly well), Robert Mapplethorpe (conveniently dead) and some other naughty, naughty artists were made into a cause celebre by the Jesse Helmses on the right (I still remember Helms describing a Mapplethorpe print: "A black man is making love to a white man on a green marble tabletop." Well, yes. And the problem? Would you rather the marble pink?). Prices for their work skyrocketed and the rest of us, while rallying immediately - and rightly - to their defense, couldn't suppress quite a bit of private grumbling into our beers when late at night down at Puffy's: hey, man, why does fuckin' Andres deserve all that publicity?

In other words, "Piss Christ" is a construction of the rightwing, who elevated one unimportant artist's photograph from just one more passmeby at an obscure gallery into an Important Statement. Talk about strawmen!

A couple more things. Dave Price says art mocking Muslims is exceedingly rare. Well, I immediately thought, of course, of Satanic Verses (ironically, a co-blogger with Dave, Mary Madigan, has an entire post about the book), but one can also find numerous examples throughout European art. There's Mozart/Schikaneder's Moor in the The Magic Flute, for one. In C.S. Lewis's Narnia, there are the Calormenes: "oily cartoon Muslims who wear turbans and pointy-toed slippers and talk funny." I don't have more examples, especially of modern art, simply because the subject matter - mocking Muslims - interests me even less than Piss Christ did. But trust me, Dave, you wanna find art mocking Muslims, you'll find lots of it in Western Art.

Which brings us to Dave's contention that modern artists are somehow only faux-daring because they mock Christ but ignore Muslims. I'm tempted to quip, "Not in Denmark newspapers they ain't!" but let's assume for the moment Dave is correct when it comes to modern American artists. The reason artists who wish to consider themselves "daring" may not bother too much with dissing Muslims is: the rightwing beat 'em to it! Remember the religious leader - invited to the White House, no less - who characterized Muhammed as a pedophile and Islam as a "gutter religion?" No, if you wanna be thought "daring" - always a good marketing idea in art since Beethoven - you go after (pardon the slightly homogenized metaphor) the sacred cows of your own culture, not others. And one of the biggest is Christianity and its iconography. Duh.

But in terms of art and the artworld, is an artwork like Piss Christ that daring? Not to anyone who knows the first thing about art. Bad art, yes. Poorly executed, yes. Interesting, well... maybe to some. But daring? Hardly. But I'll go even further. Like most normal people in the West who aren't trying to impress others with their self-righteousness, I"m indifferent to religious blasphemy. I'm just not gonna get, eh, pissed about it and start issuing fatwas; even if I found it patently offensive. It doesn't matter like it did to the Ayatollah and Jesse Helms (did I just equate them? Bad Tristero, bad Tristero! ). Dave may find Piss Christ ugly, offensive, even blasphemous, but so what? Get over it, dude. If anyone's religious faith is shaken by a photo of a cross floating in pee, then that faith is shaky to begin with, my friend. But if you wanna blame someone, blame Jesse Helms for rubbing your face in Piss Christ, without whose yeoman pr efforts, no one would have seen it.

Indeed, it comes down to this. The only people who consider Serrano a "daring" artist are the suckers on the right who make the mistake of taking him seriously - and the artist's buddies and gallery, natch. A few years ago, the Village Voice published some of Serrano's then latest work - nude photos of people with fairly unusual leisure time activities and concerns - and Richard Goldstein enthused about how astonishingly transgressive they were.* Oh? Apparently, Richard forgot Frank Zappa's immortal "Mud Shark" from 1971, or Berg's Lulu from the 1930's, an opera about a venereal-diseased hooker who seduces and destroys everyone she meets until she's finally murdered, to the tune of a blood-curdling scream, by Jack the Ripper and whose epilogue consists of a heart-breakingly beautiful love aria sung by Lulu's lesbian lover as dies, infected with Lulu's syphyllis. dies. It's performed every few years or so at the Met (not often enough, imo). That, dear Richard, is fucking transgressive. That, my dear Dave, is daring.

Oh, and one more thing. It looks like Dave's seeing his basic facts through a yelllowish-amber haze of stale urine. Turns out that Piss Christ was not funded with a government grant. Here's the skinny for those who care:

For many years, the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has hosted "Awards in the Visual Arts," a national competition for individual artists. In 1988, Andres Serrano was one of seven winners. His prize was $15,000 plus a place in the group show exhibiting the work of the winners. The fund that provided the money for the cash prizes came from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, private donors, corporate donors and the NEA.

Serrano's submission to SECCA was a series of untitled photographs involving bodily juices, some of a crucifix submerged in various fluids, including milk and, for the controversial "Piss Christ," "Serrano's own urine. Serrano was not a NEA Fellow, nor did the NEA commission his work, including "Piss Christ," in any way. The NEA was merely one of the "Awards in the Visual Arts" sponsors. Even this loose association, though, was enough to give the theocratic right a point of vicious attack on the endowment and its granting practices.

So in conclusion, thanks Dave, for reminding me of Piss Christ, not the artwork - that still fails to do much for me one or the other - but the huge flap-de-doodle. Face it Dave, don't you, too, wish we could go back to a time when the country could afford to obsess over something so monumentally stoopid? Ah, those were the days, indeed.

*I love Richard Goldstein. What's not to love about a fellow so oblivious that he panned Sgt Pepper's in The New York Times when it first came out? The art world would be a lot more dreary without people like him.
tristero 2/01/2006 07:35:00 AM |

 
And What Do Addicts Do When They Don't Get Their Fix?

by tristero

Steal, lie, rob their grandparents (or grandchildren). They become irrationally violent. Uncontrollable.

In short, Bush just put the world on notice. For the next 20 years or so, America's official policy is "Anything for Oil."
tristero 2/01/2006 04:03:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

 
Doing His Part

by digby

In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and respect for one another - and I will do my part.

Uh huh.

September 26, 2002

The [Democratic controlled] Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people."

Of course, that was a long time ago. He's changed since then. He's working hard to do his part now.

Ooops.

"I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy not comfort to our adversaries," Bush said.

Oh. And "second guessing" is not a strategy.


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digby 1/31/2006 06:14:00 PM |

 
What About Mars?







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digby 1/31/2006 04:30:00 PM |

 
State Of The Strawman Preview

by digby

Good news. On Fox, "Stretch" Cameron just said the president is going to reject the approach of "some" that says we should surrender to terrorism.

He's going to say:

"In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores."

Boy that's telling all those people who are anxious to "leave the vicious attackers alone." All four of them.

I also understand that he is going to announce a bold new program to allow people to pay for their own health insurance so that employers can keep more of their money. (After all, it's their profits!) I do hope that he is going to put the same people in charge of designing it that he put in charge of the prescription drug program (if there are any who aren't working for Big Pharma now.) That's worked out awfully well.

He's going to say that we are all addicted to foreign oil, which is an excellent point. We should have weaned ourselves long ago. But he may not be the best evangelist for the cause. After all, his good friends in the energy industry have just overdosed on windfall profits and are lying face down in a pool of oily tax-payer subsidies. (But hey, it's their profits!)

And then there is the expected soaring rhetoric:

"Abroad, our Nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal - we seek the end of tyranny in our world. The future security of America depends on it."

And just as soon as we end tyranny in our world we will turn our attention to restoring the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.


No word on how the manned mission to Mars or the crusade against steroids are going. And one can assume that the bold plan to privatize social security has been a rousing success too. Strangely, nobody is talking about it.



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digby 1/31/2006 03:40:00 PM |

 
Master Debaters Redux

by tristero

I was very interested to read the comments to my query: How on earth could Liberty beat Harvard in debate? Most commentators made points like no one cares about college debate, debating contests are esoteric and not real world, Liberty spends a lot of money on debate and Harvard doesn't, the rankings are misleading, and so on. All of this I have no doubt is true but it sidesteps a crucial fact that reverberates far beyond the trivialities of college debating:

There are no circumstances in which a contest between Harvard University debaters and a team from Liberty should even be close.

I'm not saying that Harvard has the smartest and most knowledgeable kids in the country, but I'll be damned if it doesn't have many of them. Conversely, I'm not saying that Liberty has the dumbest, most ignorant kids in the country, but it sure has a helluva lot more than Harvard. (For the record, I did not go to Harvard. Or Liberty.)

In short, Harvard should cream Liberty. Hell, nearly every school in the country should cream Liberty. But apparently they don't. And I'd like to know exactly how and why. We should all be interested in the answer.

Assuming it really is the case that Liberty can beat Harvard -and it seems to be* -, then it is one more example of how seriously undervalued the study of rhetoric - the art of persuasion - has become within the reality-based community. It's also illustrates how seriously important rhetoric is considered among the wingnuts. Once again, they are systematically training, with no expense spared, the next generation of rightwingers. Training them to roll America back to the halcyon years of Cotton Mather. And convince the majority of the country that that's a Good Idea.

Yes, the corruption of the media is a dreadful problem in getting out the truth about these nuts. Yes, the crazies can and do outspend us. Yes, they will lie, distort, and defraud elections, scientific data, and their opponents' positions. Yes, the Democratic infrastructure is cowardly (notable exceptions duly noted).

But from where I sit, that doesn't fully explain the serial failures by Democrats and liberals to make their case, a case which is so obviously sensible, especially when compared to the arguments of the winners on the right. What's left out of the explanation of failure can easily be symbolized - if not actually demonstrated - in this seemingly trivial, unimportant debate contest.

If we care about a world where religious lunatics aren't telling the rest of us what we can and cannot do, we damn well better figure out how to beat clowns like Liberty every time, no matter how trivial college debating might seem to some of us.


*One hightly knowledgeable commentator said the rankings were just pr and that Liberty was known as a joke among the varsity. That may have been true in 199x, but according to the article

Liberty is competitive at all three levels—varsity, JV and novice. "They're tough. [But] we're not afraid to debate Liberty," says Harvard coach Dallas Perkins Jr., whose varsity team was beaten by Falwell's last month.

[UPDATE] A very good discussion of why the ranking of Liberty as #1 is somewhat misleading. Perhaps most importantly, Liberty focuses on novice debaters and since it enters so many contests, its program, not its debaters or their teams, is ranked one. As Ed says in his reply to the fellow from Liberty, the Newsweek article reads as if the best debating teams in the country are at Liberty. Hat tip to TW in comments.

Even so, that doesn't get at the heart of the matter for me, which is why Liberty *still* does so well, apparently even beating Harvard.
tristero 1/31/2006 02:42:00 PM |

 
Tweety And Tom

by digby


Atrios wonders why Matthews is so easy on Tom DeLay, which is to say, given his normal proclivities, incredibly easy. Suspiciously easy.

Maybe it's this:

Matthews implicated in Abramoff scandal

[...]


Now there are two big issues here -- one is the fact that Matthews has cavorted with Abramoff in the past, to the point of helping out with one of his sham charities.

Then there's the ethical issues with this so-called journalist hanging out in (and helping with) such a blatantly partisan event. It's again obvious that his schmoozing with the rich and powerful have hampered his ability to commentate on those issues properly detached and rational. He's been co-opted by the DeLay/Abramoff machine.

I hate to jump to conclusions, here. Matthews loves all Republicans, especially big powerful ones who have awesome masculine nicknames like "the hammer." He gets all tingly merely being in their presence. But his "interview" with Delay last night was adoring and worshipful even for him. He looked like Nancy Reagan staring at the gipper during his inauguration speech. (He even actively coached him at times, just like Nancy in the later days.) There's more to this than your normal Tweety Codpiece envy.

GEARY

I passed out.

[He stands up and moves over the bed where we see a bloody dead girl.]

I -- I'll fix it.

[He unties the girl's hand from the bed post.]

Just a game.

[He takes a towel and begins to wipe up the blood that is all over her. He looks at the towel and wipes off his hands.]

Jesus, Jesus.

[He begins to cry. As he does, TOM looks over at NERI who is wiping his hands in the bathroom.]

Jesus, God -- Oh, God. I don't know -- and I can't understand -- why I can't remember.

TOM

You don't have to remember -- just do as I say. We're putting a call into your office -- explain that you'll be there tomorrow afternoon -- you decided to spend the night at Michael Corleone's house in Tahoe -- as his guest.

GEARY

I do remember that she was laughing...we'd done it before -- and I know that I couldn't've hurt -- that girl

TOM

This girl has no family -- nobody knows that she worked here. It'll be as if she never existed. All that's left is our friendship.

If you wonder what is going on between Tweety and Tom, you can ask him, here.


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digby 1/31/2006 11:38:00 AM |

 
Freedom Roast

by digby

All you latte-swilling, wi-fi worshipping, NY Times reading, muffin scarfing liberals should head over to Dave Johnson's new blog, "Smelling the coffee" He's talking about the iconic symbol of everything we godless Democrats hold dear.

(I'm drinking a cup of french press medium roast Kona as we speak. Mmmmmm. After I finish it I'm heading for the beach to protest the war and sing kumbaya in a drum circle.)


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digby 1/31/2006 10:25:00 AM |

Monday, January 30, 2006

 
Hey Beavis

by digby


The Editors found many good wankers this week, but this one's a keeper:

The Pillsbury Pantload sums up pretty neatly why Bushbots will never catch Osama:

OSAMA’S TRUCE [Jonah Goldberg]

What if Bush offered/accepted one and then, under the flag of truce, had Osama killed and his minions rounded up?

It’s amusing to imagine what some of Bush’s biggest critics might say.

No, “amusing” is imagining Jonah Goldberg’s first day at Marine boot camp. “Retarded” is fantasy schadenfreude about what would happen if Osama fell for some crap shananigans you saw on The A-Team. I think killing Osama is going to require a different brand of cunning than the sort required to get B.A. on an airplane. Although: you’ve given me a great idea! What if Bush and Cheney went to Osama’s hideout dressed like trouble-shooters from the power company, and told Osama that his neighbors were having some work done and then, when he let them in to check the fusebox, they killed him and all the terrorists in the world gave up? It’s a foolproof plan, and I bet that would shut Paul Krugman up but good. Or, how about this one:

What if Osama pulled off the biggest terrorist attack in human history in the United States, killing 3,000 people, and, five years later, Bush still hadn’t caught him? He lowered taxes a bunch of times, invaded a country for no outstanding reason, and proposed some nonsense about going to Mars, but, doggonit, never quite got around to getting that Osama feller. Can you imagine?

It’s amusing to imagine what some of NRO’s doughiest wankers might say.

I can only add: Jonah Goldberg has a regular op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times. That symbolizes everything that is wrong with this world.


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digby 1/30/2006 11:21:00 PM |

 
The Lighter Side of Self Loathing

by digby


Kick Me, I'm A Democrat

by Michael Kinsley.

It seems to be time once again to play Kick the Democrats. Everyone can play, including Democrats. The rules are simple. When Republicans lose elections, it is because they didn't get enough votes. When Democrats lose elections, it is because they have lost their principles and lost their way. Or they have kept their principles, which is an even worse mistake.

Democrats represent no one who is not actually waiting in line for a latte at a Starbucks within 150 yards of the east or west coastline. They are mired in trivial lifestyle issues like, oh, abortion and gay rights and Americans killing and dying in Iraq, while the Republicans serve up meat and potatoes for real Americans, like privatizing Social Security and making damned sure the government knows who is Googling whom in this great country. Just repeat these formulas until a Democrat has been sent into frenzies of self-flagellation, or reduced to tears.

There is always a pick-up game of Kick the Democrats going on somewhere. But something about the Alito confirmation—the pathetic and apparently surprising inability of 45 Democratic senators to stop 55 Republicans from approving anyone they want—seems to have made the game suddenly a lot more popular.

How dire is it for the Democrats? George Will noted on TV the other day that they have lost five of the past seven presidential elections. This baseball-like statistic—"Democrats have lost X of the past Y elections"—has been one of Will's favorite tropes over the generations. But why now five out of seven? Two out of the past four would be equally accurate, and not nearly as grim. If you take a longer view, things get grimmer again. In fact, you can measure back from the present to any of the past 20 elections (which takes you back to 1928) and only once (starting in 1932) do the Democrats come out ahead. But this hardly supports Will's contention—and everyone else's—that things went to hell in the 1960s. If this exercise has any meaning, they've been in hell continuously since 1936.

Sounds right.


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digby 1/30/2006 10:55:00 PM |

 
10 Questions

by digby


As we absorb our latest loss --- it sucks being in the minority, you hardly ever win --- we need to keep our eye on the ball and remember that we have hearings coming up on the illegal NSA wiretaps. Glenn Greenwald has been the go-to guy in this and he's compiled ten questions that he'd like the Judiciary Committee to ask Alberto Gonzales. Glenn says:

I believe the paramount objective with these hearings is to force out into the open the theories of Presidential power which the Administration has embraced in order to justify its transgressions of FISA -- not just as applied to eavesdropping but with respect to all decisions broadly relating to the question of how this country will respond to the threat of terrorism. Thus, the questions posed to Attorney General Gonzales should absolutely not be confined strictly to the question of the NSA eavesdropping program, but must explore how the Administration’s theories of its own power apply generally.

The Committee, with its questioning, must make clear to the public that this scandal is not about whether we should be eavesdropping on Al Qaeda, because everyone agrees that we should and must do that. That is why we have a law -- FISA -- which specifically authorizes eavesdropping on terrorists. Nobody opposes eavesdropping. The scandal is about -- and these hearings must therefore emphasize -- the scope of the President’s claimed powers, and specifically his claimed power to act without what the Administration calls "interference" from the Congress or the courts, even including -- literally -- engaging in actions which are expressly prohibited by the criminal law.

Read the entire post and look at the questions. Glenn is looking for feedback on this. He received some major media attention this past week from Knight Ridder, the NY Times and The Washington Post for his outstanding catch of the administration's 2002 objection to loosening the FISA laws. He is in a position now to advance this another step.


Update: TalkLeft has a post up that says Russ Feingold is openly accusing Gonzales of lying in his confirmation hearings. It sure looks like he did.

Sen. Feingold: And I also would like you to answer this: does the president, in your opinion, have the authority acting as commander in chief to authorize warrantless searches of Americans' homes and wiretaps of their conversations in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence surveillance statutes of this country?

MR. GONZALES: Senator, the August 30th memo has been withdrawn. It has been rejected, including that section regarding the commander in chief authority to ignore the criminal statutes. So it's been rejected by the executive branch. I categorically reject it. And in addition to that, as I've said repeatedly today, this administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture. And so, what you really are -- what we're really discussing is a hypothetical situation that --

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digby 1/30/2006 09:56:00 PM |

 
"It Is The Only Way We Can Live"

by digby


So we only got 25 Senators to vote for a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee who, if defeated, would be replaced by someone just as bad by a president in the pocket of his radical right wing. Well.

Do you know how many votes the Republicans managed to get when uber wingnut Antonin Scalia was confirmed? 98. And Democrats had a majority. We didn't have to even think about a filibuster. We couldn't defeat Clarence Thomas and we had a majority, a huge push from women's groups and a very dramatic set of hearings that went into the wee hours of the morning. It is very, very tough to do.

Kevin Drum says:

The lefty blogosphere has spent the last week trying to fire up support for a filibuster of Samuel Alito. This campaign was never likely to succeed, and today it failed as expected. But that's not all: it failed by the embarrassingly lopsided margin of 72-25.

I'm glad the filibuster took place, because even in failure it puts a marker down for future court fights. Still, even given the amateurish way that Senate Dems handled it, I expected it to get more than 25 votes. So here's today's assignment: In 5,000 words or less, what does this say about the influence of the lefty blogosphere?

I didn't expect it to get more than 25 votes and I'm frankly stunned that we did as well as we did. Indeed, something very interesting happened that I haven't seen in more than a decade.

When it became clear that the vote was going against the filibuster, Diane Feinstein, a puddle of lukewarm water if there ever was one, decided to backtrack and play to the base instead of the right wing. That's new folks. Given an opportunity to make an easy vote, until now she and others like her (who are legion) would always default to the right to prove their "centrist" bonafides. That's the DLC model. When you have a free vote always use it to show that you aren't liberal. That's why she was against it originally --- a reflexive nod to being "reasonable."

Obama had to choke out his support for a filibuster, but he did it. A calculation was made that he needed to play to the base instead of the punditocrisy who believe that being "bold" is voting with the Republicans. Don't underestimate how much pressure there is to do that, especially for a guy like Obama who is running for King of the Purple. The whole presidential club, including Biden joined the chorus.

The last time we had a serious outpouring from the grassroots was the Iraq War resolution. My Senator DiFi commented at thetime that she had never seen anything like the depth of passion coming from her constituents. But she voted for the war anyway. So did Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Kerry and Reid. The entire leadership of the party. Every one of them went the other way this time. I know that some of you are cynical about these people (and ,well, they are politicans, so don't get all Claud Rains about it) but that means something. Every one of those people were running in one way or another in 2002 and they went the other way. The tide is shifting. There is something to be gained by doing the right thing.

I keep hearing that it's bad that these Senators "pandered" to the blogosphere and I don't understand it. We want them to pander to the blogosphere. In their book Politicians Don't Pander; Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro argue:

Politicians respond to public opinion, then, but in two quite different ways. In one, politicians assemble information on public opinion to design government policy. This is usually equated with "pandering," and this is most evident during the relatively short period when presidential elections are imminent. The use of public opinion research here, however, raises a troubling question: why has the derogatory term "pander" been pinned on politicians who respond to public opinion? The answer is revealing: the term is deliberately deployed by politicians, pundits, and other elites to belittle government responsiveness to public opinion and reflects a long-standing fear, uneasiness, and hostility among elites toward popular consent and influence over the affairs of government

.

Bingo.

It isn't actually pandering. It's responsiveness. I believe that there is finally a recognition that the Party has hit the wall. We have moved as far to the right as we can go and we have been as accomodating as we can be without thoroughly compromising our fundamental principles. Most of us are not "far left" if that means extreme policy positions. Indeed, many of us would have been seen as middle of the road not all that long ago. We are partisans and that's a different thing all together. The leadership is recognising this.

I know it hurts to lose this one. I won't say that I'm not disappointed. But it was a very long shot from the outset and we managed to make some noise and get ourselves heard. The idea that it is somehow a sign of weakness because we only got 25 members of the Senate, including the entire leadership, to vote to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee is funny to me. Two years ago I would have thought somebody was on crack if they even suggested it was possible.


Firedoglake has a very nice post up about John Kerry and the others who voted to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee tonight and I urge you to read it. I agree with every word. This is a dramatic moment for the netroots. Get ready for marginalization, evocations of 1968 and 1972, calls for purging us from the party, the whole thing. That's what happens when the citizens rise up. Don't let it shake your will. We are the heart of the Democratic party and we can make a difference.

If you don't believe me, here's a great Democrat who might just convince you, Robert F. Kennedy:

"Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.

"These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

"For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves, on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.

"Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

You rise to the occasion every time it's necessary. It is the only way we can live.




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digby 1/30/2006 05:40:00 PM |

 
Master Debaters

by tristero

Falwell's college has the best college debating team in the country. Harvard's is 14th.

Questions, anyone? I have one: How on earth is that possible? (And no, the ranking doesn't seem to be entirely explained by the amount of debating tournaments they enter.)
tristero 1/30/2006 03:31:00 PM |

 
When Thrill Rides Turn Deadly

by tristero

I'd like to riff a moment on Digby's post, that radical Islamism does not pose an existential threat to the US.

Digby is absolutely right that radical Islamism has been so overly hyped and pornographied, and the "war on terror" so fictionalized, that we are more like a country watching a horror film than a country at war. It is absolutely the case that bin Laden's gang can't possibly bring down the US government.* And while it is distressingly easier than it ought to be for bin Ladenists to acquire nuclear technology, it is highly unlikely in the next few years that a nuclear attack - or even a biochem attack - will succeed. When you think about how hard it is to acquire, store, weaponize, manufacture, ship, deploy, and initiate an attack, it becomes very clear that this is beyond the technological capabilities, as we know them, of al Qaeda, even assuming that some members hold degrees in engineering. It is no accident that al Qaeda's spectacular attacks involved box cutters and simple bombs.

But there's an important caveat which I'm sure both Digby, Glenn Greenwald, and others are aware of, even if they disagree with my argumentation here. Radical Islamism is not an existential threat today. But given that the Bush administration has turned Iraq into a terrorist petri dish and that Afghanistan is little better - and that's just for starters - it is very likely that the growing isolation and consequent increasingly virulent opposition to the US will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. More secularized opponents of the US will have more and more reasons - the death of their children, for example, by US bombs - to become radicalized. And if the US traumatizes enough people, and makes it clear, as Bush stupidly does, that it is the US who is doing the traumatizing, you will eventually have a population of very angy young people which includes the technologically sophisticated, people who hate our guts and also have the wherewithal to inflict considerable damage to US populations through guerilla operations of many different sorts.

A cynic, or a paranoid, might think that a terrorist breeding ground was the goal all along for Bush/ Iraq - to create a genuine existential threat for the US to fight - which would maximize profits, destroy liberalism, etc. I don't think that's so. It's too simplistic a formulation to satisfy me; the world is more complicated than that. But in a certain sense it doesn't really matter. Deliberate psychopathy or blithering stupidity or both: The reality is that Bush has opened the gates of Hell.

There is still some time, I think to close the gates and contain the horror, but what, exactly, should the US do? The first thing is to get Bush and Bushism out of power. That is a necessary precondition to avert disaster. Since Bush will not be impeached, rational observers must operate under the assumption that the world situation by 2009 will almost certainly be very dire. Let's set aside all that can still go wrong and which Bush will certainly do wrong in the next few years. The fact remains that many of the children of Bush's victims - and let's not forget, Iraq has a very young population - will be in their late teens. Many will be growing up fully committed to radical anti-US movements. And some of them will be very, very smart. And there will be no way to kill 'em all, even if there were hundreds of Fallujahs, even if it were just.

So what should the US do in 2009? I don't have a clue. But I do know what not to do: continue the suicidal policies of the Bush administration. I'm talking not only about respecting fundamental human rights. A full repudiation of Bushism - from its economic terrorism to its lust for military "solutions" - would be a minimum first step. What to do after that is anyone's guess.

If the US wishes to avoid serious danger, it will simply have to stop aspiring to rule the world in a militarily and economically enforced Pax Americana. It will need brilliant leadership to negotiate the Post-Bush world, a world this total moron of a president made immeasurably more dangerous than the one he presumed to rule in January 2001.

I don't fear the present - in spite of my dread. I don't even fear al Qaeda, but I admit they worry me a great, great deal. I don't even fear al Qaeda's sons and daughters. What I fear more than anything is that the US will continue to place in power catastrophically awful leaders who will fulfill their own prophecies of Armageddon by acting to cause it.


*Unless, of course, the US government is even more negligent than they were prior to September 11, and that seems pretty unlikely, imo.
tristero 1/30/2006 07:17:00 AM |

 
Molly Ivins, Bless Her, Doesn't Understand How Republicans Think.

by tristero

Oh, I love Molly, don't get me wrong. But this seriously misunderestimates the Republican mindset:

I am confounded by the authoritarian streak in the Republican Party backing Bush on this [extensive, illegal spying on Americans]. To me it seems so simple: Would you think this was a good idea if Hillary Clinton were president? Would you be defending the clear and unnecessary violation of the law? Do you have complete confidence that she would never misuse this 'inherent power' for any partisan reason?

Molly, you're assuming that sooner or later there actually will be a Democratic president. Republicans assume that will never, ever happen again. And they're doing everything possible - controlling voting machines, gerrymandering, fraud, blackmail, buying the media - to make sure it doesn't.

So why bother worrying the "other party" will abuse the power Bush now has? It's like worrying about a large asteroid colliding with Earth. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but...

Wouldn't it be nice if they were wrong? And Republicans no longer were in a position to wreak the havoc they've inflicted on our country over the past 5 plus years? And the laws were again obeyed?

Me, I'd be perfectly happy if none of the scoundrels currently destroying our country's way of life and government were never prosecuted if we could just keep them out of power. Well, not happy exactly, but I'd settle for it.
tristero 1/30/2006 06:15:00 AM |

 
Micro-Propaganda

by tristero

Dontcha just love this stuff?

The tiresome pas de deux between rigid civil libertarians in denial of reality and an overaggressive executive branch seemingly heedless of the law...

Get it? You think it's a parallel construction, both sides are wrong. But look closer. Rigid civil libertarians deny reality - there's no question about it. The Bush administration seemingly ignores the law in its "overaggressiveness."

Cute.

At the end Bobbitt has two sentences more about "the executive branch's repeated appearance of an indifference to law" before finishing up with another swipe at reality-denying wimpiness. Oh, and didja notice? Somehow, the executive branch that possibly, maybe be giving the appearance of breaking the law remains nameless. Who could they be, I wonder.

But let's not be naive, folks. We're living in an America in which you cannot criticize Bush if you want to have any influence. Once we understand that, it's obvious that this little essay (and I haven't begun to discuss its substantial problems of logic and fact) wasn't meant to be read by John and Jane Q. Public but by King George and/or his codpiece full of courtiers. Given this is his target audience, what Bobbitt's saying becomes equally obvious:

He wants the Bush administration to do better at denying the reality that it is breaking the law. That way, Bush can better accuse civil libertarians and other liberal commie radical Muslims of denying reality in a post-9/11 world.

Cute.
tristero 1/30/2006 03:51:00 AM |

Sunday, January 29, 2006

 
Snark Boomerang

by digby

From the interesting tid-bit files, from Robert Parry:

Nevertheless, the Republicans may have added a complication to their expected Alito victory parade by ridiculing Kerry for making his filibuster announcement while at an economic summit in Davos, Switzerland.

As Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s right-wing Washington Times gleefully reported, Republicans quickly dubbed Kerry the “Swiss Miss.” [Washington Times, Jan. 28, 2006]

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan joined in mocking the Massachusetts Democrat by joking at the daily White House press briefing that it was a “pretty historic” day.

“This was the first time ever that a senator has called for a filibuster from the slopes of Davos, Switzerland,” McClellan said. “I think even for a senator, it takes some pretty serious yodeling to call for a filibuster from a five-star ski resort in the Swiss Alps.”

These insults added a personal element to the decision facing Democratic senators. With Republicans hooting down the Democrats’ last presidential nominee, as well as a longtime Senate colleague, crossing the aisle to support Bush’s Supreme Court nominee suddenly had the bitter taste of an act of political treason.

They have been strutting like high stepping chorus boys all week-end, shrieking with hysterical laughter and high-fiving like mad. If I could do nothing else, I'd force these bastards to wait until Wednesday for a vote, regardless of the outcome. Deny the arrogant fucks a quorum and watch them have a full-on hissy fit on the day of the speech. Maybe they can even get Mrs Alito to pump out another fake tear or two.




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digby 1/29/2006 07:13:00 PM |

 
Katrina Needs Glasses

by digby

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, who I love, is taking the liberal blogosphere to task for its outraged fury over picking Tim Kaine for the Democratic rebuttal at the SOTU. (Was there a fury and nobody invited me? I'm hurt.) I know I said "feel the magic" when it was announced, but I wouldn't call that a fury. A little snarky, maybe. But you know, I can only get really furious 27.3 times a week or I get low blood sugar and Kaine just didn't make the cut for me.

Apparently Ezra was a little bit more than snarky and Katrina got snarky right back:

Liberal writer Ezra Klein (no Brad Pitt, last time I checked him out) vented that Kaine is "a squat, squinty, pug-nosed fellow."

Now I told you that I love Katrina and I do. But she has gone too far here. I know Ezra Klein and you can say what you will about his writing, his politics or even his little American Prospect friends --- but don't say he is no Brad Pitt. This is crazy talk. He's almost as pretty as Katrina herself.


Ezra:


Katrina:


Tim Kaine:



Update: I see that Jane, Mrs TBOGG and David E have weighed in on this important matter as well, thank heavens. Case closed.



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digby 1/29/2006 05:28:00 PM |

 
Thrill Ride

by digby

Glenn Greenwald points to this op-ed in today's NY Times which points out something that many of us have been hammering for years, namely that Islamic fundamentatlist terrorism is not an existential threat. (That's not to say that violent fundamentalism isn't threatening, but the problem cannot be solved with warfare --- sadly, it's much more complicated than that.)

The oceans never protected us. I guess our president with his degree in history from Yale, doesn't know that the British live across the oceans and sailed over to burn down the White House in 1812. Or that we have lived under the nuclear unbrella for more than 50 years. All those drills when I was a kid were for the exercise.

And this is not a "different kinda war" or "World War IV" or any other type of war. And allowing it to be called a "war" is a grave mistake that we probably can't go back and undo. And unfortunately, we now know that mere unleashing of the word "war" can kick in a whole bunch of executive powers that nobody ever knew existed.

I have thought about what it is that 9/11 really evokes in people. It is assumed that it is fear, and I think that most people probably interpret it that way. Glenn attributes it, in part, to the success of bin Laden's terrorist tactics:

The cause of this irrationality, this inability to view the terrorism threat with any perspective, is not a mystery. Terrorists like Al Qaeda deliberately stage attacks which are designed to instill fear in the population far beyond what is warranted by the actual threat-level posed by the terrorists. That's the defining tactic and objective of terrorists. Fortunately for the terrorists, in the United States, Al Qaeda has a powerful ally in this goal: the Bush Administration, which for four years has, along with Al Qeada, worked ceaselessly to instill in Americans an overarching and excessive fear of terrorism.

That may be true, but I don't see a society that is truly fearful. I've been to countries that were at war. And life always goes on to some extent. But this country does not feature the psychological traits of a country that is really at war or one that really fears terrorism in any palpable way. It features the psychological traits of a country watching a horror movie, which is not the same thing at all. You certainly see this in the fevered one-handed war blogging and the endless evocations of pre-9/11 and post 9/11 thinking reminds me of nothing so much as people who are hooked on a stimulating drug.

Of course we all felt real fear in the early days, none so much as those who lived in New York and DC. It was almost unbelievable to see those scenes. But there was a sense of spectacle and drama about it that was literally unreal to those of us who watched it on television. This was fear put to music, with dramatic title treatments and a soaring voice-over. Because of that, on some level, 9/11 was a thrill for many people, even some Democrats. It was sad and horrifying, of course, but it was also stimulating, exciting and memorable because of the way it was presented on television. (When we were talking about this, Jane described it as if "the whole country was watching porn together every time the rerun of the towers falling was broadcast.") And we subsequently fetishized the "war on terrorism" to the point where some people become inexplicably excited whenever it is mentioned. They want that big group grope again, that sense of shared sensation. That is the "fear" that people say they have. And it's why they want to vote for the guy who keeps pumping it into the body politic.

It's why the "war on terrorism" still has some potency for the Republicans that the very ugly, very real war in Iraq does not. We can't lose the "war on terrorism" because it isn't a real war. Unfortunately, because we have allowed those words to be used, we have opened the door for authoritarian Republicans to assume the powers of a dictator under its auspices.

Greenwald and Ellis both argue very persuasively that islamic fundamentalist terrorism does not present an existential threat to our country. I think that idea is beginning to get some traction in the national security debates. I don't know how long it might take to break this country out of its shared fetish for the "war on terrorism" but perhaps it's time to start addressing that as well. Until we finally admit that we aren't "at war" by any real definition of that term, we are going to be hamstrung in addressing the very real national security challenges we do face.

I haven't the vaguest idea how to do it, though. This nation is on the "war on terrorism" thrill ride and is enjoying it so much they've bought a season pass. And like most thrill rides these days, after the first little while I start to feel nauseated.



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digby 1/29/2006 11:16:00 AM |

 
Gnocchi

by digby

What I learned on Press the Meat this morning:

The Republicans' numbers are in the dirt but they are going to win decisively on the optimistic issues of endless war and endless debt. The Democrats' numbers are substantially better but they will never win anything because they are icky.

The NSA illegal spying scandal is good for Republicans because there is no evidence that the president has ever used it for political purposes.

No word on the federal case against two close presidential advisors who are accused of exposing a clandestine CIA agent for political purposes.

Bill Frist has the charisma of day old gnocchi.



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digby 1/29/2006 08:21:00 AM |

Saturday, January 28, 2006

 
Unconcerned About Bin laden

by digby

MYDD has part two of their poll up and it's quite interesting. It seems that Republicans aren't very worried about Osama bin laden. But then, neither does their president:

"I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him. ... I truly am not that concerned about him."

Just what are they so bedwetting afraid of then?





Update: Also check out this boffo MYDD post by Matt Stoller.



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digby 1/28/2006 12:55:00 PM |

 
Republican Moolah

by digby

If you read nothing else this week-end, check out this report from the American Prospect that demolishes the theory that the Abramoff scandal is bi-partisan.

The analysis, which was commissioned by The American Prospect and completed on Jan. 25, was done by Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a for-profit firm specializing in campaign finance that has done research for many media outlets.

In the weeks since Abramoff confessed to defrauding tribes and enticing public officials with bribes, the question of whether Abramoff directed donations just to Republicans, or to the GOP and Democrats, has been central to efforts by both parties to distance themselves from the unfolding scandal. President Bush recently addressed the question on Fox News, saying: “It seems to me that he [Abramoff] was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties.”

Although Abramoff hasn’t personally given to any Democrats, Republicans, including officials with the GOP campaign to hold on to the Senate, have seized on the donations of his tribal clients as proof that the saga is a bipartisan scandal. And the controversy recently spread to the media when the ombudsman for The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, ignited a firestorm by wrongly asserting that Abramoff had given to both. She eventually amended her assessment, writing that Abramoff “directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.”

But the Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

Gosh, that must be why he said this:

‘I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions. I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out.’

Doh.

Can somebody get this to Tim Russert because he's under the impression that this is a bi-partisan scandal.



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digby 1/28/2006 12:45:00 PM |

 
Conviction Politics

by digby

I just saw a very interesting exchange on FOX News. The designated Democrat was Bob Beckel, the other two were typical faceless wingnut gasbags and I can't remember their names.

When asked how the Democrats could make such a stupid mistake by allowing Kerry to call for a filibuster (the two wingnuts giggling like schoolgirls at the question) Beckel replied something like this (I'm paraphrasing)

"Now you know that in this enviroment if a Democratic president nominated a pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-government secrecy judge to the high court that many Republicans would want to filibuster. Sometimes politicans do things out of conviction and many Democrats are supporting a filibuster because they really believe that he should not be on the Supreme Court."

The wingnuts were very taken aback by that statement, one of them replying: "Well, that's putting the best possible face on it."

Indeed it is. It's one of the big issues lurking beneath this Alito fight. The Republicans know very well that their future depends upon Americans continuing to see Democrats as weak and lacking in conviction. That's all they've got.

The chattering classes are all very sure that the Democrats have made a grave mistake on Alito. According to reports in the press, many insider Democrats believe this too. I believe they are wrong. This may look like a ragged strategy in some respects, but it is good for us to be seen doing things that have no obvious political advantage and for which we can legitimately claim to have taken the moral high ground. Yes, the tittering congnoscenti will flutter their fans and whisper that Democrats are witless and dull, but in this case we are talking directly to the people not to them. They have no idea anymore that a world exists out here where poltical calculation is beside the point.

Regardless of how this comes out in the end, and we don't know until the votes are cast, this may be seen as a defining moment for the Democratic Party. When a calculating political creature like Dianne Feinstein rushes to support a filibuster rather than reaffirm her opposition once conventional wisdom says a filibuster will fail, is meaningful. Democratic politicians (if not their moribund strategists) are feeling the pressure from the people to do the right thing.

Voters are still working hard this week-end to convince Democrats to support the filibuster. You can get action items and information at Kos, The Agonist and Democrats.com .

And ... I know that it is somewhat unpopular to say this, and I will get a ration of angry comments for suggesting it, but I'm doing it anyway. If any of the following are your Senators, think about taking a minute to thank them for announcing they will support the filibuster. They are being ridiculed and scorned by everybody in the beltway for being dimwitted tools of the angry left or craven political opportunists. It seems to me that if we tell them we like it when they act out of conviction, they'll do it more often. I still think we should get their back on this:

1. Barbara Boxer (D- CA)
2. Dianne Feinstein (D- CA)
3. Christopher J. Dodd (D- CT)
4. Richard J. Durbin (D- IL)
5. John F. Kerry (D- MA)
6. Edward M. Kennedy (D- MA)
7. Paul S. Sarbanes (D- MD)
8. Debbie A. Stabenow (D- MI)
9. Harry Reid (D- NV)
10. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- NY)
11. Charles Schumer (D- NY)
12. Ron Wyden (D- OR)
13. Russell D. Feingold (D- WI)
14. Barack Obama (D-IL)
15. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)




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digby 1/28/2006 10:51:00 AM |

 
Harper's In February

by tristero

You really should grab the February issue of Harper's. They don't post much online so they kinda get short shrift in Blogworld, but in this issue there is an hilarious, brilliant first person account of the Dover "intelligent design" creationism trial by none other than Darwin's very own great-great grandson.

And there's also a superbly written, heartbreaking, infuriating account of the trials of Lynddie England and the other "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib, trials that took place in a legal atmosphere so deliberately disconnected from the reality of the tortures that, as the article points out in a heart-stopping passage, someone got away with murder at Abu Ghraib.

Must reads, both of them.
tristero 1/28/2006 02:51:00 AM |

 
Posted Without Comment

by tristero

New York Times:

Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations.

In a vote Monday, the United States supported Iran's recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations' Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based in Belgium.

Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such status, which enables them to distribute documents to meetings of the council.

Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

[snip]

Mark P. Lagon, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in an interview that the vote did not stem from "being against gay rights groups" but was based on "the controversial history of the International Lesbian and Gay Association — an affiliate of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, was associated with it in the past and openly condoned pedophilia."

Scott Long, a Human Rights Watch director, said that the association had publicly expelled the man/boy group in 1994.

tristero 1/28/2006 02:26:00 AM |

Friday, January 27, 2006

 
Mau-mauing the Media

by digby

Jane points me to this wildly enjoyable recounting of a close encounter between the barbarian bloggers and the Beltway Quilting Bee and Ladies Circle Jerk Society, also known as the DC press corps. My goodness, it sounds as if somebody got up on the wrong side of the fainting couch that morning.

I've been writing a lot lately about how the mainstream media internalize the criticisms of their right wing critics. I suspect they are always subconsciously seeking ways to prove that they aren't actually liberal --- and the more liberals in general are demonized, the more they want to distance themselves from us.

I've also been trying to show how it looks from our side: years of relentless violent eliminationist right wing rhetoric toward liberals goes unnoticed or unremarked upon and yet a few hundred hostile e-mails to the Washington Post ombudsman turns the whole town into a tizzy. The liberal blogosphere is thus turned into a rampaging vulgarian force while the relentless cacophany of wealthy right wing gasbags continues to go out to tens of millions of people unabated, undisturbed and unnoticed by the media cognoscenti.

How can that be, we wonder? Why, after all these years of being called every name in the book by the conservatives, can the "so-called liberal media" be upset when the liberals use very mild tactics in comparison to what has been happening on the right?

Perhaps this is why:








It is another right wing meme that has been absorbed by the mainstream media.

Here's Michelle:

From the Inside Flap
Un·hinged

adj : affected with madness or insanity; [syn: brainsick, crazy, demented, distracted, disturbed, mad, sick, unbalanced]

- The American Heritage Dictionary

*** Warning: Unhinged liberals are hazardous to the nation’s health.

They’re slashing your tires. Burning your lawns. Heaving pies at Republican pundits. Hurling racist epithets at minority conservatives. Nursing nutty conspiracy theories. And pining publicly for the murder of President Bush.

And they call us crazy?

In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin plays conservative Margaret Mead to the alien political creatures of the American Left. With uproarious detail and rollicking reportage, Malkin chronicles the bizarre world of leftists gone mad in their natural habitats: the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and Washington.

Unhinged unmasks liberals who’ve completely abandoned rationality and reality. They’re taking chainsaws and bayonets to campaign signs. Running down political opponents with their cars. Setting fire to political opponents in effigy. Defacing war memorials. Swiping yellow ribbons off cars. And supporting the fragging of American troops.

Michele didn't come up with this on her own. It's a consciously applied meme for specific purposes. All these books allegedly about liberals called "Slander" "Treason" and "Unhinged" would have been written no matter what we did. It's how they control the mainstream media. After all, they've been calling the media liberal for more than a quarter century. They're talking about them as much as they are talking about us. And reporters don't like that. They have to live in that town.

Now we can deal with this two ways. We can be quiet and respectful and try to prove to the mainstream media that we aren't the crazed, violent freaks that Michelle says we are.

Dear Ms. Howell,

Would you be so kind as to check your facts regarding the Abramoff scandal.I think you are mistaken. I do not believe that Mr Abramoff personally gave any contributions to Democrats. Indeed, the evidence suggests that he was part of a long running Republican plan to create a political machine that exclusively funneled money from business to elected Republicans and back again.


I would very much appreciate anything you can do to clear this up. Thanks ever so much for all your hard work.

sincerely,

a nice liberal

meanwhile:

Deb,

I received a call today from Karl Rove on double secret-super-duper-deep backround. He was hopping mad. He says this Abramoff thing is a bi-partisan scandal and we're going to be embarrassed when it comes out that certain Democrats are the dirtiest Abramoff guys in town. I told him I'd look into it and get back to him.

I'm not suggesting you change your reporting. You are the ombudsman, after all. Just make extra sure you have all the facts and tell both sides of the story. The White House is riding my ass big time.


Len Downie

See you later at Sally and Ben's picnic. I hear Lynn Cheney's bringing her famous chili and Russert's going to sing.

And then there's this:

"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race."

That's how it becomes "he said/she said" and "stay tuned" and why the words "crazy liberal" just rolls off their lips. The right has mau-maued the press by going aggressively in their face with everything they've got every time they write a word that can cause them trouble. And back in the day, they carefully fed the press the kind of tabloid scandal stories that made good copy and caused ratings to rise. They work this stuff from all angles.

We can be nice liberals and continue that highly successful strategy (for them) or we, the great unwashed blogosphere, can mau-mau the media into being accountable for what they write. It isn't pretty --- they are calling us nasty names and everything. But for the first time in memory we actually have a vehicle for pushing back from the other side and we literally represent millions of people who are willing to take the time to join the fight. That's powerful juju.

Over time, they will see that we are actually giving them an excuse to lean the other way. When Karl calls up Len, he can say that liberals are on the rampage --- what does he want him to do, ignore his own readers? We liberal bloggers and readers can produce some ballast on the other side so that the press has a way to resist the wingnuts.

This is a huge change and everyone involved is going to resist. Tonight they were talking about the "angry left on both coasts" on Lehrer, as if we aren't real Americans again. That's nonsense, as we know. My traffic comes from all over the country, much of it deep in the heart of Red America. They don't know what they are dealing with.



Update: Jim VandeHei has written an interesting piece in the Post today about how we barbarians fit into the Democratic infrastructure. (Short answer: they don't know what to think about us. They love our money and they need our energy. They just don't like it that we have dug in our heels and refuse to move any further to the right. It means they have to rethink their whole strategy.)

And I think this is largely correct:

The closest historic parallel would be the talk-radio phenomenon of the early 1980s, when conservatives -- like liberals now -- felt powerless and certain they did not have a way to voice their views because the mainstream media and many of their own leaders considered them out of touch. Through talk radio, often aired in rural parts of the country on the AM dial, conservatives pushed the party to the right on social issues and tax cuts.

The question Democrats will debate over the next few years is whether the prevailing views of liberal activists on the war, the role of religion in politics and budget policies will help or hinder efforts to recapture the presidency and Congress.

We can't do any worse, now can we?


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digby 1/27/2006 04:40:00 PM |

 
Flip-Flopping Fredo

by digby

The Carpetbagger reports that preznit Bush has adopted candidate John Kerry's "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong" proposed policy toward Iran.

And some of the preznit's supporters are all confused:. Apparently they were under the misapprehension that Junior Codpiece had some sort of coherent philosophy.

President Bush's endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

"I have made it clear that I believe that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear power program under these conditions: that the material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia," Mr. Bush said at a news conference yesterday. "I think that is a good plan. The Russians came up with the idea and I support it," he added.

I'll let you click over to the Carpetbagger for the punchline.

Sigh.




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digby 1/27/2006 01:01:00 PM |

 
Straight Answers

by digby


A few weeks ago MYDD put out a call for contributions to finance a poll. There was tremendous frustration at the time, if you'll recall, at the reticence of the major pollsters to ask questions that were deemed politically incorrect or beyond conventional wisdom. And considering that the major media's long standing habit of assuming the GOP dominant narrative, they wanted to verify their numbers.

That's why Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller over at MYDD went out of their way to engage a credible pollster with impeccable credentials and pledged to let the chips fall where they may. We want real information guiding strategy, not push polls or partisan slant. This is for real. Today, the first results are in.

These first numbers are not surprising. They track with what we've seen in all the other major polls. But over the next few days, the rest of the poll will be rolled out and we will probably see some questions asked and answered that we haven't seen before. And perhaps we will gain some understanding of where the electorate stands on so many of the issues we discuss here in the blogosphere every day.

As Lil' Debbie Howell would say: Stay Tuned.



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digby 1/27/2006 11:39:00 AM |

 
Flower Shops and Bodegas

by digby


Via Crooks and Liars

What planet does this man live on?

MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Antonio—Antonio Villaraigosa?

MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D), LOS ANGELES: Villaraigosa.

MATTHEWS: Villaraigosa. Is the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since, catch this, 1872. He's also been picked, more importantly, to deliver the Spanish-speaking response to the president's State of the Union address next week. Well, the big question is, will it sound different in a different language, your response, from the Democrats' response of the Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia?

VILLARAIGOSA: Well, the answer is I made it absolutely clear that I had to have control of the editorial content of this response, since it's mine. And I thought it's important—I think any message should be a hopeful message, a positive message, one that speaks to the American dream for more people.

MATTHEWS: What's the difference in tenor when you speak in English and Spanish? Is there more of a—a more of a—I don't want to be derogatory, but I know it sounds better. It's more upbeat? It's more positive? What would be—call it—more romantic?

VILLARAIGOSA: No, I try to—well, first of all, I was born in the U.S., so my English is a lot stronger than my Spanish, but I say that the message is the same

Is he drunk? The State of the Union response will sound more romantic in spanish? Jesus H.Christ. Maybe we can get Marc Antony and J-Lo to sing the motherfucker, Chris. With a taco in one hand and a pinata in the other.

This is why we cannot have people ever thinking this man is a Democrat. It's rich, pampered beltway bubble boys like him who are killing us.

But that wasn't all. Tweety, the voice of the manly working man, had this to say about immigrants:

MATTHEWS: When I think of people who have come to this country from other countries where they speak Spanish—Puerto Rico is not another country, but it's the commonwealth—hardest working people, they are extremely entrepreneurial. If it's just owning a flower ship, it's owning a small business, a bodega, right? Puerto Ricans come to this country to start business. Cubans certainly come here to start businesses. The hardest working people in the United States are people who just got here from Mexico, the first day they get here. Everybody knows—they don't want a big social democracy. They want free enterprise and entrepreneurialism, don't they?

VILLARAIGOSA: I think what they want...

MATTHEWS: They sound like they're natural Republicans to me.

That's certainly the first time I've heard "needing to earn a dollar so I can eat today" described as being "entrepreneurial." Or Republican.

Poor people are natural Republicans because they work hard to survive. I assume the opposite is true as well. Rich people are natural Democrats because they sit on their asses all day like parasites living off of other people's hard work. No? Oh that's right. Rich people are the most productive people in the economy so they shouldn't be asked to pay a fair share of their income --- because they'd lose their motivation to work so hard. See how this works? Everybody who works or hires people who work is a natural Republican in Tweety's world. Fifty percent of the nation just doesn't know it. Except for the fags, of course. And the bitches. And the blacks.

Tweety likes to see himself as a man of the people and he is. He's a man of the rich celebrity people. But even in his little beltway bubble he still has his finger on the pulse of one fine group of regular Americans: the bigots:

The mayor got a firsthand look at the different values held by some Americans as he was peppered with questions about immigration from callers on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal."

After saying that Los Angeles is not going to follow the lead of Costa Mesa and involve police officers more in identifying illegal immigrants, a caller from Arkansas said not enough was being done to counter illegal immigration.

The woman declared: "It's only after the influx of illegals that you were elected, sir. How is this possible?"

Clearly stunned, Villaraigosa responded, "Are you kidding?" After a long silence, he added, "I was born in the United States."

The mayor of the second biggest city in the nation has to inform bigoted assholes from Arkansas and big money celebrities on MSNBC alike that he was born in America and English is his first language. Unbelievable.


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digby 1/27/2006 10:07:00 AM |

 
Thin Skin Tim

by digby


I hear the High Priest of Kewl Kid High is all upset that Arianna is reporting that the Carville radio talk show The Monsignor promoted on his show this past week-end is being produced by his own son --- a fact which he omitted. But then he has a habit of omitting information --- like the dozens of discussions on his show about the Plame leak without telling his viewers that he was a primary witness, for instance. (He's since revealed that a reporter has no ethical obligation to tell the public what he knows if doing so might harm his relationships with his social class.)

But this thing with his son really is beyond the pale. How could Arianna delve into his private life like this ... into his family for crying out loud? This is his son who has been outed as a radio producer on the pages of the mighty Huffington Post. For shame.

Of course there are times when it's absolutely necessary to drag the family into it, as in this case: Russert's first exchange with presidential candidate Howard Dean in his first appearance on Meet The Press in 2003 (via the Daily Howler)

RUSSERT: You said that your son got in a scrap. He was arrested for driving a car in which some of his friends broke into a beer cooler and stole some beer—

DEAN: Right.

RUSSERT: —and was indicted. How are you—

DEAN: He hasn’t been indicted, but he—

RUSSERT: Cited.

DEAN: He’s been cited, right.

Howard Dean had no expectation that his teenage son's mortifying lapse in judgment would not be talked about on Press The Meat. I'm sure he was prepared for it, although he might have thought that something more important would open the discussion (or at least that Russert wouldn't claim his high school aged kid was indicted.) Still, it's part of the game, and public families know what they are getting into. Everybody is just doing their jobs, no matter how sleazy.

But apparently, if someone points out that Father Tim is shilling for his kid's show on Press The Meat without revealing his son's involvement, it's out of bounds, deserving of a full PR push back from NBC News replete with sour grapes from none other than professional Republican sleazebag, Ed Rollins.

Interesting ethics you've got there, padre. I must have missed that day in Aquinas class.


Check out the Tim Russert Blog. Leave a comment and help push it to the top of Google search. His Holiness is a busy man and his assistants don't have time to search for all the things people say about him. Let's make it easy for him.



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digby 1/27/2006 08:34:00 AM |

Thursday, January 26, 2006

 
What A Coincidence

by digby

So, Via Talk Left, I see that the lead prosecutor in the Abramoff case is leaving because Bush has appointed him to a federal judgeship:

The prosecutor, Noel L. Hillman, is chief of the department's public integrity division, and the move ends his involvement in an inquiry that has reached into the administration as well as the top ranks of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.

....Colleagues at the Justice Department say Mr. Hillman has been involved in day-to-day management of the Abramoff investigation since it began almost two year ago. The inquiry, which initially focused on accusations that Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees, is being described within the department as the most important federal corruption investigation in a generation.

Shumer and Salazar are calling for a special prosecutor.

When I read this a minute ago, I was reminded of a similar story from a month ago:

The Florida prosecutor investigating radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh will soon be weighing cases rather than prosecuting them.

Gov. Jeb Bush has announced Assistant State Attorney James Martz has been appointed a Palm Beach County judge, filling a vacancy left after this year's legislative session.

TOM

Senator Cauly apologized for not coming personally -- he said you'd understand. Also, some of the judges. They've all sent gifts.

(then, toasting to the Don)

Salute!




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digby 1/26/2006 11:33:00 PM |

 
Whirlwind

by digby


With all of my politicking today I failed to note this unbelievable development in the mid-east: the terrists won an election in Palestine. And they won big time.

What does this mean for the preznits cartoon foreign policy? Here I thought that democracy was all like magic 'n shit and we were spreadin' freedom to everybody so they'd love us.

Here's Juan Cole:

How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?


Jan. 27, 2006 | The stunning victory of the militant Muslim fundamentalist Hamas Party in the Palestinian elections underlines the central contradictions in the Bush administration's policies toward the Middle East. Bush pushes for elections, confusing them with democracy, but seems blind to the dangers of right-wing populism. At the same time, he continually undermines the moderate and secular forces in the region by acting high-handedly or allowing his clients to do so. As a result, Sunni fundamentalist parties, some with ties to violent cells, have emerged as key players in Iraq, Egypt and Palestine.

Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad. And by either creating or failing to deal with hated foreign occupations, he has sown the seeds for militant Islamist movements that gain popularity because of their nationalist credentials.


[...]

Bush has boxed himself into an impossible situation. He promoted elections that have produced results opposite of the ones he wanted. For all his constant rhetoric about his determination to hunt down and kill terrorists, in Palestine he has in effect helped install into power a group he calls "terrorists." His confusion over whether this is democracy, which should be legitimate, or is an unacceptable outcome -- and his unwillingness to address the underlying issues behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- suggest that a fatal paralysis will continue to afflict the region.

The man who is planning to run the mid-terms on his great success as a wartime president just facilitated the first elected Islamic terrorist government and delegitimized moderates throughout the region. That's quite an achievement.

Here's what the commentators were saying tonight on Lehrer. (Both of them looked like they were giong to shoot themselves right after the show was over.)

KHALIL JAHSHAN: I think the program that the president has been advocating has definitely suffered as a consequence of these elections. There is a big question mark right now on a program that was hastily put together post 9/11 without thinking of the consequences of this type of advocacy of democracy without tilling the ground, if you will, or tilling the soil to allow that type of democracy to grow and to be able to nurture it from a distance. These results, I think, made that criticism a lot more credible and more forceful today than yesterday.

[...]

MARTIN INDYK: Basically, look, I agree that recently we've heard the last few days some interesting statements from Olmert at the Herzliya Conference, some of the Hamas leaders during the election showing some hope that one could build on. But frankly this is deja vu in the sense that these results I think have set us back probably 20 if not 30 years.

We're going to go back to again negotiating over charters and negotiating over removing the destruction of this party by the other party. And so there is -- the chances of two parties who have conducted ten years of negotiations coming back to the table and restarting their negotiations from where things stopped right now are much dimmer. These chances are much dimmer and much slimmer than anticipated.

I'm sure all the warbloggers have been feverishly typing "bring it on!" all day. But this is actually very serious stuff and it is a direct result of a simpleminded American policy. It isn't the first failure and it is going to be far from the last. You cannot successfully run the world on comic book slogans and third rate biblical homilies. When the Supreme Court installed a halfwit in the oval office we reaped the whirlwind.

Oh, and in case anyone's thinking that this really wasn't in the hands of Americans:

MARTIN INDYK: ... And, by the way, one should say in this regard, that there was an opportunity to postpone the election. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA wanted to do so. But this administration insisted that it go ahead.

When it comes to elections, there is nothing more sacred to a Republican than an arbitrary, meaningless deadline.



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digby 1/26/2006 10:46:00 PM |

 
Learning To Lose Well

by digby


I hope some of the comments I'm reading around the blogosphere aren't reflections of of a knee jerk cynicism on the part of Democrats who have fallen in love with their assessment that they are superior to their elected leaders. This is a very dangerous state of mind.

John Kerry stepped up today. Apparently, that isn't enough for some. He is still a "loser" in their eyes and is to be shunned. He didn't do it soon enough. Or he didn't do it right. Or he is nothing but a political opportunist. I'm beginning to think that some Democrats have gotten attached to their vision of Democrats as losers so they won't be emotionally shattered anymore. That's understandable. It's painful to get beaten. But, the rank and file need to step up too and be willing to lose and not hate ourselves or our leaders for it. How we lose on issues like this makes the difference for the future.

Sustaining a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee is a huge undertaking with the numbers we have. (Read Kos' Reality Check on this.) It's worth doing anyway because it's important to stand up for principles. We can "lose well" by beginning to make a case to the American people that we believe in something other than splitting the difference. And we might just pull it off. Either way, we make the country (and the media) see that there are lines that we won't cross.

But the way some people are acting, if we now lose this one it will be seen by the grassroots as just another example of Democratic fecklessness, even Kerry's fecklessness, which is self-defeating and unfair. If we carp when our elected politicans take risks just as we carp when they don't take risks, they have no motivation to listen to us at all.

Kerry and Kennedy stepped up today. They aren't going down without a fight. This is worth doing and if we lose it, we should reward them and those who stood with them with our gratitude and support not another round of complaints about how they are a bunch of losers.

Go vote in this stupid CNN poll and give Kerry some props for doing something out of conviction. This isn't a big winner for him and he didn't have to do it. We need to let our politicans know we have their back when they take a stand.



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digby 1/26/2006 06:26:00 PM |

 
Heterosexually Yours

by digby

The General is passing the collection plate. He sits on the right hand of Republican Jesus, so helping him is the same as helping the Lord.


A General's Prayer:

Lord, please bless the State Security Apparatus, that it might conduct it's wiretaps to the best of its abilities. Provide Our Leader with the ability to look into our bedrooms, so that He might catch French politicians putting their little soldiers in ladies' mouths and watch celebrities doing it. And Lord, let him share those videos with godly men like myself, who may then rail against these evils from our pulpits.

And bless our interrogators and their glowsticks and electrified nipple clamps of freedom. Provide them with the ability to induce pain as close as possible to that experienced during organ failure without quite equaling it.

And give us the ability to kill brown people more efficiently, so that our contractors may garner more fruit from their labor.

Praise Be.



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digby 1/26/2006 02:02:00 PM |

 
Filibuster!

by digby


John Kerry is calling for a filibuster of Alito. Flood your Senators' offices with phone calls now.

Here are the phone numbers.

Might I make a special appeal for Califronia voters to make a forceful appeal to our Senator Dianne Feinstein. She is supposed to be a voice for women in the Senate and right now she is a voice for lukewarm water. Let her know that her constituents demand that she represent the people of California's support for a women's right to choose and a judiciary of fairminded jurists, not Federalist Society fascists.

(202) 224-3841---Washington
(415) 393-0707---San Francisco
(310) 914-7300---L.A.
(619) 231-9712---San Diego
(559) 485-7430---Fresno



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digby 1/26/2006 01:45:00 PM |

 
Men Of Principle

by digby


The Editors deconstruct the Deborah Howell story as only they can. An excerpt, regarding those who bemoan the new leftist barbarity:

When one is an Elder Statesman of the American media, and when one can’t be bothered to look into the particular details of some issue, it is never a bad idea to fall back on Ecclesiastes, and remind the readers - in a tone as wise and weary as you can muster - that the seasons change and the winds blow now this way, now that, turn turn turn, but there is nothing new under the Sun. As there was a time of saying Clinton was a coke-dealing Commie and a serial rapist, now comes the time of saying that George W. Bush shouldn’t run secret torture prisons. Men of Principle lament both of these equally, for they are just two sides of the same lamentable coin. Vanity of vanity, all of it. Can’t we just play nice?

Amen.
digby 1/26/2006 01:33:00 PM |

 
Political Fandango

by digby


I know that Atrios and others have already discussed this, but it's such an obvious example of Tweety bullshit that I have to pile on.

Matthews yesterday claimed that an ad about GOP corruption implied incorrectly that DeLay was charged with bribery:

MATTHEWS: Dana, you've got to love it. This is America in action. Have you noticed in the Democrat ad, though, they do a close-up on Tom DeLay and they said "bribery"? Well, that's not a charge against Tom DeLay. His charge is this thing about hard money, soft money. It's a political little bit of a fandango. But nobody's accused him yet of bribery. But that ad sure does.

The problem is that it clearly doesn't. The ad shows a picture of DeLay when they say "money laundering" and a picture of Abramoff when they say "bribery."

This is the kind of stuff Matthews does all the time. Just recently he had really bizarre hissy fit about Alito:

MATTHEWS: Well, I don't know, I mean the Democrats, I've got a, I'm sitting here holding in my hands a pretty disgusting document. This is a, uh, put out for not for attribution, but it comes from the Democrats. They're circulating it, I can say that. And in their complaint sheet against Judge Alito's nomination, the first thing they nail about this Italian-American is he failed to win a mob conviction in a trial 20 years ago or -- way back in '88. In other words, they nail him on not putting, putting some mobst -- Italian mobsters in jail, the Lucchese family. Why would they bring up this ethnically charged issue as the first item they raise against Judge Alito? This is either a bad, a very bad coincidence, or very bad politics. And either way, it's going to hurt them. This document -- not abortion rights, not civil rights, the fact he failed to nail some mobsters back in 1988. And this is at the top of their list of what they got against this guy. Amazingly bad politics.

He was so way out there on that one, that it didn't even get traction among the Republicans. The document was about Alito being a lousy lawyer, which was clear when you read it ---- unless you are Chris Matthews, of course, whose world is filled with people who love Bush for his sunny nobility and lying Democrats who slime fine public servants like the "moderate living" Tom Delay for crimes they didn't commit. He is living in Bush's bubble.



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digby 1/26/2006 12:58:00 PM |

 
Gentleman's Agreement

by digby

Maureen Dowd is the Queen Bee of the Kewl Kidz. And she is one of those most responsible for the media's current narrative of American Politics: Republicans are jocks, Democrats are nerds.

Here's Dowd's nasty and dangerous little sideswipe today:

"As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration's national security scare-a-thon."

And whoever does end up speaking for the Democrats will also fall short. In Maureen's world, a Democrat is an object of derision, always. She may put down the Republicans, but she always reinforces the accepted narrative: Republican strong/Democrat weak. She has reduced the whole world into her stifled little junior high dating drama, and her influence is immense. She represents one of the most serious problems Democrats have.

Reed Hundt takes Maureen on today in a scathing post over at TPM. But here's the nut:

In its way, this sorry tale resembles that of many other erstwhile liberals in the mainstream media who, when invited to the never-ending Washington cocktail party, have chosen to smile obligingly at the contemptible remarks made about progressives rather than to express repugnance for the viciousness. Ms Dowd is famously shy in person, they say, but in writing she's laughing it up at the bar with the rest of the crowd. The original movie version was Gentlemen's Agreement, starring Gregory Peck.

For those of you who aren't familiar with that movie, here's the pertinent passage from the NY Times review:

This film stars Gregory Peck as recently widowed journalist Phil Green. With a growing son (Dean Stockwell) to support, Green is receptive to the invitation of magazine publisher John Minify (Albert Dekker) to write a series of hard-hitting articles on the scourge of anti-Semitism. In order to glean his information first hand, Green decides to pose as a Jew. As the weeks go by, Green experiences all manner of prejudice, the most insidious being the subtle, "gentleman's agreement" form of bigotry wherein anti-Jewish sentiments are merely taken for granted. Green's pose takes a toll on his budding romance with Minify's niece Kathy (Dorothy McGuire), who comes to realize by her own example that even those who insist that they harbor no anti-Semitic feelings are also capable of prejudic

This is why we out in the hinterland are alarmed by people like Deborah Howell and Chris Matthews. These are people who are not open partisans. Yet by "gentlemean's agreement" they take for granted certain negative assumptions about Democrats and pump them out into the body politic. It has been so internalized that they seem to not even know they are doing it. In a world where toxic liberal-eliminationist rhetoric is openly celebrated as "mainstream" and where liberals are commonly derided as cowardly and denounced as treasonous, this is very disturbing indeed.

I'm sure that most of Washington laughed uproariously when Grover Norquist made this crude characterization of Democrats as animals last January:

Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such.

And I'm sure that the same people whose sides were splitting over that hilarious bon mot were nodding their heads in agreement when Lindsay Graham admonished the Democrats to behave with decorum toward Samuel Alito and then fell over with the vapors when readers of the Washington Post rebelled against an ombudsman who refused to acknowledge a biased assumption. Not only are we democrats cowardly and tresonaous, we have no sense of humor, either. That's the curency of the nation's capital.

Many of us out here in the country are seeing a capital that operates in dozens of ways on a Gentleman's Agreement that Democrats are bad. Our values are wrong, our leaders are dishonest, our philosophy is weak, our policies are ridiculous and our beliefs are immoral. The conventional wisdom is crystalizing into prejudice.

Here's Howard Kurtz talking about Rush Limbaugh (via the Daily Howler):

KURTZ: Has Tom Daschle lost a couple of screws?

Did the normally mild-mannered senator accuse Rush Limbaugh of inciting violence?

He came pretty darn close. There were cameras there. You can watch the replay.

We can understand that Daschle is down, just having lost his majority leader’s job and absorbed plenty of blame for this month’s Democratic debacle.

What we can’t understand is how the South Dakotan can suggest that a mainstream conservative with a huge radio following is somehow whipping up wackos to threaten Daschle and his family.

Has the senator listened to Rush lately? Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He’s so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.

Here is the commentary Daschle was referring to:

Limbaugh: You seek political advantage with the nation at war. There is no greater testament to the depths to which the Democratic Party and liberalism have fallen. You now position yourself, Senator Daschle, to exploit future terrorist attacks for political gain. You are worse, sir, than the ambulance-chasing tort lawyers that make up your chief contributors. You, sir, are a disgrace. You are a disgrace to patriotism, you are a disgrace to this country, you are a disgrace to the Senate, and you ought to be a disgrace to the Democratic Party but sadly you’re probably a hero among some of them today...

Way to demoralize the troops, Senator! What more do you want to do to destroy this country than what you’ve already tried? [pounding table] It is unconscionable what this man has done! This stuff gets broadcast around the world, Senator. What do you want your nickname to be? Hanoi Tom? Tokyo Tom? You name it, you can have it apparently. You sit there and pontificate on the fact that we’re not winning the war on terrorism when you and your party have done nothing but try to sabotage it, which you are continuing to do. This little speech of yours yesterday, and this appearance of yours on television last night, let’s call it what it is. It’s nothing more than an attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism for your own personal and your party’s political gain. This is cheap. And it’s beneath even you. And that’s pretty low.

In case anyone failed to notice, Daschle lost his next election. And nobody connected the dots, least of all Howard Kurtz or Maureen Dowd, who bask in the glow of establishment approbation for mainstreaming the idea that Democrats are crazy, ineffectual and treasonous.



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digby 1/26/2006 12:39:00 PM |

 
The Humor Of The Humorless

by tristero

Recently, comedian Joel Stein in the LA Times called anti-Bush/Iraq war troop-supporters wusses and openly admitted,"I don't support the troops." The right has pilloried the schnook. And they are trying to turn Stein into the latest deadly serious cause celebre now that Belafonte's had his Two Minute Hate. But I think the right's gonna have problems with Stein.

Y'see, when you boil it down, Stein's saying that if you support the troops, then you're not supporting the troops; however, if you don't support the troops then you are, in fact supporting the troops. So Stein does, in fact, support the troops. Except he doesn't. I'se like, Wha?

So...if you make the rightwing's mistake of taking Stein's writing as worthy of serious notice, then you are compelled to conclude he's even dumber than John Ashcroft. And that immediately creates a serious existential problem, because no one can be dumber than Ashcroft and breathe without medical assistance. And that, Stein is doing, or so I'm led to believe. Therefore, anyone who knows how to read English should find it patently obvious that to argue with Stein's "ideas" is to tilt at a very stoned windmill. They're a joke.* And jokes are what comedians do, duh. And jokes are often offensive, duh.

Now, I don't happen to think his column was very funny. But I DO find it gut-busting hilarious that the right would be so STOOPID as to interpret his remarks as a serious starting point for an earnest discussion. What next, are they gonna seriously complain that SpongeBob's gay?

Ooops...


*That Joel Stein the citizen might actually believe what Joel Stein the comedian says is not relevant. It was Stein the comedian who was clearly the "I" in the op-ed.
tristero 1/26/2006 10:01:00 AM |

 
Google v. Bush: Not After Personal Records?

by tristero

In comments to an earlier post, Seth wrote that he's read the documents in the Google versus Bush dispute and that they are not after personal records in this case. As it happens the Times makes the same point today. The article, states, "The government apparently wants to show that real-world searches will pull up offensive materials that filters will not catch" and goes on to say that "Google's main argument was that its 'highly proprietary' trade secrets could be jeopardized."

I'd like to make the point that I respect this conclusion. I haven't read the subpoena but I trust their reporting. Both Seth and the Times (I know the reporter) have examined the documents, reported what they found, and stated their conclusion without spin or hyperbole (the Times article has several qualifications but clearly the impression left is that there are no serious privacy issues at stake).

Where we disagree is not on the legal issues in play, but on the potential for abuse of the data by an administration which has demonstrated time and again its obsession with character assasination as well as its desire to amass huge amounts of information while insisting that it operate at an unprecedented level of unaccountable secrecy. Despite assurances that searches cannot ever be linked to individuals, some of us who remember John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program, which advocated mining of vast amounts of seemingly random information, can't help but worry that a week's worth of Google searches in the hands of the Bush administration is an invitation for heretofore unknown forms of blackmail and abuse of anti-Bush critics.

That kind of worry, of course, is a matter of opinion, it's an assertion of intent which depends upon the weighing of relevant facts, not upon reporting a set of facts and performing a more straightforward analysis. And honest people can disagree about how much weight should be applied where, and even whether certain facts, such as prior performance, are relevant.

In this case, I'll gladly, and carefully, read the subpoena if someone will link to it, but I don't think my concerns about it will abate. Technical details might help convince me that there could never be a problem here - I do know a smattering of statistics and I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to understanding technical issues - but I also know that even an expert's knowledge might not encompass all scenarios, including very simple ones that are inadvertently overlooked. A few years ago, a record company went to a lot of trouble and expense to copy protect their cd's against copying them in a computer. I'm sure the documentation that the copy protection was robust was quite convincing. And no one imagined that, soon after the system's debut in the real world, someone would be able to subvert it using nothing more than a black magic marker. So I'll keep an open mind about this, which means in this case a highly skeptical one, but not entirely dismissive.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a subpoena for searches will not have anything to do with trolling for dirt on individuals. But sometimes a cigar is more than a cigar. Given Bush's history, I think that clearly this is one of those cases. I hope Seth is right, however, and I hope I"m overreaching. I'm pretty sure I'm not and only time will tell.

[Update: Seth has kindly provided some links. Some court documents and an analysis can be found here. More analysis here. Seth discusses the subpoenas. While he criticizes what the government is up to, he strongly believes that the blogosphere has entirely mischaracterized these searches as privacy issues when they are not. He speculates that Google may be angling to improve its image and be perceived as a Defender of Freedom.

I've read his criticisms and skimmed the court documents, reading carefully the parts having to do with the requests made and their purpose. Nothing causes me to change my opinion that this is unnecessary and potentially ominous. Yes, even to individuals. That other engines may have complied doesn't mean they were right to, or that Google should. I see no reason why the US government, and especially the Bush administration, should have this information. At the very least, it would set dangerous precedents which all of us know all too well the Bush administration will perceive as a boot in the door to ask for much more. At worst, Google's trade secrets will be compromised, the Bush administration will have URLs and search queries which could, in some ways, come in handy down the road for nefarious purposes, and personal information will be included as it was when the Bush government requested passenger lists.

Finally, apparently it won't it serve much of a useful purpose in addressing the stated objectives of the government to defend the COPA law as constitutional.]

{Update: Another interesting link about the legal precedents courtesy Seth.}
tristero 1/26/2006 01:53:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

 
Smoke Signals

by digby


I missed this yesterday and it's fascinating. Via Think Progress, here's Michael Isikoff yesterday:

ISIKOFF: As a general rule, if you’re the president … you don’t like pictures out there of you with convicted felons. It sounds like … there’s at least one picture of him with at least one convicted felon and another indicted, so it’s probably not a picture the White House is eager to have out there. The other interesting aspect of this is, while the White House hasn’t put these out, Jack Abramoff has clearly shown them to people. I don’t know anything about Time sources, but I do know that he showed them to Washingtonian magazine, which suggests he may be playing a little bit of a game here. He has, of course, pled guilty already to the Justice Department. But it does raise a question in my mind at least as to whether Abramoff is maybe sort of sending some sort of signal out here: “Hey, I’ve got this stuff.” Maybe he wants something from somebody at the White House, or he wants someone at the White House not to do something, and just sort of subtly playing with people here.

It seems to me that might qualify as obstruction of justice. But what do I know? My recent exposure to that crime was when Clinton allegedly betrayed the republic by wearing a certain tie to signal Monica Lewinsky to ... well, we were never sure just what he was signalling her, now that I think about it.

Felon Jack Abramoff sending signals to the White House that he has embarrassing photos certainly doesn't rise to that level. That must be why this time we aren't seeing the heads of every graduate of the Barbizon School of Blond Former Prosecutors spin around on their shoulders while they spew green bile and speak in Aramaic on all the cable news shows. It just isn't as important, I understand that.



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digby 1/25/2006 07:11:00 PM |

 
Unitary Criminal

by digby


For those of a certain age, Bush's contention that he has the constitutional right to ignore the law sounds strangely familiar. That's because you have heard it somewhere before --- and when you heard it you were appalled but not surprised, considering the source.

Take a trip down Memory lane over at Crooks and Liars:

When The President Does It Means It's Not Illegal



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digby 1/25/2006 06:56:00 PM |

 
Resurrection

by digby


Responding to all the Claud Rainsing on the right yesterday about manipulation of Amazon reviews I wrote a post about their own long standing manipulation of Amazon reviews.

How serendipitous, then, that one of the most notorious of Amazon manipulators in history should show up on the pages of the NY Times today. John Lott was long ago discredited as a social scientist. Indeed, economists at the University of Chicago use his work to illustrate shoddy scholorship. But naturally, even though he is held in almost universal opprobrium by every expert in his field, because he is a right wing academic he was granted a cushy sinecure at AEI and a lucrative speaking schedule. That he has now landed on the most valuable journalistic real estate on the planet, however, is nothing short of shocking.

But as I mentioned, Lott is even more interesting than just being a lousy (dishonest) scientist. In one of the blogosphere's earliest triumphs, Lott was exposed as being slightly nuts:

Mary Rosh thinks the world of John R. Lott Jr., the controversial American Enterprise Institute scholar whose book "More Guns, Less Crime" caused such a stir a few years ago.

In postings on Web sites in this country and abroad, Rosh has tirelessly defended Lott against his harshest critics. He is a meticulous researcher, she's repeatedly told those who say otherwise. He's not driven by the ideology of the left or the right. Rosh has even summoned memories of the classes she took from Lott a decade ago to illustrate Lott's probity and academic gifts.

"I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had," Rosh gushed in one Internet posting.

Indeed, Mary Rosh and John Lott agree about nearly everything.

Well they should, because Mary Rosh is John Lott -- or at least that's the pseudonym he's used for three years to defend himself against his critics in online debates, Lott acknowledged this week.

"I probably shouldn't have done it -- I know I shouldn't have done it -- but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously," said Lott, an economist who has held senior research positions at the University of Chicago and Yale.


[...]

Julian Sanchez, a Cato Institute staffer, is the cybersleuth who tracked Mary Rosh back to John Lott.

Sanchez is a blogger -- someone who maintains a Web site where they report and comment on the news -- who had been tracking the debate between Lott and critics of his gun research. He became suspicious about Rosh after he noticed that several of Rosh's online defenses of Lott seemed to track closely with arguments the scholar himself had made in private e-mails to Sanchez and other bloggers. He tracked Mary Rosh's IP address (the computer code translation of the standard e-mail address) to Pennsylvania.

"I compared that IP with the header of an email Dr. Lott had sent me from his home address. And by yet another astonishing coincidence, it had originated at the very same IP address. Now, what are the odds of that?" he wrote in a posting on his Web site. "Sarcasm aside, we're a little old to be playing dress up, aren't we Dr. Lott?"

I hear that South Korean stem cell researcher is out of work. Maybe The Times can get him to come on board as their science editor. Credibility is certainly not a requirement.



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digby 1/25/2006 04:34:00 PM |

 
Uh Oh

by digby

Tweety's got a problem. A big problem.

Those of us on the left of center aren't going to sit back and take it anymore. I'm sorry if that's hurt people's feelings but they've left us no choice. We are half of this country and yet our views are consistently marginalized, often by fake Democrats like Chris Matthews. Samela, a regular reader of mine heard Matthews speak sometime back and he was quite upfront about his agenda. He said "they like it when I beat up on the liberals." He is the definition of a media whore. He whores for ratings and he whores for access.

Update: I always find it interesting when Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh use the same talking points, don't you? How do you suppose that happens?



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digby 1/25/2006 01:06:00 PM |

 
Incivility

by digby

Boy that Washington Post chat with bloggers sure was fun, huh kids? It's really cool when guys like Glenn Reynolds cojmpletely misrepresent themselves in a national forum. It shows once again how out of control the left is.

Here's Glenn:

My own sense is that it's very hard to preserve civility -- or even a good ratio of interestingness to flaming -- on sites that have high traffic without a fair degree moderation. There's some sort of a threshold after which things tend to break down into USENET-style flamewars, which some people like, but which I'm tired of. I find the comments on Atrios, Kos, or for that matter Little Green Footballs, to be tiresome.

[...]


I love open comments, just as I love free beer, free pizza, and other giveaway goods. But I'm not entitled to them. And those who partake, I think, owe a certain degree of civility to their hosts.

Yes, and one certainly shouldn't celebrate such incivility and encourage your readers to participate, right?

December 20, 2005

THE NYC TRANSIT WORKERS' UNION has an unofficial blog, and it's getting an earful in the comments. Here are some excerpts:

[S]econdly, if i could meet the masterminds behind this strike, i'd personally spit in each of their faces. I know fifty people at my campus who now cannot return to their families for the holiday season, and are being forced to spend their break in a hotel off campus until the transit system is running again. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves doing something this stupid this time of the year. Every single worker participating in the strike is extremely selfish and short sighted.

-----

You guys really have a lot of balls. All you do is drive around in circles. Your job isn't hard at all. You get paid as much as cops and firemen, while much more as teachers. Something is wrong. You're asking for way too much here.

-----

I am thoroughly disgusted with the TWU. Who are you to think you're above the law? Who are you to take well-paying jobs (for your education levels) serving millions of people and then hold us hostage by striking?

I have a 16 month old son who will be taken to day care today in his STROLLER. In 20 degree weather. I am paid hourly and will lose today's salary.

But they're standing up for working people!

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has to be asking himself, "What would Rudy do?"

(More here).

UPDATE: Apparently someone woke up long enough to remove the comments. [LATER: CraigsList removed the link, which was to an item featuring pictures of transit workers asleep at their posts.]

Glenn Reynolds knew exactly what he was doing when he linked to that blog and sent his massive readership over there to flame them. That's within the rules of engagement. But it's chickenshit when you don't have comments yourself. And it's dishonest in the extreme to pretend that you don't engage that way when you do.

Jeff Jarvis: Glenn: I agree with your assessment of those particular sites. I wonder whether that is a function of size or topic or host's tone.

I hate it when the host's tone creates a tiresome atmosphere that promotes flaming ,don't you? For instance, how about this for tone?

Instapundit:
There was a time when the Left opposed fascism and supported democracy, when it wasn't a seething-yet-shrinking mass of self-hatred and idiocy. That day is long past, and the moral and intellectual decay of the Left is far gone.

Reynolds doesn't have comments. Fair enough. He prefers to play hit and run. Which is also fair enough. But he is in no position to be lecturing about civility. He's a rabid partisan who knows exactly how the game is played.

It appears to me that this chat today was structured as a combat between Jane Hamsher and Jim Brady, with Jarvis and Rosen there as filler --- and Reynolds there to promote hte idea that lefty blogs are uncivilized in contrast to the upslifting atmostphere of the right wing (oddly similar to Brady's interview with Hugh Hewitt.)

But let's review the history of civility in our recent public discourse, shall we? Let's take a look at some of the words of people who are brought on the highest rated television shows to give political commentary, who are paid hundreds of millions of dollars to pontificate freely on radio day after day, who are welcomed into the homes of major establishment players in Washington:

I mean, if there is a party that's soulless, it's the Democratic Party. If there are people by definition who are soulless, it is liberals -- by definition. You know, souls come from God. You know?

I said at the conclusion of previous hours -- part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, "Rush, that's horrible. Peace activists taken hostage." Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.


Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love American, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence.

O'REILLY: It's a good question, Juan. And I don't see it as a threat. I mean, I think you have to say to people, as we do with all our guests here, this is what's likely to happen. And if they continue, those people continue to attack people personally, as Frank Rich does almost every week, and Keller allows it, then we'll just have to get into their lives.


O'REILLY: All right, and that brings us to the other group. And you know, certainly ABC News is a responsible organization. They made a decision. And the folks can decide for themselves whether -- who they agree with. The ACLU, I think, is a grossly irresponsible, irresponsible organization that is going out of its way to help Al Qaeda, that I don't think ABC News is in that category at all. I mean, I think they're doing what they think is best for the country. The ACLU is doing what they think is best for the country they envision, not the country we have now, but certainly is aiding and abetting the enemy.

The radical Democratic left is an army of soulless ghouls. Being of the living dead, they live in a world of death and try to impose it on we the living. Witness who led the charge: a radical homosexual, Barney Frank. A radical abortion Mafiosa, Barbara Boxer. What is difficult for we the living to comprehend is the reason they can engage in such anti-life abominations is because they have no souls.

That's the tip of the ice berg. These are people who are feted by the president of the United States, who appear on the cover of TIME magazine and are profiled as merry jokesters, people who mainstream journalists refer to as "wonderful." The Washington Post and NBC news referred to at least one of these people as "mainstream."

Please, please spare me the crocodile tears about leftist incivility. We are living in a political world formed by rightwing commentators who have made a fetish of harsh eliminationist rhetoric hammered over and over again into the ether until it sounds like normal discourse. And we've been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths. It's made us a little bit testy. When important news outlets like the Washington Post see "leftist incivility" as a topic worthy of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth it makes us wonder if they are even living in the same universe we do.

Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture.





Update: Jane's not done with Brady yet.

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digby 1/25/2006 11:24:00 AM |

 
Ubiquitous Anonymity

by tristero

This New York Times article on Internet privacy inspired the thought that one good way to protest at least some of the behavior of an American government acting like a third rate Stalinist satellite is to make anonymous websurfing the standard.

As you probably know, Google is locked in a fight to turn over their users' identification data to George W. Bush, ostensibly so Bush can stamp out illegal forms of pornography"establish a profile of Internet use that will help it defend the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose Web sites carried material deemed harmful to minors" . If you believe that they're not seeking individual records of searches, there's a Playboy centerfold of Phyllis Schafly I'd like to sell you (and I'll throw in a free rubber ducky). Those who object to this blatant Big Brotherism are met with the fallacious accusation that they are in favor of young kids being exposed to pornography and with the equally fallacious fascist threat that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

You don't like George Bush having the opportunity to spy on you? Make yourself invisible, even when you surf for groceries. That way, simply using anonymity software will not be considered suspicious in itself - hey, I forgot to turn it off! And obviously, the more people who use anonymity software, the less suspicious its use by any one person.

So, here are a few Mac OSX programs to get started (the Times article has links to some PC programs). It's probably a good idea even if you don't want to use them now to download them anyway. Given this administration's proclivities, there's no telling how long anonymity software will be available.

You might ask: How good is this stuff? Does George Bush have a backdoor into these programs or their techniques, rendering them useless against a malicious US administration? Are they difficult to set up and use? Do they slow down web surfing and emailing?I don't know. I've been told that PGP is exactly what it says it is: pretty good privacy, meaning it takes a very sophisticated computer program a considerable amount of time to decrpyt. The others are new to me so if anyone has any info please drop a note in the comments.

ANONYMITY SOFTWARE: MAC OSX

GPGMail 1.1.1 - PGP For Apple Mail
Caem (OS X)
Java Anonymous Proxy X 1.037
Proxify
Easy ways to access Proxify
NetShade
Tor

[Update: Link added to TOR. Link added to clarify the law at the center of the issue. Fallacious accusation #1 was corrected and changed in response to reader comments.]
tristero 1/25/2006 03:46:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

 
Foxy Eddie

by digby

Atrios links to the Bob Casey/Ed Rendell endorsement of Alito and it is pretty hard to take. I happened to see Rendell on Fox earlier today (Bill Hemmer's show) and he didn't just endorse Alito. He went out of his way to bash Democrats for being so partisan and failing to recognise that Alito is superbly qualified. Oh, and Bush won the election so he is out King.

He was good little Fox Democrat. I hope they gave him nice chew bone and a scratch behind the ears when he was done.


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digby 1/24/2006 07:24:00 PM |

 
Probable Destruction Of The Fourth Amendment

by digby


Talk Left has an interesting post up about a proposed expansion of the uniformed secret service which is being called a "federal police force."

I guess the FBI, DEA and ATF aren't getting the job done.

But why should they be given the power to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The last I heard police had to have probable cause to arrest someone. Apparently, the Republicans are trying to change the plain meaning of the fourth amendment.

I hate to get all Godwin, but come on.

Update: Here is what the above link says about reasonable suspicion and probable cause:

Definition of Probable Cause

Many factors contribute to a police officer’s level of authority in a given situation. Understanding the what, when, why, and how of police conduct during a stop is confusing for most people. Varying standards of proof exist to justify varying levels of police authority during citizen contacts. While FyR maintains that it is never a good idea to consent to a search or answer incriminating questions, an understanding of these standards will help the citizen understand when police can surpass constitutional protections.

Reasonable suspicion Facts or circumstances which would lead a reasonable person to suspect that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed

At this stage, police may detain the suspect for a brief period and perform a frisk. In some cases, drug-sniffing dogs may be called to the scene, although officers must cite a reason for suspecting the presence of drug evidence in particular. Refusing a search does not create reasonable suspicion, although acting nervous and answering questions inconsistently can. For this reason, it is best not to answer questions if you have to lie in order to do so. Police authority increases if they catch you in a lie, but not if you refuse to answer questions. As a general rule, reasonable suspicion applies to situation in which police have reason to believe you’re up to something, but they don’t know what it is.

Probable cause Facts or evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed and the person arrested is responsible

At this stage, police may perform a search, and often an arrest. Probable cause generally means police know what crime they suspect you of and have discovered evidence to support that belief. Common examples include seeing or smelling evidence which is in plain view, or receiving an admission of guilt for a specific crime.

For the conscientious citizen, the best advice regarding police authority is to stick to your guns and not waive your constitutional rights under any circumstances. Police officers will often give misleading descriptions of what their authority is, but you have nothing to gain by submitting to coercive police tactics. Police must make ad hoc decisions in the streets regarding their authority level in a given situation and these decisions are subject to review in court. Asserting your rights properly is good way to avoid arrest, but it is an even better way to avoid a conviction.

Here is what Law.com says:

probable cause

n. sufficient reason based upon known facts to believe a crime has been committed or that certain property is connected with a crime. Probable cause must exist for a law enforcement officer to make an arrest without a warrant, search without a warrant, or seize property in the belief the items were evidence of a crime. While some cases are easy (pistols and illicit drugs in plain sight, gunshots, a suspect running from a liquor store with a clerk screaming "help"), actions "typical" of drug dealers, burglars, prostitutes, thieves, or people with guilt "written across their faces," are more difficult to categorize. "Probable cause" is often subjective, but if the police officer's belief or even hunch was correct, finding stolen goods, the hidden weapon or drugs may be claimed as self-fulfilling proof of probable cause. Technically, probable cause has to exist prior to arrest, search or seizure.


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digby 1/24/2006 03:12:00 PM |

 
Update to the post directly below:

Speaking of writing your own epitaph: It's not the same James A. Baker.

This is particularly galling because I was aware of the earlier flap about James A Baker,even wrote about it, so I checked. When I saw the Wikipedia entry I made the assumption that it was the "real" James Baker this time, "serving quietly" in an oversight position (which I assumed to be kind of like the defense policy board or something.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wiki was wrong and I was wrong to have believed it.

Played For A Fool

by digby

I'm sure that most of you have already read Glenn Greenwald's blockbuster catch today in which it's shown that Mike DeWine submitted legislation in 2002 that would have reduced the standard for FISA wiretaps from "probable" to "reasonable" cause, but the administration's own Office of Intelligence Policy argued against it. Needless to say, this blows General Hayden's explanation yesterday out of the water.

One little tid-bit I don't think people may get right away about this is that the man who issued the statement arguing against changing the law is none other than major league heavyweight, James A. Baker III.

Since 2001 he has quietly served as head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. This government agency handles all Justice Department requests for surveillance authorizations under the terms of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, advises the Attorney General and all major intelligence-gathering agencies on legal issues relating to national security and surveillance, and, according to the agency website, "coordinates" the views of the intelligence community regarding intelligence legislation. Baker has often testified before Congress on behalf of Bush administration intelligence policies, and most recently has defended the USA PATRIOT Act before the House Judiciary Committee.

You. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Jim. Baker. Not even Rove would dare try it.

I think Jimbo needs to be added to the witness list as well. Maybe we can "devaaaahn the will of the administration" from him.

In June of 2002, James Baker didn't even believe it was constitutional, necessary or practical to use this "reasonable" standard to wiretap non US citizens. It's very hard to believe that he's changed his mind so much that he now thinks it was fine for the administration to wiretap US citizens without any kind of warrant at all.

He's a very slippery operator. I'm sure he'll come up with something creative to square what the administration was already doing when he made that public judgment. But it's going to have to be mighty creative or he's going to look like an idiot. I don't think James A Baker III likes looking like an idiot.


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digby 1/24/2006 12:01:00 PM |

 
Getting With The Program

by digby


I am really loving the wingnut magnolia wilting over us rude leftist vulgarians. I am tempted to get out my bulging folder filled with examples of right wing cretinism (which I've been collecting for over 15 years) but it's a waste of time. The newsmedia is feeling beseiged by the left and that is an unadultered good thing. Being nice is beside the point.

But it's a pleasure to reprint this e-mail from Rick Perlstein to this little naif over at CBS who seems to think that the left invented swarming the Amazon reviews section:

Cher colleague, you know nothing about Amazon.com and have fallen for a
right-wing propaganda campaign. People have been driving down the ratings of books for ideological reasons since there have been reviews on Amazon, with conservatives in the lead by about half a decade.

I append an article I wrote on the subject in 2000, in which I observed "most conservative books" garner "80 percent five-star ratings and 20 percent one-star, as opposed to pro-Clinton books, which receive 20 percent five-star, 80 percent one-star."

I humbly suggest a correction.

Rick Perlstein

That article was written in 2000.

To those of us not living in a cave for the last decade, the manipulation of book reviews on Amazon by freepers of one ilk or another is not a surprise any more than is right wing manipulation of book sales. I've always kind of admired them for it. For decades the right has had book clubs and book stores and now online book clubs and book stores to promote their own thinkers and writers. They support their idea people explicitly and compensate them well. I think that's a good idea if your job is to persuade people that your idea is better than the other guys' which is what politics is all about.

They also learned very early on to game the system in both the media and in places like Amazon by placing fake "liberals" on TV and radio and creating a false impression in the public's consciousness that conservatism is a much more powerful force than it actually is. They have been using mischief to manipulate the Amazon rating system for years.

This is simply another illustration of the whiny-ass bedwetting that characterizes so much of the right wing. They benefit for years from gaming the system and then faint with the vapors when subjected to their own tactics.

What a shame. Here's a hankie.



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digby 1/24/2006 10:50:00 AM |

 
Reasonable

by digby


Kevin notices something quite important about General Hayden's Q and A yesterday; He said the illegal wiretapping this was not some sort of vague, impersonal data mining:

Hayden stressed that the program "is not a drift net over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont, grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about. This is targeted and focused."

Ok. Good to know. Kevin says:

This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn't meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing.

So why didn't they ask Congress for that change? It certainly would have passed easily.

Matt Yglesias surmises that their "reasonable" (as opposed to probable) standard is probably quite elastic. They might just think it's reasonable to monitor any call made overseas by an American of Arab descent. They could, after all, know someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Bacon. In any case, their reason for not working to change the law or finding ways to do this legally is clearly because they knew very well that reasonable people can disagree quite disagreeably about what is reasonable.

For instance, in this week's Newsweek, we learn more about another program the government is using to protect us from terrorists:

The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering." The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. "It was tongue-in-street political theater," Parkin says.

But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

Just because one secret government spying program thinks that handing out peanut butter sandwiches outside Halliburton is a threat to national security perhaps we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about this secret NSA program either. But let's just say it makes it "reasonable" for us to have some suspicions. Critics of the president have been told often enough that we are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which is the explicit constitutional definition of treason.

"The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it…. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right," Bush said.

"I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy — not comfort to our adversaries," Bush said.

When the president says things like this, how unreasonable is it to demand that somebody oversee his secret program?

I know one person who should be very worried about this now that the NSA has revealed that this is not a random program: Grover Norquist. Needless to day, his "leave us alone" coalition should be supportive of a check on executive power and against warrantless wiretaps on principle alone. But Norquist also happens to be married to a Muslim, had contacts with the Taliban going way back and spent considerable time cultivating the Muslim community in the US as a Republican voting block. He is the prime example of an American who the government could find it "reasonable" to monitor without a warrant.

Perhaps Norquist would like to testify before the senate judiciary committee in the illegal wiretap hearings next month. Aside from proving that he isn't all talk and no action when it comes to privacy and liberty, this could be a very personal issue for him.


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digby 1/24/2006 08:21:00 AM |

Monday, January 23, 2006

 
Liars For Life

by digby


William Schneider did a little blurb earlier today on Blitzer about the Alito nomination in which he said that most people think that Samuel Alito will not vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade:

SCHNEIDER ... Just over a third of the public believes Alito would vote to overturn Roe. While 44 percent believe he would not. That's what shapes opinion on Alito's confirmation. People who favor Alito's confirmation overwhelmingly believe he would not vote to overturn Roe. Those who oppose Alito believe even more strongly that he would vote to overturn Row. But the number of people who believe that is not large enough to turn public sentiment against him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): Is there public support for filibuster of Alito's confirmation? By 48 percent to 38 percent the public says a filibuster is not justified -- Wolf.

People who favor Alito's confirmation overwhelmingly believe he would not vote to overturn Roe.

Bullshit. It is absurd to think that the wingnuts who support Alito so fervently don't believe that he will overturn Roe. They are lying.

When I saw an anti-abortion activist appear on NOW a couple of weeks ago I was struck by how deeply and profoundly dishonest she was:

BRANCACCIO: The head of Kansans for Life, Mary Kay Culp has a good reason for watching the big story in Washington this week.

Appeals court judge Samuel Alito did not trip up in any grotesque way this week. The conventional wisdom that dictates these things signals that Alito will soon occupy the swing seat on the Supreme Court. And his rulings could shift the court's position on hot-button issues like abortion.

It's just that kind of shift on the court that Mary Kay Culp and her group in Kansas have been hoping for.

BRANCACCIO: Thanks for coming in.

MARY KAY CULP: Thanks for having me.

BRANCACCIO: Well, looks like Samuel Alito is going to get this. That must, given all the work you've done over these years, make you happy.

MARY KAY CULP: I am glad that President Bush's nominee looks like he's going to make it on the court. Whether or not it's going to make me happy from a pro-life point of view, I think that remains to be seen.

BRANCACCIO: Why are you being tentative? He--

MARY KAY CULP: Well, he looks like he's a real careful-- a real careful, thoughtful, analytical guy, and I like that. And-- because I'm a little tired of this being portrayed as if he has an agenda, that all of a sudden, poof is going to happen if he gets on the court.

BRANCACCIO: Agenda being getting rid of Roe v. Wade?

MARY KAY CULP: Exactly. I don't think that that's going to happen. And if it does, all it means is that the issue comes back to the states.

BRANCACCIO: But, with all the work that you've been doing in Kansas for all these years, don't you think that if it becomes a State's matter that in Kansas like that (SNAP) you'll get rid of abortion? Huh?

MARY KAY CULP: No. I don't. Unh-uh. I don't think that'll happen in the states. But, what can happen is a real discussion. What can happen are committee hearings in your Senate and your House where witnesses are called-- witnesses who have had abortions-- witnesses on both side of the issue. And, it can be heard — the most frustrating thing about Roe is that it just slammed the door. When you try to get a State law passed even to regulate just a little bit, or partial birth abortion, anything, a legislator will tell you-- "Well, you know-- we can't do that under Roe versus Wade anyway."

BRANCACCIO: But you must be encouraged about the way things are going with Samuel Alito? All right, I'll encourage you then.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: You know-- Pat Buchanan?

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: My favorite conservative commentator.

MARY KAY CULP: Yes. Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: He said with Alito-- here's the quote from this week.

MARY KAY CULP: Okay.

BRANCACCIO: "Roe could go. George W. Bush is one Justice away from succeeding where Nixon, Ford, his father and even Ronald Reagan all failed."

MARY KAY CULP: That would be - one Justice after Alito.

BRANCACCIO: One Justice after Alito.

MARY KAY CULP: Unless-- not with Alito. Yeah.

BRANCACCIO: So, it's gettin' there.

MARY KAY CULP: Right.

BRANCACCIO: I don't understand how Kansas wouldn't-- ban abortion quit quickly after that. What do you know about the state of that debate in your state...

MARY KAY CULP: It isn't that. It's just that I know how the political system works. Then you can have real discussion. Then every-- both sides are gonna get aired, and if the media's fair about it, both sides are gonna get aired. That-- you know, that's a question. But at least democracy will have a chance to work on it. But, that doesn't necessarily mean anything either way.

But, well, I do know what might happen in Kansas. We have late term abortions in Kansas, and we're known for having late term abortions in Kansas. Those, yes, we might be able to get rid of right away.

BRANCACCIO: But, really there are two questions here. There's the political calculation that I did ask you about. Do you think that Roe v. Wade's going to be overturned and therefore abortion will become illegal? You don't think so. But, what about your goal? Would it make you happier? Is this your vision of America where abortion is illegal.

MARY KAY CULP: It would be nice to know that tomorrow morning no knives are gonna be taken to unborn babies. That'd be a nice thing. But, in order for that to happen and for it to-- to stay in place, I mean, if you just boom turn it around-- without people really understanding the issue, it's not as-- certainly not as satisfying as it happening for the right reasons.

Because, the media in this country becomes unafraid to actually hear both sides of this issue, 'cause that hasn't been the case for 30 years. It's been getting better. But, really it's kind of an interesting dynamic, because-- I didn't notice really a change until a partial birth abortion issue came along in Congress, and that really earns you a lot of credibility. And, then people start to look and listen. And, as we got stronger politically, it's really-- it's amazing how a political win really can draw peoples' attention to an issue.

BRANCACCIO: You know, Mary Kay, from your discussion, though, there are a lot of people who do not like abortion, who want to reduce the number of abortions I America--

MARY KAY CULP: Uh-huh.

BRANCACCIO: But are very concerned about an America where if a woman chooses to do this for whatever complicated reason that they have that choice. You could have some of these States deciding based on a different Supreme Court, "We are gonna outlaw it." And, that means if you got the money, you go to another state. If you don't got the money and your poor, terrible things could happen.

MARY KAY CULP: You know, terrible things are happening right now-- terrible things. But, nobody knows about 'em, because nobody's really looking at the other side of this issue. Terrible things can happen on both sides of this issues, if it's recognized for what it is and the way it impacts a woman's life and impacts society. And that's what I think we need to look at.

There are a lot of mainstream Americans out there that care about this issue. It isn't-- you know-- people can stereotype us and call us names if they want to. You know what? We don't care, because there's just more and more of us, and we're having more of a political effect. And, I hope we'll get some credibility with the media only so that we can look at these issues in a-- in a real way.

BRANCACCIO: Well, Mary Kay Culp, Kansans for Life, thanks for coming in to help us understand where you're coming from and possibly understand where the ascent of Samuel Alito came from.

MARY KAY CULP: Thank you for allowing me to come. I appreciate it.

That woman who believes that abortion is the killing of babies with knives is one slick political operator. She knows that this isn't about any dialog. She knows that Alito will vote to overturn Roe. She knows that the minute Roe is overturned a whole bunch of states will make it illegal. She is lying about all of that.

Why in the hell is it necessary for some woman from Kansas not to tell the truth about her cause or her goals? What is she so afraid of? Why does the born again conservative president have to phone in his support instead of appearing proudly and openly before his pro-life supporters? If this is an issue of deeply felt morality that all Americans are having difficulty dealing with, why can't they just admit openly that they want to outlaw abortion?

We know why:

Only 25 percent of those polled said they believe the precedent should be overturned, while 66 percent said they believe Roe should stand.

Could someone please inform the Democrats that when 66 percent of the public agrees with you on an issue that you can feel confident that you are not losing elections because of that issue?

Pro-life people even at the state level are savvy political con artists who are pretending to be more powerful than they are while lying about their goals. They are operating from a position of weakness not strength. Anybody in politics who is fooled by this crap should be fired.



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digby 1/23/2006 04:28:00 PM |

 
What Creeps Me Out More

by digby


From the future ex-Mrs Limbaugh:

KAGAN: Yes, I'm not doing that. I don't know what creeps me out more, vampires or the idea of Colin Farrell kissing a 14-year-old girl in this other movie, "The New World."

LEATHERMAN: It's really weird. It's a little bit strange.

KAGAN: It's illegal is what it is!

LEATHERMAN: When they made this movie she was 14. And the thing about this movie is everybody knows the plot. It's about the settlers coming over. He plays John Smith, who gets in a relationship with Pochahantas, who was -- the actress was 14 when they made this movie.

This is a Terrence Malick film. He makes a film about one every 27 years.

KAGAN: Yes, that's good.

LEATHERMAN: A lot of people really love his work. I have to tell you, I thought this movie was tedious and slow, boring and slow and slow. It was just -- for the parts of the movie I was awake, Daryn, it was beautiful to look at. But if you're looking for a good snooze, I suggest you go see "The New World."

KAGAN: And you got the biggest womanizer in Hollywood kissing a 14-year-old girl. Pass and pass.

LEATHERMAN: You are angry.

KAGAN: I'm angry about that.

I'm angry that sometimes I turn on my television and this woman appears, instantly bringing to mind a picture of her in bed with that gelatinous pill-popping cretin. And then I throw up a little in my mouth.



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digby 1/23/2006 03:48:00 PM |

 
Tally Me Bananas

by digby


I see that many people are upset about Father Tim's rather odd question this week-end in which he queried Barack Obama about Harry Belafonte. Attaturk defends the Monsignor and rightly so:

Before we get too angry at Li'l Russ

He didn't ask about Harry Belafonte's quotes of just Barak Obama and Colin Powell just because they are African-American.

After all the next time he has Condelezza Rice on, I'm sure he won't ask her about Belafonte.

He'll stick to asking her about what she thinks of Li'l Kim serving time.

I also heard that His Holiness plans to ask Russ Feingold about Barbra Streisand's political contributions, so that's good. It's not like it's a black thing.



Be sure to click the link to Attaturk for an illustration of what we can expect the next time the Secretary of State appears on Press the Meat.


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digby 1/23/2006 03:14:00 PM |

 
Lefties Rule

by digby


How great is it that every blog nominated for best Political Blog in the Bloggies is a member of the left blogosphere?

Wonkette, Kos, Talking Points Memo and Crooks & Liars, Firedoglake

Great blogs, all of them.

That would not have happened just a year or so ago. When I first started lurking around the blogosphere it was pretty slim pickings for libs. I had to pretend that Instapundit was a real libertarian and actually read him because there just wasn't much else. Liberals were way in the wilderness then.

Now a thousand bloggy liberal voices have bloomed. Congratulations to all the nominees.


And pay a little visit to our very own friendly folks at Wampum, too, who are hosting the Koufaxes --- Left Blogistans community awards. And toss them a couple of bucks if you can. They are wonderful people who devote a ridiculous amount of time to doing this every year for us.



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digby 1/23/2006 02:41:00 PM |

 
Tweety's Oeuvre

by digby


If you haven't paid a visit to An Open Letter To Chris Matthews today, check it out. They have gathered quite a list of Tweety's biased (and bizarre) comments.

But come on folks, how could you leave this one out?

I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit ... it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It's not a stunt if it works and it's real. And I felt the faces of those guys--I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

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digby 1/23/2006 02:08:00 PM |

 
Shameless

by digby

I don't know what class in Wingnut U teaches phony sanctimony, but it's clearly a requirement for graduation. Even the father of convicted felon Jack Abramoff has the unmitigated gall to pull a "this is not a goood man" on George Clooney:

He said the lobbyist’s daughter, who was watching the show, was in “a fit of tears” after hearing Clooney’s remarks.

“Are you proud of that?” Abramoff wrote. “Shame on you.”

Huckleberry Graham would be proud. The man whose son, the orthodox Jew, just pled guilty to several felonies and is about to implicate his friends and colleagues in any number of crimes says, "shame on you" to someone who derides him publicly. It clearly didn't even occur to him that he had no legitimate claim to the moral high ground; it didn't occur to him that he should be hanging his head in shame himself. Indeed, he apparently felt entirely justified in publicly protesting that his son's immoral and criminal behavior was the subject of public derision.

No matter how nasty, how ruthless, how cruel or how unjust Republicans are (and they are) they never fail to shamelessly turn on the crocodile tears and blubber into their lace hankies like Miss Manners when Democrats say "enough." They have taken manipulative behavior to its most exalted level. Dems need to jettison the political strategists and start consulting psychologists.


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digby 1/23/2006 11:18:00 AM |

 
Killing Me Softly

by digby

I'm feeling down right now. I know I shouldn't. The fact that Tom DeLay has stepped down is such a huge victory for humanity all by itself that I should be dancing a jig for the next six months. But, I'm down in the dumps, mostly because I am watching George W. Bush repeat his patented mantra for the 514,346th time. It's filled with lies, mischaracterizations and simple-minded gibberish, as always, and I'm watching it go out unfiltered, in its entirety, unchallenged by the media, no Democrats in sight, on every cable channel. I think they are personally trying to drive me crazy.

There is one new wrinkle. Regarding the illegal wiretapping, he just said, "it's amazing to me when people say I just wanted to break the law. If I wanted to break the law why would I brief congress?"

His masterful sound guy is there, compressing the sound, building the audience response to statements like that from a distant chuckle to a soft moan of appreciation, slowly ratcheting it up to a low roar until it reaches a crescendo of ecstatic, sustained hysteria. I think I even saw some rending of garments in the fourth row.

They are going to the 9/11 well again. They say that Democrats are sending talking points to Osama and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rove says we don't believe that the government should monitor al Qaeda's telephone calls. The next several months will be spent fending off accusations that if we don't let the president do anything he damned well pleases we are all going to die.

I don't know if it will work again. But I also don't know if I can take this campaign one more time. Five years of hearing the same thing over and over again and watching American sheeple fall for it over and over again is just too depressing. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to January 20, 2009 (and I'm of an age where rushing the future is no longer wise.) The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life.



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digby 1/23/2006 10:29:00 AM |

 
They Sound Just Like Osama!

by digby

Bill Sherr reminds me of certain "similarities" between the views of the Republican party and Osama bin Laden:

"Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?"

Absolutely not and I imagine that Osama and his good friends on the right are in complete agreement on this. He's much happier to be fighting Jihad against a man of great personal moral rectitude like George W. Bush.

But then, our president has often called forth language that is similar to that used by bin Laden. Indeed, when you read their words together you would think that we are engaged in a religious war. I noticed this back in 2003 when I wrote a post called Brothers In Weltanschauung:

"We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now."

In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience.

I also advise myself and you to say more prayers.

"Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy," "Hope still lights our way, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it."

God Almighty says: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil."

"There is power -- wonder-working power -- in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."

Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust.

"The American people have deep and diverse religious beliefs, truly one of the great strengths of our country. And the faith of our citizens is seeing us through some demanding times. We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith."

God Almighty says: "Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly."

"After we were attacked on September the 11th, we carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer."

Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam with complete submission to Allah.

"The role of government is limited, because government cannot put hope in people's hearts, or a sense of purpose in people's lives. That happens when someone puts an arm around a neighbor and says, God loves you, I love you, and you can count on us both."

The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden

"I ask you to challenge your listeners to encourage your congregations to work together for the good of this nation, to work hard to break down the barriers that have divided the children of God for too long. There is no question that we can rid this nation of hopelessness and despair, because the greatest of America is the character of the American people."

Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumors, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement.

"What I'm saying is, the days of discriminating against religious groups just because they're religious are coming to an end. I have issued an executive order banning discrimination against faith-based charities and social service grants by federal agencies."

Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs.

"And we are a courageous country, ready when necessary to defend the peace. And today, the peace is threatened. We face a continuing threat of terrorist networks that hate the very thought of people being able to live in freedom."

We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States.

"They hate the thought of the fact that in this great country, we can worship the Almighty God the way we see fit. And what probably makes him even angrier is we're not going to change."

Muslims' doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God's sake. So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan

"We face an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country."

Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam.

"A regime that aids and harbors terrorists and is armed with weapons of mass murder. Chemical agents, lethal viruses, and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He's a threat to the United States of America. He's a threat to some of our closest friends and allies. We don't accept this threat."

We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders' preparations for war to occupy a former capital of Islam, loot Muslims' wealth, and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments.
This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel.

"My attitude is that we owe it to future generations of Americans and citizens in freedom-loving countries to see to it that Mr. Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

This is a prescribed duty. God says: "[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush."

"It's his choice to make as to how he will be disarmed. He can either do so -- which it doesn't look like he's going to -- for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition of willing countries and disarm Saddam Hussein."

Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons.

"But should we need to use troops, for the sake of future generations of Americans, American troops will act in the honorable traditions of our military and in the highest moral traditions of our country."

Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values

"In violation of the Geneva Conventions, Saddam Hussein is positioning his military forces within civilian populations in order to shield his military and blame coalition forces for civilian casualties that he has caused. Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes."

"...we realized from our defense and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have. They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers.

"America views the Iraqi people as human beings who have suffered long enough under this tyrant. And the Iraqi people can be certain of this: the United States is committed to helping them build a better future. If conflict occurs, we'll bring Iraq food and medicine and supplies and, most importantly, freedom."

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq, may God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.

"We're called to defend our nation and to lead the world to peace, and we will meet both challenges with courage and with confidence."


If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?

"Liberty is not America's gift to the world. Liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world."

God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them.

"There's an old saying, 'Let us not pray for tasks equal to our strength. Let us pray for strength equal to our tasks.' And that is our prayer today, for the strength in every task we face."

...we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad.

"I want to thank each of you for your prayers. I want to thank you for your faithfulness. I want to thank you for your good work. And I want to thank you for loving your country. May God bless you all, and may God bless America."

O ye who believe. When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. Our Lord. Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire. May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

Us, them



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digby 1/23/2006 09:47:00 AM |

 
Unbelievable.

by tristero

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe used to boast that within one year of his coming out and entering the heavy leather gay scene, he had seen every kind of deviance, fetish, and perversion there was to see. Nothing could shock him.

Then again, Mapplethorpe never lived to see the Bush administration. Read it all. And if you don't get it, then read it again.

Got it now? That's right, the Bush administration, in cahoots with the gas and oil industries, has systematically defrauded the US government. To the tune of $700 million for gas royalties alone.

Can't get your head around the leaders of a US administration conspiring to bilk the US government of more than 2/3 of a billion bucks? Neither can I. But that's exactly what's going on.

What Bush's henchmen are doing makes jamming a finger inside another man's penis look like a gentle caress.

(Revised shortly after posting to correct a bad typo on the amount defrauded ($700 million not billion), which required editing out some inappropriate examples. An apology: I read the article in the print edition of the Times and misread the amount. An inexcusable error of fact which I will make every effort not to repeat. During my career as a blogger, I haven't made too many of these careless mistakes -literally around a handful, but if someone has kept track, and I've made more, I'll issue another correction. Nevertheless each one I've learned about has been quickly corrected and a straightforward apology has been offered. Thanks much to the readers who found this one.)
tristero 1/23/2006 06:04:00 AM |

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 
What Molly Says

by tristero

Like Howard Dean, Ivins is saying things that need to be said and saying them the way they need to be::

There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people think the war in Iraq is a mistake and we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) favor raising the minimum wage. The majority (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) want to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) think we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Whom are you afraid of?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily...

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds because they were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The minute someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

tristero 1/22/2006 10:27:00 AM |

 
This Is How Dems Should Talk When They're Being Charitable To Republicans

by tristero

Governor Dean:

"Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative," said Dean. "Rove's political standing gets him an invitation to address Republicans in Washington, DC today, but it doesn't give him the credibility to question Democrats' commitment to national security. The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong."

tristero 1/22/2006 10:03:00 AM |

Saturday, January 21, 2006

 
When Will The Times Stop Kowtowing To Creationists?

by tristero

Judith Shulevitz in tomorrow's Times Book Review continues the utterly disgraceful NY Times coverage of evolution and "intelligent design" creationism. Shulevitz lets some creationist from Discovery rail against Judge Jones' brilliant decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover for somehow imposing his religious opinions on others. You'd never guess that during the trial, this very same judge listened patiently for hours while creationist "experts" demonstrated from their own words that "intelligent design" was just a new phrase for the same old creationism and that in fact these same "experts" had repeatedly stated that "intelligent design" was invented to bring religious ideas back into public schools. She neglected to mention that one of these brilliant "scholars" was so ignorant of what science is, he asserted that by his definition, astrology would be considered a science. And you'd never guess that some of the instigators of the "intelligent design" creationism initiative in Dover were so deceitful in their answers and behavior that the judge made a point of declaring calling them out and out liars.

And then there are Shulevitz's mistakes. She writes:

Darwin...realized that if he were to turn his theories into a credible science, he'd have to avoid ascribing a higher merit to those who won out in the battle for life.

But earlier Shulevitz (mis-)described Darwin's theory of natural selection as "the continual culling of less fit forms of life that drives evolution forward," ie, precisely the kind of oversimplified, easily mistaken, Spencerian formulation of evolution Darwin was trying to avoid.

Shulevitz then discusses Michael Ruse's contention that there's a quasi-religious movement among scientists called "evolutionism," which apparently is a "partly secularized postmillennialist" movement. The problem with this is that as far as I know of no scientist when discussing either evolution or their thoughts about how evolution might - repeat might - impact ethics, politics, and culture has ever tried to bring discussions of when the Son of God will return (and what we need to do to hasten that happy day) into the discussion. It doesn't work, even as metaphor, as Shulevitz suggests.

No matter. Shulevitz nevertheless accepts the existence of an evolutionism religious cult:

[T]he notion that evolution equals progress still runs through many evolutionary theorists' works and public statements, giving them, at times, a curiously spiritual feel.

But she fails to provide a single example. I've read Ruse's The Evolution-Creation Struggle, the book she discusses, and I can't remember detecting a "spiritual feel" behind any of the remarks Ruse describes as "evolutionistic." And I recall being quite unimpressed with the notion that there was any coherent religious or philosophical system in the extra-scientific musings he quoted, even from such known firebrands as Dawkins. It all seemed more ad hoc than "spriitual."

Finally, Shulevitz winds up saying, sure, teach science in science class - good for her! But were it not for the IDiots and their tomfoolery, that would go without saying. And then:

Teach evolution in biology class and evolutionism in religion class, along with creationism, deism and all the other cosmologies that float unexamined through our lives.

But Judith, how can you teach "evolutionism" as a religion if there is no such thing, outside of Ruse's dubious ruminations?!?

In short, Shulevitz, and the Times in general, continue to mis-cast the battle over teaching "intelligent design" creationism as one between two sides, religion or science. This mischaracterization persists despite considerable evidence that it is simply not the case that this is a religion/science clash of civilizations. Rather, it really is a fight between a handful of well-funded lunatics clamoring to make their particular religion - and no one else's - a State religion and the rest of us, who know that that is one of the stupidest fucking ideas ever.

(I'll leave the interesting subject of whether creationism is a fit subject even for a religion class to another post. For now, I'll just say that in some overlooked testimony during Kitzmiller, a Christian theologian and scholar cast considerable doubt on creationism's viability as an intelligible theology. In short, creationism is to theology as astrology is to astronomy: not worth the time and effort to study. )
tristero 1/21/2006 09:59:00 AM |

Friday, January 20, 2006

 
Hotshots

by digby


So Tweety introduced a new feature today called the "Hardball Hotshots" with Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson and Rita Cosby --- two wingnuts and a babbling tabloid airhead. They all agreed that bin Laden was parroting Michael Moore, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in his tape yesterday.

No apologies. In fact, quite the opposite. Chris did say that he'd been misunderstood, but he didn't elaborate. They all agreed that it was going to help the president.

(Remind me. Whose side is bin Laden supposed to be on again?)


They also agreed that Hillary was incredibly offensive with her plantation statement. Rita was particularly shocked because she's from the south. No comment yet from anyone in the media about all the prominent Republican references to the "Democratic Plantation." Perhaps those comments aren't offensive because it only refers to African Americans who are supposed to be too stupid to know which party better serves their interests. Hillary was beyond the pale. She accused white southern males of running a plantation. In Limbaugh Nation, that's racist you see.


Hardball:

(202) 824-6707

Tell Chris Matthews
what you think.


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digby 1/20/2006 03:18:00 PM |

 
Update

Apparently the number for Hardball is:

(202) 824-6707

Just in case.






thanks again to uggabugga
digby 1/20/2006 01:49:00 PM |

 
Limbaugh Nation

by digby


A commenter alerted me to this article in The American Prospect that explains why the Democrats picked Tim Kaine to give the Democratic response at the State of the Union: he speaks in religious moral terms. Good to know.

But the article is interesting because it profiles a new and influential polling and analysis group that is trying to change the way the Democrats look at the electorate. And as far as I can tell, the Democrats (or maybe just the author) are taking the wrong lessons from them.

Here's the story:

In April 2005, Nordhaus left his job at the opinion research firm Evans/McDonough Company to start, along with Shellenberger, an American branch of the Canadian market research behemoth Environics, which specializes in the study of consumer behavior, right down to the level of “neighborhood lifestyle segmentation.” Though such data are not collected on behalf of political figures, it’s the kind of information political operatives often use to slice and dice the electorate into ever thinner pieces. Similar data allowed Republicans in 2004 to make sure they targeted last-minute calls and fliers to domestic SUV-drivers, subscribers to hunting magazines, and women who watch Will and Grace. American Environics intended to use the detailed data its parent company had collected since 1992 for a different purpose, however: to challenge progressive interest-group orthodoxies and the progressive movement itself.

In the great debate about how Democrats can stage a comeback (beyond simply waiting for the coming Republican implosion that never seems to arrive), American Environics rejected some of the more popular recommendations out there. Rather than focusing on reframing the Democratic message, as Berkeley linguistics and cognitive science professor George Lakoff has recommended, or on redoubling Democratic efforts to persuade Americans to become economic populists, as another school of thought suggests, the American Environics team argued that the way to move voters on progressive issues is to sometimes set aside policies in favor of values. By focusing on “bridge values,” they say, progressives can reach out to constituents of opportunity who share certain fundamental beliefs, even if the targeted parties don’t necessarily share progressives’ every last goal. In that assessment, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are representative of an increasingly influential school of thought within the Democratic Party.

Nothing too revolutionary there, you say? Well, no, when described in that predictable way. We all love values. Values are, in fact, the basis of all poltiics. What a good idea. Let's talk values. The article also (for inexplicable reasons) spends a great deal of time discussing the data produced by Stanley Greenberg who, like clockwork, interviews a bunch of rural voters in Arkansas and finds out that they care more about gay marriage than putting food on the table. Which means we will lose because of values and we need to get some. (Those of us who disagree with the rural Arkansans are assumed to have no values, apparently.)

But the article skews that way for reasons that have little to do with the study. Here's what Environics actually found out and it's quite interesting:

Looking at the data from 1992 to 2004, Shellenberger and Nordhaus found a country whose citizens are increasingly authoritarian while at the same time feeling evermore adrift, isolated, and nihilistic. They found a society at once more libertine and more puritanical than in the past, a society where solidarity among citizens was deteriorating, and, most worrisomely to them, a progressive clock that seemed to be unwinding backward on broad questions of social equity. Between 1992 and 2004, for example, the percentage of people who said they agree that “the father of the family must be the master in his own house” increased ten points, from 42 to 52 percent, in the 2,500-person Environics survey. The percentage agreeing that “men are naturally superior to women” increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. Meanwhile, the fraction that said they discussed local problems with people they knew plummeted from 66 percent to 39 percent. Survey respondents were also increasingly accepting of the value that “violence is a normal part of life” -- and that figure had doubled even before the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.

Lumping specific survey statements like these together into related groups, Nordhaus and Shellenberger arrived at what they call “social values trends,” such as “sexism,” “patriotism,” or “acceptance of flexible families.” But the real meaning of those trends was revealed only by plugging them into the “values matrix” -- a four-quadrant plot with plenty of curving arrows to show direction, which is then overlaid onto voting data. The quadrants represent different worldviews. On the top lies authority, an orientation that values traditional family, religiosity, emotional control, and obedience. On the bottom, the individuality orientation encompasses risk-taking, “anomie-aimlessness,” and the acceptance of flexible families and personal choice. On the right side of the scale are values that celebrate fulfillment, such as civic engagement, ecological concern, and empathy. On the left, there’s a cluster of values representing the sense that life is a struggle for survival: acceptance of violence, a conviction that people get what they deserve in life, and civic apathy. These quadrants are not random: Shellenberger and Nordaus developed them based on an assessment of how likely it was that holders of certain values also held other values, or “self-clustered.”

Over the past dozen years, the arrows have started to point away from the fulfillment side of the scale, home to such values as gender parity and personal expression, to the survival quadrant, home to illiberal values such as sexism, fatalism, and a focus on “every man for himself.” Despite the increasing political power of the religious right, Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant.

No kidding. Is the culture growing more coarse? Check. Cruel? check. Nihilisitic? check. Xenophobic? check. Consumption worshipping? check. Sexist? check. Rage filled? check. Hmmmm.

Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?"

This is a very revealing portrait of what's happening in America and it explains some things about why the right is so successful. And it's the opposite of what everybody says it is. It isn't because they've become more moral and religious. It's because they've fostered and exploited extremism, nihilism and cruelty. After all, if it was the libertine culture of "Brokeback Mountain" or "unwed motherhood" or (gasp) abortion that was creating this shift, you'd think we would have benefitted, not them. For all their crowing about traditional values, it's the right that has embraced decadence, sadism, vice and corruption.

Yes, it's a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that's -- well, it's true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.

I have little doubt that most of the people who listen to Rush also believe that they are good practicing Christian conservatives. And many Christian conservatives probably don't listen to him. But they listen to this:

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

And this:

How about group marriage? Or marriage between daddies and little girls? Or marriage between a man and his donkey? Anything allegedly linked to civil rights will be doable, and the legal underpinnings for marriage will have been destroyed." Now, that's more or less a prophecy. Not a divine prophecy, but a prediction.

Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.

If the culture is careening into a crude, dog-eat-dog corrupt "Pottersville" it's because the greedheads and the juvenile authoritarian thugs, whether in street gangs or talk radio or K Street, have taken it over. And it is hard for liberals to counter this because our bedrock values include tolerance, free expression and personal autonomy and that enables this decadent turn in many ways. But let's make no mistake, it is only on the right that purveyors of brutal, sadistic, depraved political discourse are welcomed into the houses, offices and beds of the nation's political leadership.

I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but I know that this is where the real political problem for Democrats lies. So, perhaps we can stop bullshitting ourselves that we can solve this problem by speaking in rightwing approved religious language and pulling our punches on abortion. That is not the real reason the right is winning and we won't win that way either. Religion is cover for these people. Rush Limbaugh is the guiding spirit of the Republican Party.

LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture...You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.

When Limbaugh came under fire for those vulgar comments, the leading lights of the Republican party quickly came to his defense.

Rush's angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the "facts." We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her. For millions of us, David Brock is firing blanks against a bulletproof target.

— Kate O'Beirne is Washington Editor for National Review.

Figure out how to deal with that and we might be able to make some headway.




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digby 1/20/2006 01:07:00 PM |

 
Liberals Are Not Religious Fundamentalists

by digby

It's a contradiction in terms. Comparing liberals like Michael Moore to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists is calumny in every possible way. Islamic fundamentalism is the antithesis of liberalism. It's not funny and it's not cute when influential pundits try to make points by comparing the two. I'm sick of it.

Tell Chris Matthews you want an apology, by dropping by this board and leaving your remarks. He'll read it. MSNBC has been getting an earful.



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digby 1/20/2006 09:37:00 AM |

 
Response To Kevin Drum

by tristero

Kevin asks liberal bloggers to respond to a hypothetical and I will cheerfully do so, although my argument won't please Kevin, I think:

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.

Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal blogosphere discuss it. And for those who answer no, I'm curious: under what circumstances would such an attack be justified?

My answer, which will surprise no one who knows my writing, is that what Kevin has written is so loaded that it is utterly incoherent as a spur to an honest discussion of terrorism and what to do about it. The only appropriate way to answer is ask the questions that should be asked in the first place, the ones that are being sidestepped. To explain:

Although it seems there are two questions here, there are exactly no real questions being asked. In fact, Kevin simply has crafted a blunt accusatory phrased as a question which can only elicit one possible answer: his. He's really saying, roughly, "You'd be out of your mind not to bomb them, even if 18 innocents died. Thousands, if not millions, of lives, will be spared."

The question, "Was the attack justified?" is not meant to be seriously disputed and a little bit of thought will show that it never can be. Let's just say you answer no and with tremendous eloquence you discuss the morality of it, invoking not only the Bible, but the Bhagavad Gita and a few scientific studies of moral dilemmas. It's all meaningless, for all Kevin needs to do is follow up with, "Okay, let's say the people in that building were putting the finishing touches on a plan to nuke Boston. Would you now say it's justified?" And if that doesn't change your mind, Kevin can simply continue to up the ante - in the house, say, was enough Chemical W to obliterate the Midwest for generations. Eventually, even you will be forced to abandon your objections.

But what happens if you agree with Kevin that the attack was justified? Well, an opponent can easily play this game, too. Simply respond with the opposite extension of the hypothetical. "Okay, let's say those 18 killed included your Mom, your Dad, your brother, two sisters, and your favorite cousins. Was it still justified to attack that house?" And sooner or later you will end up saying, no it wasn't justified.

And around and around you'll go, fine tuning the hypothetical to provide you with exactly the answer you want. It only looks like a moral dilemma but really, it isn't. A moral dilemma happens in the real world, not in hypothetical situations. Kevin's hypothetical is a setup. In fact, and this really should be patently obvious, it isn't even Kevin's hypothetical, but the Bush administration's, a hypothetical they are asserting actually occurred. And while they're marketing it as likely fact, this situation doesn't resemble genuine moral dilemmas I know, which are far more complex than a carefully constructed hypothetical which this clearly is. In other words, the story of the attack and its justification is a lie.

The question Kevin asked is precisely the one Bush wants us to ask. They have composed this "justification" for the attack which they expect will meet the minimum standards necessary for some dispassionate observers to conclude that yes, it just might be worth it to have unfortunately killed all those innocent civilians. But the closer you look at the story, how it developed, how it's being described, the more bogus it seems. For example:

Mysteriously, the bodies of the targeted terrorists were removed before they could be identified. The US government, quite skillfully, has refused to confirm or deny the latest Pakistani story which originally contended it was al Zawahiri but now it's a mad bomber genius, al Qaeda's own Unabomber, who was - ever so ironically - blown to bits. Surely, that's worth 18 innocent lives, yes?

And that, plus other peculiarities, is why I don't believe a word of it. It's too pat, too perfect a concretization of a carefully crafted arm chair accusatory skewed towards only one right answer - Bush's - and as details emerge it can be easily adjusted to make that answer even more inevitable. And tellingly, the structure of the Pakistan assertion combined with a US refusal to confirm easily enables the story to be disowned a few months from now, when no one's paying much attention.

Am I saying that there is no way in hell the story put out by the Pakistanis and the Bushies could be true? What I'm saying is this: the story of 18 innocents sacrificed to eliminate an Evil Bombing Genius is so perfectly tailored to fit the moral theorizing of amateur philosophers rather than any possibly real conflict with al Qaeda that it resembles more the fake Jessica Lynch heroism stories than the real Lynch story.

This is merely Bush propaganda at its most cynical and crude. Frankly, I'm amazed that Kevin asked precisely the question Bush wanted us to ask, a question posed only so that outrage over American bombing of civilians - a war crime if deliberate - would dissipate. I'm also amazed, in fact saddened, that PZ Myers didn't realize this was was a con and chose to respond as if it were a serious question designed to "engage" a debate about national security and its tradeoffs. PZ didn't realize the fundamental bogosity of the question.

But while Kevin may be naive when it comes to accepting the terms of the Bush administration for debate - and he is, as his pre-invasion support for the war shows - he is no Bushite. In fact he is probably after a deeper question here: How should al Qaeda be confronted? What techniques and strategies will not only neutralize al Qaeda's ability to strike but eliminate al Qaeda-ism as a serious danger? That's a question I'd like not only liberal bloggers to discuss; I'd like the government of the United States to address it directly instead of spewing an endless stream of third rate propaganda intended only to make it impossible for their domestic political opponents to object to their cockmamie plans.

Perhaps Kevin is also posing a meta-question here: How can liberals construct narratives that are rhetorically as slippery as the rightwing, like this one about the botched bombing? That is another very good question. Personally, I lean towards crisply telling the truth no matter where the chips land. I'm not sure much more is required to bring down Bush and Bushism for good. It would be nice if a political party did that in a consistent fashion, just as an experiment some time.

(updated immediately after posting to fix grammar and clarify some subsidiary points.)
tristero 1/20/2006 08:09:00 AM |

 
The Best Response To The Democrats' SOTU Response

by tristero

When you're asked to donate to the Democratic party, just remember that your dollars are paying the salaries of the idiots who decided that this man was the appropriate person to deliver the response to Bush's 2006 State of the Union address.

Don't get me wrong. There are some great Americans in the Democratic party - Dean, Kerry, Pelosi, Obama - make your own list. But something is seriously - major seriously - askew with the plumbing behind the scenes. And Dean, even as head of the party, won't be able to fix it. In short, Daou's an optimist.

What to do? I suggest donating to another organization that recognizes exactly how serious a danger Bushism represents an organization that's shown they will fight tooth and nail against it. I'm suggesting that such an organization could then use its financial and electoral clout to demand the Democrats fire every last strategist, consultant, and adviser who was involved in the inexcusable losses of the 2002 and 2004 elections and hire new people who are prepared to implement a winning strategy.

What NOT to do? Don't forgo political donations - give them to groups that you think matter. Don't drop out and refuse to vote - every vote counts. Most importantly, don't, for a moment, hold on to the delusion that the Democrats, as presently run, are a viable national second party. They're not, and we're going to have to work like hell to create a national party that can confront the Republicans and marginalize the extreme right.

One personal note. I truly hate having to blog about this issue. I'm no purist, I'm not a Naderite, a radical. I'm a moderate liberal. I recognize that a national strategy opposed to Bush can't possibly address many of the issues I care about. I understand that I will inevitably disagree with positions taken to attract a more conservative voter than myself.

But what the Democratic advisers are doing isn't wise strategy designed to appeal to the center. It's sheer stupidity and incoherence. And if bloggers don't speak out - loudly - then no one will. Although our influence is genuinely trivial, it is not zero. And so we must protest in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read what we say and perhaps try in some small way to turn the Democrats around so that the US can once again become a two party democracy.
tristero 1/20/2006 06:43:00 AM |

 
Timing Is Everything

by tristero

It looks like some Gooper brownshirt was a bit ahead of his time in his offer of a $100 to any student willing to record the lectures of politically "suspect faculty." Another few years, at the most, and CNN will instead describe them as "deviant faculty" and some earnest Ralph Reed clone will say that if professors have nothing to hide, then they won't object to having their lectures taped and sold to watchdog organizations. And after a while, no one will care and eyes will roll at dinner parties if anyone is politically correct enough to question its morality.
tristero 1/20/2006 03:30:00 AM |

Thursday, January 19, 2006

 
One of The Boys

by digby


Just this morning, in honor of Matthews and Imus sharing masculine chuckles over "that movie" I took a little trip down Hardball lane and relived those glorious days of yore when Tweety and the Sycophants sang their song of manly love to Commander Codpiece and Big Dick Cheney.

A commenter later pointed out that Tweety has been socializing with GOP mouthpiece Ed Rogers, celebrating the impending nuptials of objective reporter Campbell Brown and her fiance Dan Senor, former professional GOP spokesliar for Viceroy Bremer. (He had been promoted from Ari Fleischer's harem.) Tweety gushed at how much fun he'd had hanging with the wingnuts:

MATTHEWS: Dee Dee, you're great to come on. Ed Rogers, same to you.

Thanks for the party the other night.

ROGERS: Enjoyed having you.

MATTHEWS: (inaudible) Brown and her husband about to be.

This was after a ridiculous segment in which Tweety let Rogers spin like Tonya Harding on meth about the goddamned plantation nonsense, while Dee Dee Myers (typically unprepared) apologized for Hillary and babbled nonsensically about Democrats being in the minority.

That's all within a 24 hour period. But that wasn't the end of it. Tonight he said that Osama bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore (via Crooks and Liars):

I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells...

Come on. This is ridiculous. This man is either working overtime to kiss right wing ass for some reason or he's been paid off to do full-on GOP character assasination. This is exactly what the Republicans did to Tom Daschle and Max Cleland.

This comparing liberals to Osama bin laden has been going on long enough. We don't want to subjugate women and kill gays. We don't want to turn free societies into theocracies and inflict a particular religious doctine on everyone. We don't see geopoliticc through the lens of religious revelation and compel others to act upon it. It is beyond absurd to keep comparing liberals, any of us, to religious fundamentalist terrorists.

Peter Daou calls for an apology and I agree that it's long overdue:

Bin Laden sounds like Clint Eastwood" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Ron Silver" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Rush Limbaugh" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bill O'Reilly"-- "Bin Laden sounds like Mel Gibson" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bruce Willis" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Michelle Malkin"... Imagine the outrage on the right and in the press (but I repeat myself) if a major media figure spat out those words. Well, on Hardball, Chris Matthews just blurted out that Bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore. Simple: Matthews should apologize. On the air. This has NOTHING to do with Michael Moore and everything to do with how far media figures can go slandering the left. And last I checked, Michael Moore didn't massacre thousands of innocent Americans.

Golly gee, I only wish that I had Monsignor Tim's number and could call and report Tweety's transgressions as Scooter Libby did. Scooter's complaint got a call from the padre to the president of NBC news and I'm pretty sure Matthews got a trip to the woodshed.

But a few thousand emails from readers demanding an apology might just get somebody's attention too:

Hardball@msnbc.com

MSNBC

www.msnbc.com
world@msnbc.com

One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (201) 583-5000
Fax: (201) 583-5453


NBC News

www.nbc.com

30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-5900
Fax: (212) 664-2914



By the way: Tweety's tied to the Abramoff probe. He happily raised money for one of Casino Jack's front groups. And he's gone out of his way to trivialize the unprecedented bribery, shakedowns and protection racket his best pals have been engaged in. I'm just sayin'


Update: Thank you John Kerry.

"You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America." -- John Kerry

Update II: Americablog, Daily Kos, firedoglake, and MYDD have all issued a call for apology as well.


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digby 1/19/2006 06:48:00 PM |

 
Keepers of The Flame

by digby


Garance at TAPPED writes today about the Patriots to Restore Civil Liberties and cautions the Democrats not to get too excited about guys like Grover Norquist or Paul Weyrich leaving the Republican coalition over Bush's disregard for civil liberties.

I have no idea if she was referring to my post among those she admonishes, but I think it's worth clarifying anyway. My point was not that Grover and company were going to leave the Republican Party, but that they were laying the groundwork for purging others from the coalition. They will not do this while Bush is in office, for obvious reasons, but they are beginning to make the case that Bush was not a "real conservative" and therefore anything he did while in office cannot be defined as "conservatism." They do this whenever a politican becomes unpopular.

I linked to Rick Perlstein's post on HuffPo from a while back in which he tells of his speech to the conservative cabal that was meeting at Princeton late last year:

This past year, I interviewed Richard Viguerie about conservatives and the presidential campaign. I showed him an infamous flier the Republican National Committee had willingly taken credit for, featuring a crossed-out Bible and the legend, "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." "To do this," Viguerie told me, "it reminds me of Bush the 41st, and not just him, but other non-conservative Republicans."

Republicans are different from conservatives: that was one of the first lessons I learned when I started interviewing YAFers. I learned it making small talk with conservative publisher Jameson Campaigne, in Ottawa, Illinois, when I asked him if he golfed. He said something like: "Are you kidding? I'm a conservative, not a Republican."

But back to Viguerie's expression of same. With a couple of hours' research I was able to find a mailer from an organization that was then one of his direct-mail clients that said "babies are being harvested and sold on the black market by Planned Parenthood."

Why not cut corners like this, if you believe you are defending the unchanging ground of our changing experience?

[...]

This part of my talk, I imagine, is long after the point a constitutive operation of conservative intellectual work has clicked on in your minds: the part where you argue that malefactor A or B or C, or transgression X or Y or Z, is not "really" conservative. In conservative intellectual discourse there is no such thing as a bad conservative. Conservatism never fails. It is only failed. One guy will get up, at a conference like this, and say conservatism, in its proper conception, is 33 1/3 percent this, 33 1/3 percent that, 33 1/3 percent the other thing. Another rises to declaim that the proper admixture is 50-25-25.

It is, among other things, a strategy of psychological innocence. If the first guy turns out to be someone you would not care to be associated with, you have an easy, Platonic, out: with his crazy 33-33-33 formula--well, maybe he's a Republican. Or a neocon, or a paleo. He's certainly not a conservative. The structure holds whether it's William Kristol calling out Pat Buchanan, or Pat Buchanan calling out William Kristol.

Norquist, Weyrich and Keene (not Barr, who I think might be a principled libertarian) are all keepers of the flame. Their job is to maintain "Conservatism" the brand, the movement, the value. The Republican party is their beloved vessel, not their cause.

I doubt that anyone is suggesting that Grover Norquist is thinking of leaving the Republican coalition over this. He's thinking ahead to the moment when it is clear that Bushism and DeLayism are so tainted that they will make "conservatism" look bad. That is when they will be revealed to have not been true blue in the first place. In fact they will have been traitors to the movement. Only "real conservatives" like Norquist and Weyrich and Keene can be counted upon to be pure keepers of the flame. Or so they say.

Garance points out that these "Patriots for Checks and Balances" aren't actually doing anything, just sending out press releases. This is par for the course. They aren't going to actually work to undercut the Republican Party. The party is one of their assets. What they are most concerned with is maintaining the value of their brand and that requires constant vigilance. Grover and his conservative "leave us alone coalition" aren't worth much if they sign on blindly to illegal wiretapping, are they?

None of this means that Democrats could still not deftly exploit this for our own purposes. But that's another story.



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digby 1/19/2006 03:45:00 PM |

 
Innoculation

by digby


Glenn Greenwald tells me that KellyAnn "I wish I were as cute as Ann Coulter" Conway and her little dog George have started a blog in which they are recapping the Cinton scandals for the folks. Glenn's post does a smashing job of reminding us of the professional character assasins of the GOP, many of whom have been woefully underemployed since the GOP owns everything in town:

Examining filth-peddling relics of the 1990s like the Conways is not merely an exercise in masochistic nostalgia. As their new National Review blog demonstrates, lowly character smears are a quite current and integral weapon in the Republican arsenal. These gutter tactics and their vile purveyors haven’t gone anywhere. And it is beyond doubt that all of the Clinton smears which lowered our political discourse to the primordial level, along with many new ones, are being kept warming in the oven just in case Hillary gets anywhere near a Presidential election.

But the real reason to remember this despicable filth-peddling is because these same Republicans are being permitted by an amnesic and manipulated media to parade themselves around as the Paragons of Civility and Dignity. That Republicans can deliver dignity lectures to the media, which then dutifully reports them with a concerned face while repeatedly showing video of Sam Alito’s wife crying, is quite compelling evidence of just how wretchedly dishonest Republican moralizing is and, worse, how utterly dysfunctional our media has become.

There's another reason they have trotted out the bitch-twins, as well. They are desperate to keep the public believing that the "culture of corruption" is bi-partisan. I have no doubt in my mind that Mighty Wurlitzer has employed Kellyanne and George for the specific purpose of recycling smears from the 90's (that can be helpfully passed on to the right wing blogs, talk radio and TV pundits) in order to "remind" people how corrupt Democrat Clinton was. Look for the Conway crap to show up in the blogosphere before long and soon in the major media. We should be prepared for it.

In some ways, the Clinton scandals of the 90's can be seen as innoculation for the Republican corruption that was rampant, even then. We all know that the charges against the Clinton administration were bullshit, but the non-stop pounding for eight long years is one of the main reason why the public sees corruption as bi=partisan in Washington today. They've been hearing about scandals pretty much non-stop for the last 14 years. I don't believe this is an accident. These people are very good at this stuff. And we are very bad at seeing it coming.


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digby 1/19/2006 12:43:00 PM |

 
Tweety And His Hot Man Love

by digby

So I see from Atrios that Tweety was on Imus and the two of them shared a few manly laughs about "Brokeback Mountain" and praising the psychotic Michael Savage.

MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—

IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?

MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—

IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.

MATTHEWS: Yeah—

IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—

MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.

IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...

How droll.

Oopsie. Somebody's glass house has a big fat crack in it. Let's take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

MATTHEWS: Let's go to this sub--what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo of in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I've got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on--onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I'm not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn't do it for me personally, especially not when he's in a suit, but he arrived there...

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: ...he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn't he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa--I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just--I can't think of any, any stunt by the White House--and I'll call it a stunt--that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It's not a stunt if it works and it's real. And I felt the faces of those guys--I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of--the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he--you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That's what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you're watching that from--say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We're coming.' Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not--we've allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it's time to tell them, you know what, `You're going to be help accountable for this.'

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

After the segment, Chris handed out cigarettes and ice cold bottles of evian to the panel. But they had rolled over and gone to sleep.

If there has ever been a more embarrassing display of repressed erotic longing on national television, I haven't seen it. Oh, wait:

From May 13, 2003, Via The Daily Howler:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?

LIDDY: Well, I-- in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know --- and I've worn those because I parachute --- and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count --- they're all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

"You know, it's funny. I shouldn't talk about ratings," he [Matthews] said, also gazing at Bush's crotch. "But last night was a riot because ... these pictures were showing last night, and everybody's tuning in to see these pictures again."

I have no doubt that Chris watched those pictures again and again and again --- until his hand got tired.

If ever there was a closet case, he is it. He routinely makes a fool of himself on national television, literally drooling over what he thinks are big masculine Republican men.

Remember this one?

MATTHEWS: Will the most powerful vice president in American history become the man who ramrods the rise of the new South and with it a legacy that could promote a draft for a Cheney presidency? The question is a big one. Is Cheney charging down South to serve as President Bush‘s executioner or full-fledged viceroy?

Oooh lala. The question is HUGE! Ramrodding the rise of the new south, indeed.

I suppose we should have some sympathy for Tweety. He probably felt all hot and confused and funny down there when he was talking to Don Imus. After all, Imus wears a cowboy hat and you know what those masculine symbols do to old Chris. I'm sure when he snuck in to see Brokeback Mountain in the suburbs last week, he was smart enough to carry a raincoat.



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digby 1/19/2006 11:47:00 AM |

 
Muddling The Message

by digby


I am a big fan of Harry Reid. I thought his op-ed the other day was masterful.

But watching him last night on the Lehrer News Hour made me realize that we are going to fail in making it clear that the Republicans are a criminal enterprise. In fact, we are probably going to get blamed for it. In the end, I wouldn"t be surprised if the Republicans don't succeed in becoming the John McCain "party of reform" and we actually lose seats.

Here's why:

JIM LEHRER: And now to the minority leader of the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. Senator welcome.

SEN. HARRY REID: My pleasure.

JIM LEHRER: First, why has it taken so long for everybody to move on lobbying reform?

SEN. HARRY REID: Jim, it's taken a while for this culture of corruption the Republicans have developed to come into fore. The Republican leader in the House, four ethics convictions in one year, money laundering indictment, the Republican leader being investigated criminally and civilly, we have for the first time in 135 years, someone who works in the White House indicted. Safavian, who is in charge of government contracting, the president appointed him, hundreds of billions of dollars a year, led away in handcuffs because of sweetheart deals he had with Jack Abramoff and then you have, as has been talked about earlier in your program, the K Street Project.

Think about this, the "pay and play" program. You as a lobbyist, you pay, and we Republicans will take care of you legislatively. That's why it hasn't come to the forefront. The arrogance of power, the culture of corruption has not come to the attention of the American public as it has the past several months.

JIM LEHRER: But it's been going on for years and years-- the very things that you and the Republicans agree on to correct have been legal up till now. In other words, these are not the things that Abramoff is charged with or any of these people that you say are going off in handcuffs, right?

SEN. HARRY REID: Yes. But of course this culture of corruption, we need to change the rules and regulations that you talked about here on the program, but people are taking millions of dollars defense contractors, as one Republican was doing, and is now -- pled guilty. The stuff that DeLay has done, you don't need to change the rules.

JIM LEHRER: That's my point exactly.

SEN. HARRY REID: The point is, he has already been in trouble. But I think it has shone a bright light on the abuses that have taken place that need to be corrected. And that's what we want to do. We want to shine a bright light and make things better than what they were. We don't think there should be a pay or play system. We don't think this K Street Project, which they have worked on for a long time to get up to snuff -- it was done with Abramoff; it was done with Norquist; and it was done with Ralph Reed. These are people who are in the political circles are famous for being infamous.

JIM LEHRER: But the specifics that are involved in the current situation aside, the practices of lobbyists taking people -- financing trips abroad, taking people to meals -- all of that -- free airplane travel -- all that sort of stuff has been common practice. Democrats and Republicans have been doing that for years, correct?

SEN. HARRY REID: Well, Jim, listen. The Jack Abramoff situation where he's flying people around to golf tournaments in Scotland and other places, I don't think that has been -- if it has, I don't know about it, but if it has been, it's time to stop.

I just know that this is another one of the things that I didn't take the time to mention that has been so abused, and the American people now see this.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. But members of Congress did not see it until the Jack Abramoff case came along?

SEN. HARRY REID: Of course, we as -- friends have helped us; there have been criminal indictments. I've listed those.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

SEN. HARRY REID: We have had ethics committees who have met, and the Democratic -- I'm sorry, pardon me. Strike that from the record, the Republican leader in the House four times convicted of ethics violations. I mean, we've had a little help bringing this to the attention of the American public.

JIM LEHRER: What I'm getting at, I think, Senator, is it's a little bit of an "oh, I'm so shocked" element to this that a lot of people are having trouble understanding because this kind of practice of lobbyists trying to influence legislation is part and parcel of the system.

SEN. HARRY REID: Jim, your question is very valid, and I'm sorry I didn't get to the answer sooner. Here's the situation we have though. We are in the minority. There's an arrogance of power here in Washington that is untoward. Republican White House, Republican House, Republican Senate. Seven of the nine members of the Supreme Court have been appointed by Republican presidents.

You know, you can't get things done unless there's a bipartisan movement, and I would hope that with this scandal, this Republican-driven scandal, we'll get a few Republicans of goodwill to step forward and say we should have done this a long time ago, but we didn't; let's do it now. And that's what I hope happens.

By coming up with this "reform package" we have managed to make people think this is about reforming arcane congressional rules when it is actually about a bribery and protection racket. And that is exactly what the Republicans wanted us to do. After all, if its only a matter of changing a few rules, they can do that themselves and just move along. Reid starts out with all the right rhetoric and then ends up calling for bipartisanship, for heaven's sake.

The problem is that Democrats listen to conventional wisdom and bad strategists who all insist that you have to have a positive agenda or people will hate you. This is because when they do focus groups people always say they hate all the negativity and they just want politicians to tell us what they are going to do to fix things.

That is bullshit. People say that because they think that's what they are supposed to say. They don't know how much they are being manipulated by all the negative images and so they simply say they don't like them. It doesn't mean they don't respond to them. It's subliminal. The Democratic party needs to hire a top psychologist to explain this to them --- or find a politician who has good instincts.

Here we have Harry Reid trying very hard to make Jim Lehrer see that this is a Republican scandal. But because he is focused on "lobbying reform" --- just like the Republicans are --- Jim doesn't see the beef. Everybody knows that politicans and lobbyists are in each others' pockets. This seems to him like a tempest in a teapot. (Or he's pretending it does. Lehrer knows very well what the real story is.)

The problem is that Reid and the rest of the Democratic party believed that they had to "offer a solution" because otherwise the public would think they are just being negative. (And yes, the punditocrisy would have been all over them for not offering any solutions, just like they always are.) But had they simply said, "this is way beyond lobbying reform. Republicans like Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have been running a criminal enterprise out of the US congress," they could have framed the argument as Republican criminality instead of systemic problems that can be fixed with a few changes in the rules.

If Lehrer said, "isn't this just the way business is done in Washington?" Reid could shoot back, "sorry Jim, this K Street project's first order of business was to require the lobbying firms to hire only Republicans, many of them staffers from Tom deLay's office, to pay off congressmen. The Democratic party is not perfect but we don't operate like the mob." If Lehrer had said, "well what do you propose to do about it?" Reid should have said, "I'll let the criminal justice system do its work, and it has its work cut out for it. But it's clear that we badly need checks and balances back in our system. Putting this country solely in the hands of the Republican Party has been a disaster."

You could sense Reid's frustration in the interview. He made many great points but they were all muddled by this stupid "reform plan" that Lehrer was obsessed with. And that's because the Democrats had stepped on their own most potent argument --- the Republicans are in charge and they are running a corrupt criminal enterprise out of the House and Senate. Even a Republican Justice department could not avert its eyes from the rampant criminality. Duke, DeLay, Abramoff, Rove, Libby, Safavian.... all of them and many more are either under indictment, pled guilty or remain under suspicion. This is not business as usual and the solution isn't another package of rules changes about who buys the pizza.

I had grave doubts when I heard about the Democratic leadership's plan to offer competing lobbying reform packages and keep harping on the "culture of corruption." I knew the message was going to get muddled. We simply need to understand that being "negative" is a perfectly acceptable way of communicating .... about criminal behavior. (Duh.)

We cannot, as usual, depend on the press because they are incompetent. As this piece by Eric Boehlert points out, the press is "afraid of facts."

The Democrats needed to Keep It Simple Stupid and do nothing but pound away that this was a Republican Criminal Enterprise. They should have swept aside all the DC punditry and stayed on message until they could see that they had traction. Only then should they have started thinking about a positive message --- preferably a lot closer to the election, once people had absorbed the Republicans are crooks meme and were looking at the Democrats with a more open mind. Instead we just threw it all on the table in one big pile of mush.

Big mistake. Huge.


Read or watch the whole interview. It will make you hang your head in despair. I like Reid, but this was just terrible. The caucus needs to rethink both its message and its strategy.


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digby 1/19/2006 09:26:00 AM |

 
Backing Up Murtha

by digby


This op-ed in the NY Times from yesterday by James Webb, Reagan's secretary of the Navy, in which he defends John Murtha against the latest swift boat smears, is a must read. I had occasion to bring this up with some Republican veterans recently and they were uncomfortable with the implications. Unlike Kerry, who they all agreed had joined up purely to advance his political career and was a total phony, Murtha isn't so easy to peg. And when I asked if it was reasonable that every single Bush critic who is a veteran is either lying about his war record or crazy, much hemming and hawing ensued. And when I questioned their medals, they got angry.

At some point the military itself is going to have to defend itself against these attacks. Every time these swift boat assholes do this they call into question every medal that's been awarded. If all these public figures could get away with this it's only logical to assume that the military hands out a great many improper medals. After all, they couldn't have known at the time that these particular men would someday be politicians. This would have to be a systemic problem.

Webb cautions about its effect on the military:

... in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

[...]

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

The Carpetbagger adds:

On a related note, still no word from the White House on whether the president is willing to denounce this baseless attack on a man Bush recently described as "a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States Congressman." Scott McClellan wasn't asked about it at yesterday's briefing. Maybe today the White House can do the honorable thing and publicly reject this nonsense.

I'm not holding my breath.


Via Jane over a Firedoglake, I see that a message board has sprung up for people to register their wish that Murtha give the Democratic response at the State of the Union. I think it is a teriffic idea and would be an excellent way to show these swift boating scumbags that the Democratic Party will not be intimidated by their smears.

Murtha is just terrific on TV. His grizzled countenance, his obvious sincerity and straighforwardness, his credibility make him the perfect person to speak for the Democrats on Iraq. Even my wingnut Dad has to say "well, he's got a point." After listening to the callow preznit spew out words he doesn't even know the meaning of for an hour, Murtha would be like a breath of fresh air.

And Democrats need, right now with no further ado, to show this brave man that we have his back. By Democrats I mean both the rank and file and the leadership. If they can get away with swiftboating John Murtha, then there is simply no use in any Democrats bothering to speak the truth on national security. Everybody just get ready to fight useless wars whenever these bedwetters have a scary nightmare or need to prove their manhoods.

Here are a the e-mail addresses of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid

sf.nancy@mail.house.gov
Or here is her web page form you can use.

Reid only has the web page form.

If there was ever a time to show these Republican thugs that they can't just swift boat every Democratic veteran and get away with it, it's now.



Update: Never mind

National Democratic leaders today will ask Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) to deliver the party’s response to the president’s State of the Union address, believing that the new governor can best deliver their 2006 message of inclusiveness, American values and high ethical standards.

Feel the magic.
digby 1/19/2006 08:00:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

 
Foiled Again

by digby


Via Kevin, I see that the Republicans have come up with a scathing attack on Harry Reid that is sure to blow the lid off the Democrats' call for reform:

We are shocked, shocked to see that politics is going on here!

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digby 1/18/2006 04:54:00 PM |

 
Purge The Bushmen

by digby


It appears that the "movement conservatives" are getting ready to cut Dubya loose. (They usually do this when any Republican becomes unpopular, so as not to sully the brand.)

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

Good for them and welcome to the fight for civil liberties. But lest anyone think that these people have some core of values that make them "different" lets not forget this from March 30, 2005:

Fellow Conservatives,

I'm writing to ask you to join me in doing something effective against the leftist organizations and liberal media who have launched truly vicious attacks on U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

They attack Tom DeLay for just one reason: Congressman DeLay is one of the most effective fighters for conservative principles.

Time and again, Majority Leader Tom DeLay manages the strategy which wins for conservatives in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

I know personally that Tom Delay is almost obsessively careful to get good legal advice before he takes any step which might conceivably be questioned under the law or suspected as an infraction of House rules. None of the leftist uproar has contains any evidence he has done anything illegal or violated the House rules.

The only fire under all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man.

Conservatives must respond with a richly deserved attack on leftist groups and liberal media trying to lynch Tom DeLay. That's why I'm writing to you.

And you and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay.

Media and organizations who would let left wingers get away with almost anything are trying to generate a feeding frenzy against DeLay. No matter what he does, they attack him. Not content to make mountains out of mole hills, they invent mole hills to make mountains.

If Tom DeLay preferred Fords to Chevrolets or Chevrolets to Fords, the leftists would gin up reasons to attack his preference either way.

Unscrupulous leftist media will huff and puff to breath life into any trivial or phony leftist complaint against any act of any powerful conservative, no matter how upright and innocent. And they'll keep doing this until a public reaction begins to embarrass and damage those spreading the propaganda.

You've seen this all your life.

These guys appear to have seen the writing on the wall since then. It's time to start the purges. (For more on this, see Rick Perlstein's brave foray into the belly of the beast.)

The movement conservatives are not really very comfortable on the inside. Witness their absurd appeal above. It's all about the "permanent revolution" for them, even to the extent that they could ridiculously defend Tom deLay as innocent, upright and under seige from powerful liberal factions less than a year ago. They seem to have realized that it won't work any longer and it's time to begin the conservative purification rituals if they want to keep the revolution alive.

Not that any of that it makes any difference for these purposes. These guys make the illegal wiretap case easier to get past the media's knee-jerk dismissal of all things Democratic so, viva la revolucion!



Update: Rick Perlstein seems to have caused quite a ruckus by posting the press release over on Free Republic. They are very confused. Here's a sample:

Hillary will do this stuff anyway. It's not the present NSA intercepts you have to fear, they were checked and vetted even through the opposition, and no one balked at the program.

Like stated earlier, we don't need to commit suicide to keep our rights.

Hillary et al are corrupt, and they will do anything (and already have) to maintain their power base. She and her ilk are the dangerous ones. Gore and these so-called conservatives are way off base.

------

But Barr won't be complaining when or if it happens anymore than the NY Times will be upset about past or future Clinton spying on their enemies, i.e., conservatives, right wingers, political enemies as defined by the Clintons, meaning any Republican, because Barr will not be drawing a paycheck anymore if he does. It's real simple even if many of you are unable to grasp the facts - the Clintons were doing this before the Patriot Act, before Bush was elected, and they will do it again if given the chance and to hell with the constitution or any law passed or not passed by congress because NONE OF IT APPLIES TO DEMOCRATS or in those immortal words of Al Gore, "There is no controlling legal authority."

You wonder why Bush is able to get away with speaking gibberish?

But then, there's this:

"So you are okay with warrant less wiretaps? I'm not"

Nor am I.

And I’m pretty astounded by the number of conservatives who are willing to surrender unlimited power to whoever happens to sit in the oval office for the duration of a possibly endless war (can you imagine a time when there is no one who wishes the US harm?)

My wife's desk is in the Sears Tower - now the tallest building in the country, and presumably short listed by possible terrorists – so I’ve though about this a lot. And my conclusion that in terms of what really matters long term ultimately she's safer there – at least as long as this is a country where there are judicial checks on the legal powers of the executive branch - than in a country where the Maximum Leader makes whatever rules she or she prefers as tribal War-Lord.

At the moment, it’s often hard to get this point across – some people are willing go to just about any length to avoid facing the question of possible abuse of such power.

But IMO when you see people such as Paul Weyrich being derided as liberal lap-dogs, you know the argument is off the rails - the problem with this sort of approach is that you have dismiss the opinions of ever larger numbers of thoughtful conservative commentators; if they are elected they are RINOs, if unelected, “who do they represent?”, if current members of government they are said to be “disloyal”, if they have left government service they are attacked as “traitors”, and so on.

Still, at the moment I’m in the minority, and can only hope that a majority of voters come to their senses before such power is vested in someone really inimical to our traditional freedoms.

I suspect Rove is beginning to feel that atomic wedgie right about now.

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digby 1/18/2006 12:14:00 PM |

 
Crying Wolf

by digby

This article from First Post says it all:

Among British neo-con commentators and policy wonks - the Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld right-wing fan club centred on the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail - anger over the West's vacillation in the face of Iranian intransigence is running especially high.

[...]

But before they blame everybody else for letting him [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Iranian president] get away with it, the armchair warriors of the right should ask themselves why he seems able to defy the world with such apparent impunity. The invasion of Iraq, the neo-cons' favourite cause, is one obvious answer. With the US bogged down in Iraq, Tehran can be sure that the American public is in no mood for another Middle Eastern adventure.

Should that show signs of changing, Tehran can up the pressure on the coalition whenever it wants. Ironically, the Iraqi government, installed by the Americans, is dominated by pro-Iranian Shias. So are many of the militias that run large parts of the country.

So pervasive is Iranian influence in Iraq post-Saddam that, when the US and its allies eventually withdraw, Iran is likely to turnout to be the principal beneficiary of the invasion.

The Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the limitations of American power in the Middle East, for all the world to see. If the neo-cons had only bothered to make serious plans for the reconstruction of the country, Tehran might now take Western sabre-rattling rather more seriously.

Then, as always, there is the question of oil. Iran is still the world's fourth largest exporter of the black gold; and at a time when supplies are tight, that gives it obvious leverage. In addition, the majority of all Middle Eastern oil exports have to pass down the Gulf and through the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians effectively control.

If need be, Tehran could have the world literally over a barrel. Experts have been warning about the West's dangerous dependence on imported oil for years. But the neo-cons have consistently pooh-poohed their warnings and opposed any attempt to curb America's profligate use of energy.

The other day, Jack Straw said the Iranians were "pushing their luck" by pressing ahead with uranium enrichment. Given the neo-cons' disastrous record of bad judgment, incompetence and worse, the Iranians must think that they are pushing at an open door.

The neo-cons told us that Saddam had to be removed because he had weapons of mass destruction, when in fact he had none. Now that we find ourselves up against a dangerous country that really is about to get WMD, we discover the neo-cons have already squandered our power and credibility in Iraq.

I have written before about how powerful countries must maintain their mystique or risk having crazy people make mistakes. Once it shows that its military is not omnipotent and that its intelligence is crude, it emboldens madmen to play their cards. It's a stupid, unnecessary error to be proven impotent by lying so boldly and being wrong so grandly, which is what we did with our misbegotten invasion of Iraq. Powerful nations should only go to war when they either have no other choice or are virtually assured of success in concert with a powerful coalition of allies. Screwing up this way in the nuclear age is especially dangerous.

We toppled Saddam, but we exposed the fact that our greatest asset --- the belief that we have super, high tech intelligence and military capabilities beyond anyone's imaginings--- was a sham. And our poor planning proved to everyone that the military braintrust running this country can at times be so wrong that it can render our superior military and economic prowess irrelevant.


And the neocons know it. Here's Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman suddenly turned into Ken "Kumbaya" Adelman on Wolf Blitzer last Monday. And here I thought we were fighting World war IV:

BLITZER: ... Joining us now to talk about the possible showdown [with Iran]is Ken Adelman. He's a former deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, former director of the U.S. arms control and disarmament agency.

[...]

BLITZER: Is there a military option, a viable U.S. military option to go ahead and knock out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

ADELMAN: I don't think we should ever take it off the table, but when you look at the practicalities of knowing what they are doing, knowing where they are doing it and knowing that you can get to those targets, it seems very improbable to me.

[...]

ADELMAN: ...I hope there is a regime change in Iran. And then it can come about not by military action but that can come about by subverting the regime right there, using the methods of Martin Luther King to tell you the truth, civil disobedience, peaceful, nonviolent techniques.

BLITZER: Well, should the U.S. and its allies be engaged in covert action to try to result in this regime change?

ADELMAN: Sure, we should have been doing that for the last 30 years. And that's part of the spread of freedom the president talks about, but we haven't done enough on that.

And what you can do, very quickly is take the playbook from Poland, from our approach to Poland in the early 1980's with -- from the Carter administration, and then especially the Reagan administration, dealing with solidarity, and just update it. Instead of using money to give for machines, use the Internet. Now instead of walkie-talkies, you now use cell phones. But what you want to do is to help Democratic forces.

BLITZER: So to encourage the dissidents in Iran right now to overthrow the regime.

ADELMAN: Absolutely.

BLITZER: And you think that is a doable option?

ADELMAN: Well, it's certainly doable to give them support, more support than we are doing. Whether they succeed or not, you just don't know, but one thing you can do is to model it after what you had in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, what you've had in peaceful demonstrations around the world.

BLITZER: Well, I've heard, you know, that scenario, but the U.S. has been trying to do that in Cuba, for example, for decades unsuccessfully to get rid of Fidel Castro. North Korea, the U.S. has been trying to do that for decades to get rid of Kim Jong-il unsuccessfully.

Yes, there was a successful end of the Cold War and all the change, the Democratic reforms in central and eastern Europe, but is Iran, in that model?

ADELMAN: No, Iran is a much more right model. It's more like Poland is at the outset of solidarity. Why is that? Because what we know is the majority of people in Iran, the vast majority, can't stand these corrupt and really awful repressive laws.

And so you have the conditions, it's a far more educated population. It's a far more open population. It's a far more open country than others. So that you can really go in there and these kind of techniques that you had in Poland, and you in the Ukraine, and you had in Georgia.

I mean, this is a proven technique. Now, it's not proven everywhere, and it doesn't work everywhere, but it's not going to work unless you help it.

BLITZER: I've heard top administration officials say that the goals should be to delay Iran's development of a nuclear weapon for as long as possible, with the hope that perhaps in the interim there could be regime change.

ADELMAN: That's fine. I would agree with that.

BLITZER: The question is how long is it going to take them to develop, to get beyond the point of no return?

ADELMAN: I mean, we have been by and large very successful since the early 60's in non-proliferation. You have to worry now about India and Pakistan leading the way, you have to worry about Iran and North Korea on the verge.

But overall, it's remarkable, Wolf, when you think of a 1963, I believe it was, Kennedy -- President Kennedy gave a speech in which he predicted by the 1970s, that there would be 25 nuclear nations, nuclear-armed nations around the world.

Well, you know, in the 1970s there were probably seven or eight. There weren't 25. And here we are in 2006, and there are not 25. So we've done much better than expected, and I think if we do Iran right -- really concentrate on regime change through nonviolent means, through peaceful means, through Martin Luther King means -- I think we can make some progress.

More cartoon history. Last time we were re-creating WWII, this time we are re-creating Selma and Solidarity. (And I can't help but be amused that Adelman and his pals, who only two years ago said that the non-proliferation regime of the last 40 years was liberal mollycoddling, are now wrapping themselves in it. Chutzpah, thy name is neocon.)

Immature political thinkers that they are, the Bush administration and the neo-con cabal had been aching to prove America's manhood (and their own) to the world for so long that they prematurely ejaculated. Now we are spent, at least for a time, and the whole world knows it.



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digby 1/18/2006 09:59:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 
House Slave

by digby


Tweety is gleefully flogging Hillary's "plantation" comment like he just discovered his little winkie.

There has bever been as great a GOP tool as Tweety Matthews. He gets a little bit uppity once in a while so they force feed him some bullshit which he happily regurgitates with gusto so as not make somebody important in the Republican establishment really, really mad at him. (When that happens, as we know, Monsignor Tim reports him to the Big Boys.)

Atrios has put this link up explaining why the Republican Magnolias having the vapors over this plantation comment is a steaming pile of fetid, GOP talking points.

I don't know if any of you would like to tell Chris Matthews how to use Google, but of you would, here's his e-mail: hardball@msnbc.com

Maybe he or his staff would like to look over those links and then explain why he and his Republican pals thinks she's so out of line.


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digby 1/17/2006 02:03:00 PM |

 
What's Wrong With This Picture?

by digby

Speaking of CNN, I don't know what to make of this, but it's interesting. I mentioned yesterday that Bill Schneider said this on the Situation Room yesterday. It was quite soon after gore's speech so I figured he would get an earful from the powers that be and we'd hear the last of it. But today he pretty much repeated it verbatim. To my ears, it sounds non-judgmental veering on positive. Schneider isn't usually a very reliable observer, but this strikes me as pretty fair and pretty provocative toward the Bushies. Am I wrong?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Wolf, Democrats heard a voice from the past today, but it's a voice that may be charting a course for the party's future.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice over): Who speaks for Democrats these days? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are minority leaders. Howard Dean's job is to represent the broad range of Democratic views. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards may run for president, and they are pretty cautious. So is Bill Clinton who is invested in his wife's political future. Enter Al Gore, giving full throated voice to the outrage that many Democrats feel over the administration's wiretapping of American citizens.

GORE: ... What many believe are serious violations of law by the president.

SCHNEIDER: Violations of law? Exactly.

GORE: ... Into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the president.

SCHNEIDER: That may be grounds for impeachment. Gore never used the I word, but he did call for ...

GORE: ...The appointment of the special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by the warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the president.

SCHNEIDER: A special counsel would have to be appointed by the attorney general, who works for President Bush, and how realistic is it to think about impeachment when Congress is controlled by Republicans? Gore's answer?

GORE: It should be a political issue in any race, regardless of party, section of the country, house of Congress, for anyone who opposes the appointment of a special counsel.

SCHNEIDER: Gore is telling Democrats, let's make this our issue.

Just the fact that Schneider brings up Impeachment, which Gore did not, seems to me like a good thing. I must be missing something.



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digby 1/17/2006 01:06:00 PM |

 
Down On The Plantation

by digby

I'm glad to see that CNN has booked two African-Americans agreeing that Hillary Clinton was wrong to compare the Republican House to a plantation, so that's good. The poncy Republican is calling for her to resign but the other thinks that probably isn't necessary. We're getting fair and balanced coverage on this issue.

Apparently, this is an outrageous thing to say. I wonder if anybody thought this article by Joseph Farrah of World Net Daily called "Racism on Dem plantation" (available today only on Google cache for some reason)was out of line. Or how about this one on on Townhall by Cal Thomas who refers to "the Democratic Party and its plantation mentality." And then there's Rush Limbaugh who's been know to refer to anybody who's in the leadership position in the Democratic Party" as "pimps" who attempt to deceive black people into remaining on the "Democratic plantation."

Here's the thing. When the Republicans talk about the "plantation" they are specifically talking about race, claiming that the Democrats are using (presumably stupid) Black Americans against their own interests.

Hillary was talking about the fact that the Republican leadership treats their own caucus (not to mention the minority) like they are slaves.

Now which of those views is racist?

Yet, the Republicans are all over this and they will probably end up getting her to apologise because Democratic politicians have never learned how to respond to being called racist. Until they do, the Republicans are going to use this ridiculous epistemic relativism against them.


Update: As a couple of commenters remind me, perhaps the most famous of these plantation comments cane from none other than Newtie:

"...on the eve of his great electoral victory ten years ago, the speaker-to-be told a reporter he was leading a "slave rebellion" against the Democrats who "run the plantation."

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digby 1/17/2006 12:35:00 PM |

 
The Whole Schmear

by digby

I agree with Kevin that the ineffectiveness of the illegal wiretap program is not the most important issue. The president having unlimited power, even to the extent that he is not bound by the law or the constitution, is the fundamental threat and this wiretap program is just the most recent example of it.

However, this revelation that the illegal wiretapping is a waste of time does refute the most important argument of the other side. That argument is best articulated by today's winner of the Golden Globe for best tease, Trent Lott:

"I don't agree with the libertarians," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that."

If the details show that the FBI is wasting valuable man hours chasing its tail, it's not exactly giving you "your security" is it? Not only is the president breaking the law, he's wasting the valuable time and energy of the FBI which could be spent preventing terrorism and catching criminals. Why on earth would that make a frightened little bedwetter like Trent Lott feel safer? It should scare the lil' guy to death.


Josh Marshall has an insightful post up today about Al Gore's speech yesterday that speaks to how these issues all work together.

The point Gore makes in his speech that I think is most key is the connection between authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence.

The president's critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it's often treated as, well ... he's power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this.

The basic structure of our Republic really is in danger from a president who militantly insists that he is above the law.

The illegal wiretap scandal is a perfect example of this --- authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence. (No wonder they call it "the president's program.") When you add in endemic corruption, you have a recipe for a constitutional crisis and a political tyranny --- which is exactly what they have been cooking up.

It's awfully hard to respect people who are so frightened they don't know they are helping the terrorists to achieve what the terrorists couldn't achieve on their own.


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digby 1/17/2006 09:59:00 AM |

 
Trent's Slot Safe

by digby


Incumbent Senator Trent Lott called a press conference to announce whether he's running again. He'd hinted that he might not, so the suspense was palpable. A Democrat, after all, was favored to win if Lott didn't run. Would he or wouldn't he? What was going to happen? Oooh, it's the kind of thing that sends chills down your spine. After about ten minutes of stirring oratory celebrating all the fine people he's worked with over the years, he soulfully looks into the camera, nods his head to his staff and then announces ... he's running again.

And now Ed Henry talking about how this sets the stage for him to make a great comeback and win back the majority leader job! Is Trent awesome or what?

None of the CNN anchors even have the decency to look sheepish about being played for morons. But then, why would they?



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digby 1/17/2006 09:08:00 AM |

Monday, January 16, 2006

 
Arlen's Spectacle

by digby

Isn't this special?

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Brownback said he was heartened by the hearings. He argued that in the 2004 elections, Republicans had showed Democrats that "we can run on abortion rights and win the public," adding, "they are trimming their sails some on it."

The apparent outcome of the Alito nomination may call into question a political assessment that Mr. Specter made after those elections. Mr. Specter said at the time that it was highly unlikely that a Supreme Court nominee who would change abortion rights precedents could be confirmed, in part because of the determined opposition of the Democrats. Some leading Democratic senators publicly agreed.

Conservatives, upset at Mr. Specter's comment, almost unseated him from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.

After the hearings ended on Friday, Mr. Specter said he would vote for confirmation and declined to revisit his earlier comments. But he said it was impossible to know how Judge Alito might vote as a Supreme Court justice. He said abortion rights groups had also opposed Justice David Souter, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - all Republican nominees who have voted from the bench to uphold the core abortion rights precedents.

"There are weighty considerations involved in changing Roe v. Wade, very weighty considerations in modifying that principle and a woman's right to choose," Mr. Specter said.

This is why everyone should laugh in Arlen Specter's face when he says this:

A top US Republican senator on Sunday for the first time mentioned impeachment in connection with President George W Bush's authorisation of electronic surveillance inside the United States without a court warrant.

Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cautioned it was too early to draw any conclusions as his committee gears up for public hearings into the growing controversy early next month.

But in his appearance on ABC's "This Week" program, Specter insisted the Senate was not going to give the president what he called "a blank cheque."

When asked what could happen if lawmakers find Bush in violation of the law, Specter answered: "Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy ... under our society is to pay a political price."

He made it a point to clarify, however, that he was speaking theoretically and was "not suggesting remotely that there's any basis" for a presidential impeachment at this moment.

[...]

He added that the issue of wartime presidential powers was "a very knotty question" that "ought to be thoroughly examined."

Specter assured he was prepared to listen to the administration's explanations, but warned, "I'm going to wear my skepticism on my sleeve."

Uh huh. This man has run for years as a pro-choice Republican in a swing state. This is probably his last term. And he tossed abortion rights out the window without a second thought. This emerging narrative that Arlen is going to be tough on the administration on these wiretapping charges is total bullshit:

Gonzales said he had agreed with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, to testify in hearings on the controversial program that eavesdrops on U.S. phone calls and e-mails.

Gonzales said he would not discuss any operational details at the hearing and would only explain the legal justification.

The testimony will take place in Senate hearings that are expected to be held early next month.

It was unclear whether the judiciary committee would also hear testimony from senior intelligence officials such as the NSA director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, or Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the No. 2 U.S. intelligence official who ran the NSA when the eavesdropping program began.

"What we‘re thinking is that this is primarily the attorney general‘s show," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because plans for the hearing had not been finalized.

Yeah. Arlen's in charge allright.

Here's what's going to happen. The Republicans will carefully plan and coordinate their strategy. Guys like Jeff Sessions will be in charge of fear-mongering and ad hominem attacks on dissent. Huckleberry Graham will express grave concerns about liberty only to be convinced by the end of the hearing that the gravest threat to the nation is Democratic rudeness. Gonzales will then say this is nothing but a high tech illegal deportation across the Rio Grande. Sam Brownback will offer objections to abuse of presidential power but will concede that it is necessary since godless abortionist terrorists are trying to kill us all in our sleep. His wife will inexplicably start crying and run out of the room. Everyone will agree that Alberto Gonzales has been remarkably forthcoming. Arlen will concede that the constitution does indeed provide for a King.

The Democrats, meanwhile, will take a much needed week long vacation before the hearings. They'll meet up in the mens room just before they begin, to discuss a strategy. (Dianne will watch the door.) Kennedy will suggest that he attack Gonzales on presidential power and Shumer will snap that he's sick of Kennedy getting all the good attacks and insists that Kennedy takes that boring Unitary Executive bullshit this time. Biden will request that he lead the questioning which will make Pat Leahy tell him to go fuck himself. Joe will remind the whole group that he once had a phone call overheard in college so he's been the victim of warrantless wiretapping and can bring the personal touch to the hearings. Feinstein will ask, "what are these hearings about again?" In the end the Democrats will strongly object to Arlen's conclusions that the constitution provides for a King.

Senator Reid: I'm begging you, man. If there is any way you can move these hearings to another venue, please, please do it. I can't go through this again so soon.



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digby 1/16/2006 06:30:00 PM |

 
Civil Obedience

by digby


I can't tell you how moved I was by Bush's speech commemorating Martin Luther King today. Particularly this:

Bush told the crowd at the annual "Let Freedom Ring" performance that Congress must renew provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that are set to expire next year. The president had previously declined to support the renewal until last month, and the crowd erupted in applause when Bush insisted that it be renewed.

They applauded because he said it as if he had just crawled across the Edmund Pettus Bridge himself. Which was surprising since it was only a year ago that Bush told members of the NAACP that he was "unfamiliar" with the voting Rights Act, which I'm sure was true.

There really is nothing more sickening than seeing the right wing suck up on Martin Luther King Day after all the years they demonized him and how hard they fought to keep this day from beocming a national holiday.

Rick Perlstein writes in to remind me that back in the day some of our most revered conservative icons had a different way of looking at things:

Reagan after the King assassination:

it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

Strom Thurmond:

"We are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case."

Just in case it isn't clear, by "people choosing which laws they'd break" and "telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case," they referred to King's doctrine of civil disobedience.

That, in other words, King brought his own assassination upon himself.

I recall as a kid hearing a lot of that kind of talk. Civil disobedience and passive resistence were considered the work of the commies by many on the right. But then I'm sure they considered Henry David Thoreau a commie too, even if he didn't know it. It was his all-American idea of civil disobedience, after all, that went half way around the world and back again inspiring Ghandi and King and resulting in the liberation and conference of civil rights upon millions of people. You can't get any more commie than that. Anybody who espouses that kind of talk is just asking to be killed.



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digby 1/16/2006 03:00:00 PM |

 
Using Her Power For Good

by digby

Congratulations to Jane Hamsher and her readers for single handedly driving down the sales of Kato Beirne's latest atrocity. I'm pretty sure it qualifies her for sainthood.

Kato's book is just the latest in a long line of tough as nails Republican career women who make money writing books reassuring smug conservative housewives and their impotent husbands that they are better off being second class citizens. It's a racket that goes all the way back to the original beehived Republican icon, Phyllis Schlaffly.

Whenever I see Kato on television lecturing the public about real womanhood, I'm reminded of TBOGG's famous catch some years back featuring Kate and some hot wingnut chicks talkin' bout dick:

ERICA WALTER: Manliness has experienced a renaissance for two reasons: The Bush/Cheney administration has set the tone for the political culture. And 9/11, of course. Why did America fall in love with soldiers and firemen and traditional male occupations? Because we realized we’re at risk. The comeback of manliness is here to stay as long as national security is an issue.

[snip]

CHARLOTTE HAYS: The modern-day loss of respect for manliness is an aberration. Men and their virtues have always been prized. The great epics aren’t about women and their virtues. The post-9/11 love affair with police, firemen, and soldiers is a return of normal relations between men and women. Most people today never needed to be carried out of a burning building. But once they see 3,000 people that need to be rescued, they know it takes men.

O’BEIRNE: We were reminded on 9/11 and again during the military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that we depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe. Every single one of the dead firemen heroes on 9/11 were men. This was one group where liberals didn’t ask why there wasn’t a more pleasing gender balance. Because the Upper West Side is not fireproof. What happens in combat in some distant field is abstract to Upper West Side liberals, but they can understand the need to have strong, brave, reckless men in their fire department.

>WALTER: When it comes to role confusion among men themselves, though, I believe the damage of the ’60s and ’70s has persisted.
During my first pregnancy, I rode the Washington, D.C. subway every day. I was amazed at the number of men who didn’t offer me their seat, didn’t lift a finger for me. A Marine friend of mine, who is a normal, manly man, got so angry that he rode the subway with me, and in full cars pointedly asked men: “Would you please give up your seat for this young lady?” The request meant: “Will you do what you’re supposed to do?”

[snip]

O’BEIRNE: I don’t think there has to be a trade off. Men will behave however women demand they behave. I don’t spend time with male boors, so I don’t think most American men lack manners. British men are terribly mannerly, but they’re all wimps. I think well-raised American men have the ability to be thoroughly masculine and mannerly at the same time.

[snip]

O’BEIRNE: Anyone married with children appreciates why children need fathers. The typical mother of a second-grade boy is destroyed if he’s not invited to a certain birthday party. Mothers would wrap sons in cotton. It’s the fathers who instill the sense of risk-taking, of the stiff upper lip.

NAOMI SCHAEFER: But what about daughters? They often need to know how to keep a stiff upper lip, too. Whatever the problems with feminism, I guess I’m sort of glad that it all happened.

CHAREN: It would be wrong not to give feminism some credit for improving women’s place in the world. But I believe many of these changes would have happened organically anyway—with rising prosperity, labor-saving devices in the home, and widespread education. You didn’t need a bunch of bra-burners for that.

[snip]

...and a conversation among these women wouldn't be complete with mentioning....The Clenis™:

ROLLINS: What is your definition of virility? Does it have a role in political leadership?

WALTER: It’s a nebulous quality for a political leader. Bill Clinton was virile—in a very sleazy way. There’s also the sex appeal of someone like Don Rumsfeld. President Bush possesses this intangible something—you really saw it on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Testosterone and camaraderie—many people responded to it. In George W. Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated. Bill Clinton showed a lot of outward empathy and he was very articulate but I don’t think many of us would have trusted him with our daughters.

GAVORA: If virility equates with strength, then there is no question that Bill Clinton lacked it completely. Bush has shown that he has it. His willingness to go after terrorism root and branch despite the widespread opposition among our European allies and even some at home, and to withstand that pressure, is strength. Bill Clinton made surface gestures. He refused to go against the media, popular opinion, the pinstriped boys at the State Department, because he lacked that strength.

HAYS: The most masculine man I ever knew was my grandfather, who supported seven children and never failed to stand when a woman came into the room. Bill Clinton is virile, but he’s not masculine or mature. He never became a grown man.

O’BEIRNE: When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. There’s no contest between Clinton and Bush on masculinity. Bill Clinton couldn’t credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit.

ROLLINS: But why do so many American women love Bill Clinton?

SCHAEFER: You can learn a lot jumping rope with girls. It won’t make you sexually attractive, but it will make you a more effective, patient listener.

O’BEIRNE: Bill Clinton did understand, from the matriarchy he grew up in, how to appeal to women in that modern way.

HAYS: Clinton could feel your pain like one of your girlfriends. But he could never make a decision like Bush has had to make. He would still be trying to negotiate with the terrorists. The use of force, which until recently was passé, has come back. Clinton couldn’t use force except in a motel room.

Ok. I know that was unfair so soon after lunch, so I'll give you a moment to purge.

Are you ok now? Good.


Thank you Jane. Destroying her book sales on Amazon is a public service. You are a patriot and a credit to women everywhere.



Update: Kudos also to RenaRF for her superb rant that started the whole thing off.
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digby 1/16/2006 01:36:00 PM