Hullabaloo

Monday, February 27, 2006

 
Follies

by digby

Arthur Silber has written a very compelling series of posts featuring Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly" in several different contexts and it led me to go back and read it. It's an amazing analysis of a certain kind of willful governmental stupidity borne of hubris, mental laziness and bad judgment, and it's quite clear that we are seeing it being carried out right before our eyes. She defined "folly" this way:

To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. This is important, because all policy is determined by the mores of its age. "Nothing is more unfair," as an English historian has well said, "than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory." To avoid judging by present-day values, we must take the opinion of the time and investigate only those episodes whose injury to self-interest was recognized even by contemporaries.

Secondly a feasible alternative course of action must have been available. To remove the problem from personality, a third criterion must be that the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime. Misgovernment by a single sovereign or tyrant is too frequent and too individual to be worth a generalized inquiry. Collective government or a succession of rulers in the same office, as in the case of the Renaissance popes, raises a more significant problem.

Certainly, the first two criteria apply in spades. It's that last, that got my attention. In order for the current quagmire to be truly considered folly it must persist beyond any one political lifetime. In my view it already has.

Via Arthur again, here's Tuchman describing the thought processes of Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam:

Like Kennedy, Johnson believed that to lose South Vietnam would be to lose the White House. It would mean a destructive debate, he was later to say, that would "shatter my Presidency, kill my Administration, and damage our democracy." The loss of China, he said, which had led to the rise of Joe McCarthy, was "chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam." Robert Kennedy would be out in front telling everyone that "I was a coward, an unmanly man, a man without a spine." Worse, as soon as United States weakness was perceived by Moscow and Peking, they would move to "expand their control over the vacuum of power we would leave behind us ... and so would begin World War III." He was as sure of this "as nearly as anyone can be certain of anything." No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.

The purpose of the war was not gain or national defense. It would have been a simpler matter had it been either, for it is easier to finish a war by conquest of territory or by destruction of the enemy's forces and resources than it is to establish a principle by superior force and call it victory. America's purpose was to demonstrate her intent and her capacity to stop Communism in a framework of preserving an artificially created, inadequately motivated and not very viable state. The nature of the society we were upholding was an inherent flaw in the case, and despite all efforts at "nation-building," it did not essentially change.

In the illusion of omnipotence, American policy-makers took it for granted that on a given aim, especially in Asia, American will could be made to prevail. This assumption came from the can-do character of a self-created nation and from the sense of competence and superpower derived from World War II. If this was "arrogance of power," in Senator Fulbright's phrase, it was not so much the fatal hubris and over-extension that defeated Athens and Napoleon, and in the 20th century Germany and Japan, as it was failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques of even American goodwill. "Nation-building" was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had built a nation from Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work.

Wooden-headedness, the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts" habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared "no human force can any longer restrain." Washington could ignore General Leclerc's prediction that conquest would take half a million men and "Even then it could not be done." It could ignore the demonstration of elan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.

American refusal to take the enemy's grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam's history, traditions and national character: there were "no experts available," in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a "fourth-rate" Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.

Deja-vu-vu. I think it's pretty clear that history will judge Vietnam and Iraq as related wars, much as WWI and II were related, one growing out of the other. (The last election more or less dramatized it like a movie of the week.) The Republicans clung to their delusions for more than a quarter of a century believing that the Vietnam war was lost because it was sabotaged by the civilian leadership and the fecklessness of the American public. They nurtured their resentment through almost three decades, unappeased even by the fall of the Soviet Union. They, and many Democrats as well, never questioned their assumptions about the "illusion of American omnipotence" and they never understood that "problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques of even American goodwill." In fact, they carefully nurtured all those fancies and when they finally gained the power and opportunity, they immediately set about trying to prove their point --- again. The results are as predictable and as bad they were the first time.

I think that many of us over these last few years have felt as if we were living under water. Everything has seemed vaguely distorted. Communication and movement had an odd quality of density and resistance. We spoke out. We marched. We called our representatives. But it seemed as if our words sounded garbled and muffled in some way.

And there has also been a strong sense of inevitability. Certainly, since the impeachment the country has been steamrollered into a bizarre and aberrant political reality, never more than after 9/11 when the administration began agitating for this absurd, incomprehensible war. Despite its utter madness, I think most of us knew it was unstoppable. And it wasn't just us moonbats who knew it; it was the CIA and the state department. It was all of Europe and even Saddam himself. I suspect this is yet another feature of folly --- the sense among those who know better that there is no way to change the course of the event, that you are speaking a language nobody can understand.

Now, after we are dug in deeply with so much blood and money wasted, salvation requires repudiation of the Iraq war, the Bush doctrine and the cruel, undemocratic policies of the "war" on terrorism. I don't know if anyone has the strength to do that. It must be said that Lyndon Johnson was correct in that he would be mercilessly attacked for being weak if he withdrew from Vietnam. That's a political fact and it is what will happen if a Democratic administration tries to draw down the GWOT. (Not that we shouldn't do it, I'm just saying that the price will be high.) It's one of the main reasons why we should never start these things unless absolutely forced to. They are very difficult to end.

What or who will successfully put a coda to this ongoing folly? I don't see it in either party, to tell you the truth. But it's what I'm going to be looking for. This is the central challenge of millenial America: how can the most powerful nation on earth survive such monumental folly?




If you are interested in this topic, I urge you to read Arthur's long entire series on Iran and Tuchman's "March of Folly." Oh my.



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digby 2/27/2006 04:20:00 PM |

 
Extremes

by digby

Kos highlights an interesting story today about the fears among the political establishment of the of grassroots extremists:

While some view the evangelical church as above all a force for promoting conservative values, others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and values voters but not the broader electorate.

"It's great, because it creates a lot of energy and helps broaden a movement, but the downside is you can also get pulled in a more extreme direction," said Erik Smith, who worked in the 2004 race for both Tom Coburn and a multimillion-dollar independent Republican ad campaign.

"There is real power there . . . but there are some real limits to it, and those limits have to be heeded," said Jonah Seiger, an evangelical strategist.

The Republicans are very concerned about how they appear to the mainstream and worry incessantly about how these activists will pull the party too far to the right.

Not.

That paragraph actually reads like this:

While some view the Internet as above all a democratizing force, others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and ideological voters but not the broader electorate.

"It's great, because it creates a lot of energy and helps broaden a movement, but the downside is you can also get pulled in a more extreme direction," said Erik Smith, who worked in the 2004 race for both Dick Gephardt and a multimillion-dollar independent Democratic ad campaign.

"There is real power there . . . but there are some real limits to it, and those limits have to be heeded," said Jonah Seiger, an Internet strategist who also heads the board of advisers for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not question whether it is a good thing to have hard working, committed activists. They just say thank you.

Rather than worry about being "pulled in a more extreme direction" they confidently accept support wherever they can get it and openly court their base. They proudly run on the label "conservative" and would not dream of marginalizing their most energetic partisans. Democrats, not so much.

Note to the clueless DC insiders: the blogosphere is only "extreme" to the extent it is extremely impatient with people like you. We believe that your strategy of caution has failed and we are agitating for a more aggressive Democratic politics. After a partisan impeachment, a stolen election in 2000, an illegal war and an unprecedented executive power play we think this is a pretty serious situation. In fact, we see this as political civil war. You apparently think that is "extreme." We think it is common sense.

Perhaps it would be easier for these people to understand if we speak like Republicans and use stupid Civil War analogies to make a point, so here goes:

We believe that the DC establishment is running the war like George McClellan and we think his cautious strategy is losing us the war. It's not because we aren't all on the same side or don't have the same goals. It's that the McClellans of the establishment are temperamentally inhibited at a time when aggression is called for. We believe the party needs to fight like Grant.

If that civil war analogy is too complicated I'm sure I can find a cartoon or children's book to illustrate it. We are not ideologues. We are simply demanding that elected Democrats stand firm on our convictions and be willing to go toe to toe with Republicans. It isn't complicated. When Lincoln was asked to relieve Grant after Shiloh, he said, "I can't spare this man -- he fights." That's what we're talking about.


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digby 2/27/2006 01:28:00 PM |

 
No Retreat, No Surrender

by tristero

In comments to a previous post about South Dakota's imminent approval of coathangers for abortion, reader goodasgold wrote

I couldn't live in South Dakota. It would hurt too much. I wonder where all this will lead. I live in California. I feel safe.

The sentiment is understandable. Why live someplace that seems hellbent on trumpeting its ignorance of reality? Why go somewhere that all but brags of its cruelty to the poor?

Indeed, that's what pro-coathanger legislation is all about. The rich and the middle class will always have access to safe abortion. Making abortion illegal is quite simply class warfare, aimed at the poorest women and families.

That is all it is. It is one thing if your religious beliefs require you to bring a pregnancy to term. No one in the United States will, or should, stop you, It's a very, very different situation to use your religion as a shield to deflect sharp criticism of your political activism and demand that abortion be made dangerous and illegal. That is not religious belief. That is simply heartless, cruel, and immoral politcking. The cynical operatives who demand that the state approve coathanger abortions by banning legal ones in no way can claim the moral high ground, America's laws are very clear: no group has the right to inflict their religious proclivities on the rest of us.*

However, I think goodasgold is wrong, as the troll Par R, inadvertently, reminds us. Par R apparently lives in South Dakota and writes:

God bless and keep you safe in California, since we sure as Hell don't want your type living among us up here! Thanks.

To translate out of Troll-ish, Par R is saying, "Ignorance and tyranny will flourish wherever liberalism is absent." For that reason, it is vital that more liberals move to South Dakota, not less.

Liberals should move to South Dakota not to "impose" their values, of course. For as we all know, coercion is what religious nuts do, not liberals. Liberals have a long, consistent history of strong opposition to laws that force people to conform to a specific "politically correct" or "religiously correct" moral code. Nope, more liberals should move to South Dakota for one reason only: To become proud, loyal, and productive South Dakotans. The state simply needs more liberals if it is to become a better South Dakota and it needs less unprincipled politicians advancing an anti-American theocratic agenda.

Contrary to christianism, with its unhealthy obsession on deadly punishment and diseased sex, liberalism is a world view that is life affirming. It posits that human beings have the ability and the will to construct a moral life, and a happy, prosperous one in a civil community regardless of our differences. That is what is meant, in a political context, by "all men are created equal." And liberalism has succeeded. It is in states where liberalism is in short supply that poverty reigns, and ignorance, and a great deal of crime.

The answer to South Dakota's real problems is not tyranny, either religious or secular (and make no mistake: oppressing the poor, by denying them access to a safe medical procedure, certainly is tyrannical). Both are the desperate solutions of the ignorant and the fearful. No, the answer begins with informed, careful, and reasoned thought. In a word, the answer begins with liberalism. By contrast, nothing could be further removed from reality, nothing could be more irrelevant to the problems South Dakota faces than the thoughtless and clueless theocracy the pro-coathanger crowd desire. And that is why more liberals are needed in South Dakota.

Liberal South Dakotans surely hold different values than California liberals. Speaking for the moment as a New York liberal, I certainly hope so! (grin)

Therefore, more liberals in South Dakota will bring to the state a personal and civil philosophy that will make South Dakotans of all political stripes even prouder of their state than they already are. They will give all South Dakotans more genuine reasons to sneer at how awful and foolish life is in California (and New York), not less. More liberals in South Dakota will focus the state's resources on genuine issues, not well-marketed faith-based cure-alls that cure nothing. Issues, like passing laws to ban abortion, are not only immoral because of their viciousness to the poor. They are immoral because they waste valuable time and resources better spent addressing real problems.

Liberalism - a philosophy of reason, compassion, tolerance, and hard-headed realism unemcumbered by utopianism - is the only civic philosophy that is flexible enough to encompass the wildly different needs of a wildly disparate America. The notion of a "godless" liberal is one more rightwing myth. The vast majority of American liberals agree that, on a personal level, the "good life" is lived with God's help. They are also aware that what is meant by God or God's will is no business of the state to define; one group's position on God's will can in no way be privileged in the business of an American polis. The sooner South Dakota's legislature stops trying to to do so and gets down to the real business of running the state, the better. And that requires more liberals in South Dakota, not more theocrats thumping Bibles and obsessing about other people's sex lives.

And so, goodasgold, start packing.



An apology: I haven't addressed the right to safe and legal medical care very much in the past. The reason is that it is self-evident that all citizens have a right to such care, even if they are poor. Therefore, what's there to argue over? The fury over the use of coat hangers has always puzzled me. Yes, honest people can come to radically different conclusions as to whether their pregnancy should or should not be terminated. But an American government clearly has no right to impose a conclusion. Therefore the politicization of the abortion issue has always struck me as a thinly disguised war against providing safe health care to the poor, especially women, rather than anything that engages a genuine moral issue which, in abortion's case, is a private one.

I still think this is true. But it is becoming clear to me that, not only because the issue of safe medical care for all Americans is an important issue in itself but because the right to such care impacts many other important issues, all of us must once again speak out, loud, clear, and often in favor of Roe v. Wade.

True, I've done so several times before, and just as unequivocally as I've done so here. But I feel a need to speak out even more. I recognize that others have sensed this need long before I have. They were right, I was wrong and I apologize. To say that there were (and are) issues that were just as serious is no excuse, of course. But that was, and is, the case for me.

As I've said before, it has become very hard to be an American. The assault from the extreme right on American values has been relentless and highly organized since (at least) the second Clinton term. Nearly as bad, the Democrats have, as a party, failed miserably to stand behind its finest members - people like Kerry, Murtha, and Dean - or its modern principles, which are based in liberalism. The fact that being an American is very hard work these days also is no excuse. Please accept the apology and I'll try to make up for it with more posts on the right of all Americans to safe, legal medical care. That care is dangerously undermined whenever the access to abortion on demand is challenged. The dangers of illegal abortion primarily fall on poor women (and honest, competent doctors who provide abortions despite the potential for imprisonment), but the dangers of making access to medical procedures contingent on religious correctness are dangers for everyone, including those who, for personal/religious reasons, will carry all viable pregnancies to term.

*Note to rightwing religious nuts: Disagree with me all you want, but don't try to claim I am "prejudiced against religion," yadda yadda because I would truly hate to embarass you. There is abundant public proof of my longstanding admiration and deep respect for religious observance and devout practice.

My contempt and disgust is focused entirely on political activists like bin Laden, Antonin Scalia, Randall Terry, or the late Meir Kahane, who hide behind the skirts of priests to advocate theocracy. (And yes, that is precisely Scalia's agenda which is why he's mentioned here in the company of his peers: his remarks here fall barely one or two commas short of advocating a full overhaul of American jurisprudence and the establishment of a christianist theocracy)

Now if you're an extra crunchy and sleazy rightwing nut you might sneer, "What about Martin Luther King? You object to him speaking out when he saw injustice?" To which there is only one response:

Your comparison is deeply insulting. King's peers are Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, so if you want to discuss him by comparing him to those other great human beings, I am only too happy to join you. But I will not demean KIng's achievements by dignifying, with a response, any mention of him in the rhetorical company of cheap slimeballs like Pat Robertson or Rick Santorum. What next, shall we "discuss" whether FDR is the moral equivalent of Hitler? Or whether the Bible authorizes slavery? It's still a free blogosphere so go somewhere else and spew.
tristero 2/27/2006 06:33:00 AM |

Sunday, February 26, 2006

 
Creating A Better Circumstance

by digby

This William Kristol quote from this morning is another step in the eventual disavowal of Bushism. You see, just as it was in Vietnam, the know-nothings in Washington won't let the military leaders take the gloves off which is why we are having so many problems.

This will, of course, be folded into the standard one size fits all conservative whine that alleges conservatism cannot fail on its own terms. Not even neo-conservatism, which isn't conservatism at all except to the extent it prefers war over other means of change.

Indeed, the neos have the civil war in Iraq already built into their utopian vision. Much as David Ignatius said that if in 30 years Iraq is doing as well as Lebanon is today then the invasion can be seen as a success, for years some neocons have held that in order to make a nice US dominated Iraq, the massive death and destruction of a war and then civil war might be just what the doctor ordered. From a very depressing article by Robert Dreyfuss:

In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous "Clean Break" paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : "The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state." After Saddam, Iraq would "be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families," he wrote. "Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition." Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to "expedite" such a collapse. "The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance."

Such black neoconservative fantasies—which view the Middle East as a chessboard on which they can move the pieces at will—have now come home to roost. For the many hundreds of thousands who might die in an Iraqi civil war, the consequences are all too real.

This is where the Straussian beast of neoconservatism rears its ugly head.[and says hello its mate, perverted trotskyism. ed] Their vaunted starry-eyed idealism about spreading democracy is a pile of crap. They, like all imperialists, seek domination. They went along with the cockamamie idea to give the Iraqi people the opportunity to surrender peacefully and do it our way. Those purple fingers should have made them feel really good about themselves. But they aren't cooperating. Which means, sadly, that it's time to accept reality. We tore the country apart, now we'll let the crazy wogs have it out.

The big challenge now is to "limit and expedite the chaotic collapse in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance." When you look at it that way, everything's going according to plan. Too bad about all the dead people.

Meanwhile neocon shills like Kristol will soothe the rubes with tales of how the Bush administration tied the military's hands. If they'd have let them go they could have gotten the job done in a couple of weeks. We could have bombed em back into the stone age if necessary. After all, everything turned out just great with Japan and Germany. But, no. They wouldn't let our brave men and women get the job done. (Of course you can't blame them too much. It was the dominant Democrat hippies who made them do it.)

It gives the Republicans a good excuse to run on "restoring honor" to the country. The rubes eat it up and get all excited about proving ourselves in the next war. A war we must fight for freedom and democracy, of course. Because we're so good.


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digby 2/26/2006 01:14:00 PM |

 
Vinaigrette

by digby

Kevin at Catch is calling it a day and now I have one less funny blogger from whom to steal great material. Damn. I hate when that happens. He is one of those guys who likes to go into the belly of the rightwing blogospheric beast and examine the entrails with insight and humor. It is a valuable service and I will miss him.

We met (virtually, of course) during the Wes Clark campaign when both of us were asked to do an online interview with the general. Back in those golden, olden days, that was quite an unusual thing. We were asked to submit five questions. Kevin and I both asked four probing, deeply complicated queries about long term foreign policy strategy and one fun "personal" question. They picked the personal questions, of course. Kevin's was "what's your favorite salad dressing" and mine was "of all your postings overseas, what country did you enjoy the most?" (answers: vinaigrette and Panama.) I was lucky enough to get one "real" question in the mix as well so I didn't suffer the overwhelming disapprobation of the Clarkies who accused Kevin of wasting the general's and the community's time with this silliness. (Clarkies are a serious bunch.) We bonded.

Kevin may be leaving the blogosphere but he will be long remembered around these parts. His memorial is the term "bedwetters." That's what I call a contribution.

I assume that Kevin knows his great eye and superior snark are always welcome on this blog should he feel the overhwelming urge to post. And you know he will feel the urge eventually. It's hard to go cold turkey. Yelling at the TV just doesn't have the same kick. Plus it annoys people. Your loved ones quickly realize they didn't miss you that much after all and are relieved to hear the sounds of your angry typing. I'm guessing. Not that I would know, of course. I'm very even keeled.

In case you missed it, here's Kevin's interview with TBOGG. A classic.


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digby 2/26/2006 09:12:00 AM |

Saturday, February 25, 2006

 
They Are NOT Eliminating Abortions In South Dakota



by tristero

They are approving coathangers for use as medical instruments.

tristero 2/25/2006 02:55:00 PM |

 
Who Says Dems Don't Ask The Tough Questions?



by tristero


Now, I'm not saying that I completely agree with this, but I do think it is worthy of a full, thoughtful discussion.

Note to wingnuts: In case it is lost on you, the sentence above is one I have found on right wing discussion boards regarding whether gays are moral lepers, abortion doctors deserve the death penalty, or whether torture may be a good thing on occasion. In other words, this is satire.

tristero 2/25/2006 12:20:00 PM |

 
Civil War

by tristero

Ever optimistic, the Times surveys opinions on what Civil War would be like in Iraq if civil war comes. While there is much that is interesting here, I am also struck by the amount of naivete on display* and the poor organization of the article. For example, this would appear to be perhaps the most striking and important "news" to impart to Americans:

[Kenneth] Pollack cautions that a civil war could prove especially painful for the Shiites. There is no reason, he says, to assume that they won't fight among themselves. The three major Shiite movements each have militias. Sometimes they have clashed... "There are a thousand Shiite militias that could do battle against each other, splintering even the southern part of Iraq."

The way the story's usually been played in the US press is that it's Shia vs. Sunni. Not so. The situation is far more complex. So where does the Times put this important information? Near the end of the article.

While Pollack is right to point out the dangers of infra-Shia strife, he is wrong elsewhere in the piece to claim that such strife is the first thing one would see in an Iraqi civil war - Sunnis may be a minority, but they were, and still are, a powerful minority. The first thing you'd see, obviously would be something close to what we are, indeed, seeing: increasingly violent actions between Shia and Sunnis. Nor is Pollack accurate in opining that "a civil war could prove especially painful for the Shiites." If nearly any Shia faction wins a violent civil war, Sunnis will experience major league political repression. As in state sponsored torture and murder. If anything, it's the Sunnis who will find a civil war "especially painful," assuming they lose. And, among many other factors, it is their desperation - rightly, they don't trust a "legit" Shia government to treat them well - that is behind their present attacks.

Pollack's emphasis on Shia-Shia conflict seems an academic distortion, going for the unusual angle. But that's nothing compared to this unattributed whopper:

Some experts, however, say Iran may understand the dangers of a war. Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denunciation of the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra last week, in which he blamed Zionists rather than Sunnis, could be seen as an act of restraint, these experts say — an effort to play to Shiite anger without fanning flames between Iraq's Islamic communities.

Now this is such an unspeakably stupid analysis of what Iran is up to that it could only come from a high Bush administration official. I'm quite serious. Another clue it's from a Bushite is its sense of loony "accentuate the positive" thinking. And indeed, the context gives a pretty clear clue where this idiocy probably came from. Backing up one paragraph we read:

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has proclaimed that the world has isolated Iran more than ever because of its nuclear ambitions, Iran has in fact tightened relationships with it local allies as events in Iraq have played out. In recent months, Iran has been deepening its alliance with Syria and the Shiite movement Hezbollah in Lebanon, and now it appears ready to strike up a friendship, backed by financing, with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Some experts, however, say Iran may understand the dangers of a war. Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denunciation ...

Am I saying Condoleeza Rice is the moron who sees hope in Iran's anti-Zionism/semitism? No, not exactly. But anyone who is making the fundamental error Rice is making - focusing on Iran's "world" isolation while downplaying its strengthening of regional ties, including to Hamas - is quite capable of misconstruing Ahmadinejad's remarks to mean Iran is not doing whatever it can to grasp as much purchase within Iraq as possible. And if it came to a war that led to Iraq's total disintegration, it is unclear what Iran stands to lose.

The article also floats the idea of a negotiated breakup of Iraq into three states. Good luck. Who gets the oil regions, boys and girls? Who gets the desert? And who moves? And who sez Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are just gonna twiddle their fingers and not interfere?

There is much more interesting speculation and detail about how truly incredibly complex the mess in Iraq is, and how few alternatives exist that won't quickly lead to disaster for the people of the region, and the people of the United States. Will Turkey invade to defend the Turkomen against oppression if Iraq's Kurds officially set up on their own? Will the Arab League step in to intervene? And looming above it all are nukes. Iranian nukes coming soon. Potential Sunni Arab nukes depending on how the situation worsens (calling Dr. A. Q. Khan!).

So, Mr. Tom Friedman, are you enjoying the real live political experiment now? So, Mr. George Packer, still think that those of us who absolutely knew Bush/Iraq would open the gates of hell have "second-rate minds?"

Hey, y'never know! Maybe Ahmadinejad really was sending a signal that Iran wasn't interested in an Iraq civil war when he blamed Zionists - Israel -for the attack. True, that could be because he wants to attack Israel first, but at least it's not supporting civil war in Iraq!

Yes, it's possible. And maybe there really is a Bigfoot. And maybe tomorrow, cold fusion will work and, as Woody Allen predicted in Sleeper, cigarette smoking will turn out to improve your health and longevity. You never know...






*I am no expert on the Middle East. Why am I so confident many of the "expert opinions" in this article are naive? Here goes:

To be deemed an expert on the Middle East, one would assume that the prerequisite would be fluency in several dialects of Arabic, fluency in Persian, fluency in Hebrew, and considerable time spent living and working in the Middle East. But one would be wrong. Most American "experts" in the public domain -there are real experts in universities, I assume - know one of those languages. At best, two. Many can't read or speak any of them, and rely on assistants and clipping services for information on Middle Eastern press and mass media. Incredibly, language fluency is still considered not a requirement for marketing yourself as a pundit whose specialty is the Middle East. And many people defend this.

In my book, there's a word to describe anyone who claims expertise in Middle Eastern affairs who can't read Iranian or Iraqi newspapers, or needs a translator to understand al Jazeera, or whose experience of the region is limited to a guided tour of the pyramids or an overnight stay at the King David Hotel: phony.

Simple commonsense tells me that Iran stands to gain quite a bit from Iraq's disintegration and stands to lose little even if there is furious intra-Shia civil war in Iraq. Simple commonsense tells me that when Iran sends a message to the world that Zionists destroyed the Shiite shrine, they are clearly trying to unify Muslims against a common enemy - Israel - and they are not saying anything, one way or the other, about the desirability of Iraqi civil war. Commonsense also tells me that when Iran's president sends a message to the world, that message is intended primarily for Muslims and that US analysts make a fundamental error when it assumes "the world" means us.

I'll gladly defer to genuine expert opinion on any of this, but I doubt that any seriously real scholar would make assertions like the silly ones cited above. Pollack's sense that Shias would endure "special pain" in a civil war is vacuous and dishonest, used only to hype his superior knowledge of the complexities, but shows not a trace of any superior understanding. For one thing, "speical pain" is empirically unverifiable. Furthermore, his argument is naive in its assumption that a Shia/Sunni strife can never get bloody enough to meet most standards for what is meant by the term "civil war."I'm afraid we are seeing Pollack proved wrong on a daily basis right now.

As for the anonymous misconstrual of Iran's remarks, that is less naive than it is delusional.


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tristero 2/25/2006 08:15:00 AM |

Friday, February 24, 2006

 
Update: Pardon our dust. Yes, I know it's a bit of a mess. Please bear with me. People much smarter than I are working on bringing this site in to the second half of the ot years. Thanks you for your patience.

And, no. The new design will look nothing like the one some of you saw earlier. That was merely a placeholder.






Never mind


This is not a permanent template. Please don't waste your time commenting on its terrible/wonderful look.

I'll tell you when the real transition happens. And then you can complain all you want. Comments will return I promise.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.




digby 2/24/2006 04:19:00 PM |

 
The Ship That Sailed



by digby




If you haven't had any fun today, click on Lou Dobbs arguing with Joe Klein about port security. Klein, the pretend liberal in a balanced group consisting of Republican David Gergen, Republican Ed Rollins and Republican Dobbs, insists that if we don't let this Dubai deal go forward, we will be causing ourselves some real trouble in the arab world. They are very sensitive to this kind of disrespect, you see. Changing the rules midstream is going to cause more terrorists.

He's so right. America should do everything it can not to foment terrorism.


Meanwhile, violence and fear sweep through Iraq:

The waves of vengeance have left the majority Shiite and the minority Sunni communities feeling victimized and deeply angry with each other. Both are also resentful of the United States, which has been working to ease the animosity and coax Iraq's various ethnic and religious groups into a cooperative government.

"The Americans also abandoned us extremely. They could have put some of their vehicles to protect the mosques — they have the forces to do that," Khalaf Ulayyan, general secretary of the Sunni Iraqi National Dialogue Council, said at a news conference. "How does a civil war start? It starts like this."

What a shame.

But let's keep our priorities straight here. What we need to do is make sure that Dubai's feelings aren't hurt or things might just hurtle out of control in the mideast. We wouldn't want that.





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digby 2/24/2006 03:43:00 PM |

 
Braindead Hotshot



by digby



Rita Cosby said that it's wrong that the Republicans in South Carolina are asking for church rolls to target the evangelical vote but it's just as wrong that Democrats are targeting the "hoodlum vote."

Yes, the hoodlum vote. When a plainly confused Chris Matthews asked what she meant, she explained that Democrats were going through voter rolls to find felons to vote for them.



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digby 2/24/2006 02:50:00 PM |

 
Rude Lefty Bloggers

by digby

A mainstream Republican gives a speech:

Coulter even made comments about the physical appearances of those who were removed.

"Another attractive Democrat," she said as junior Sean Hall, a man wearing a blonde wig, white sheet and a sign that said "Coultergeist" was removed.

"I think we should have saved the ushers some time and just removed all the ugly people," she said.

During her question-and-answer session, Coulter responded to both fans and protesters. One comment that drew strong audience reactions came from a young man who asked her if she didn't like Democrats, wouldn't it just be better to have a dictatorship? Coulter responded with a jab at the way the student talked.

"You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?" she said.

The well trained young Republican borg had a ready defense:

IU College Republicans President Shane Kennedy defended Coulter's comments by stressing that the speech was for entertainment and attendees should have expected Coulter to say controversial comments.

"I think the guy could have been more respectful to her," he said. "I mean, we already know that she was going to be controversial and she was just saying what people were thinking. If you are going to talk like you are gay, then Ann Coulter is going to call you gay. Of course, she said it in a spiteful tone, but it was expected."

On the other hand, she was quite upset that she had to deal with dissent:

"You are paying me to give a speech," she said. "I mean, if you don't want me to keep talking, that's fine, but I think I'll just do the speech. Hopefully, the idiot liberals will be out of here by the second half of the speech.

"You guys are doing a great job." she said sarcastically later to auditorium ushers. "I guess they did hire Democrats as ushers."

In other news, the mainstream media continues to wring their lace handkerchiefs about rude liberal readers.



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digby 2/24/2006 02:32:00 PM |

 
Jingo Blowback

the digby

Last night Kevin approvingly linked to the same William Greider piece that I did and said:

On a related note, it makes me feel almost nostalgic to watch the toxic stew of cherry picking, half truths, and outright misrepresentations currently being used to demonize the UAE as a virtual arm of al-Qaeda. You know what it reminds me of? The way Bush & Co. tried to sell Saddam Hussein as Osama's best buddy in the Middle East. It's poetic watching the Bushies squirm when they're on the receiving end of this stuff.

I think this comparison is off base. To the extent it is demagogic, this UAE outcry falls into the category of political ox-goring, the likes of which are seen every day in our system. Comparing it to the lies, distortion and institutional manipulation that led the nation into a war is vastly overstating it.

This would be better compared to the white house having a fake case of the vapors over Newsweak reporting that Korans had been defaced at Guantanamo and "causing" the riots in the mid-east. The head of the joint chiefs of staff said the whole thing was used as an excuse by the heavies in Afghan politics, but that didn't stop the administration from lecturing the press about revealing these accusations. Many people accepted the idea that Newsweak erred, particularly when it was shown that the report was unreliable. Bush and his boys had been saying that revealing information about torture and abuse was playing into the enemies' hands for months, so this fit perfectly with their "loose lips sink ship" rhetoric. In this case, Bush has been saying "we're fighting 'them' over there so we don't have to fight 'them' over here" for years. Saying now that it's ok to bring "them" into our ports creates cognitive dissonence. They have only themselves to blame for the outcry.

In both the UAE port outcry or the Newsweak outcry, the demagogic argument coming from the administration is that these things will harm our image in the middle east and make it more difficult for us to prosecute the war on terror. It works fine as long as it doesn't conflict with one of their other demagogic arguments. But neither of these flaps come close to the invasion of Iraq for sheer bad faith and demagogic overkill.

Besides, there is a legitimate reason to be wary of the UAE being involved with US port management and calling it racism, in particular, is puerile nonsense. Like Pakistan, another close ally in the war on terror, the UAE have been playing both ends against the middle for a long time. We all understand that and accept it. They have to deal with the vicissitudes of their own political situation which doesn't always accrue to our benefit. Welcome to the real world where the black and white formulation of "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" is shown as the bullshit it always was. As Yglesias says here:

... the UAE isn't a strategic partner of the United States in the way that the UK is. The number of countries who have British-style security relationships with the United States can be counted on one hand, if not one finger. We share intelligence with the British that we wouldn't share with Portugal, much less Dubai. An ally as close as Israel has been known to screw us over in defense and intelligence matters because, hey, countries have different interests. A private British firm operates in the context of the rule of law; a state-owned enterprise in Dubai . . . not so much. These are different countries in a thousand ways that have nothing to do with skin color. Pretending not to see the difference is childish and absurd. That a country hosts American military bases proves almost nothing -- we have bases in all kinds of places.

I would suggest that if the UAE is holding access to their ports over our heads as a way to ensure this deal goes through, then we may have to evaluate whether they are even the nominal ally in the war on terror we think they are. That's called blackmail. They can't interfere with our domestic policies any more thaan we can interfere with theirs.



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digby 2/24/2006 01:40:00 PM |

 
Back To Normal

by digby

Ok, you are not going crazy. You did see a different template on this site earlier today. This blog's oging to be changing a bit over the next little while. There may be some glitches for a while. That was a glitch.



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digby 2/24/2006 01:18:00 PM |

 
Remedial Journalism

by digby


Gosh, the Republicans must be so pleased with CNN's new reporter Brian Todd. Discussing Libby's motion that contends Fitzgerald lacks authority to bring charges because proper procedure were not followed, Todd asserted:

"Here's the procedure: He or she has to be appointed by the president. He or she has to be confirmed by the senate. He or she has to answer to top justice officials whenever they want to bring and indictment of grant immunity. None of these things have occurred in the case of Mr Fitzgerald. He was appointed by an acting Attorney general. He was never confirmed by the Senate. He has had sweeping power in this case to do as he chooses."

I guess he didn't have time to check the Department of Justice Web site:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald began serving as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois on September 1, 2001. The United States Senate confirmed his nomination by unanimous consent and President Bush signed his commission on October 29, 2001.

He was named special counsel by an acting attorney general because the attorney general recused himself from the case.

Here's what the GAO had to say about Fitzgerald's mandate:

"The parameters of his authority and independence are defined in the appointment letters which delegate to Special Counsel Fitzgerald all (plenary) the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity with the direction that he exercise such authority independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department. [13]. In addition, Department officials informed us that the express exclusion of Special Counsel Fitzgerald from the application of 28 C.F.R. Part 600, which contains provisions that might conflict with the notion that the Special Counsel in this investigation possesses all the power of the Attorney General, contributes to the Special Counsel's independence. [14] Thus, Special Counsel Fitzgerald need not follow the Department's practices and procedures if they would subject him to the approval of an officer or employee of the Department. For example, 28 C.F.R. 600.7 requires that a Special Counsel consult with the Attorney General before taking particular actions."

That took me five minutes with Google. I would imagine that Brian Todd could have had some flunky do the same thing before he proclaimed that Fitzgerald's appointment hadn't followed this procedure. It doesn't prove anything, of course, but it does show that there might just be some legitimate differences of opinion as to whether or not their claim has merit. You don't have to be a lawyer to know that the law requiring that the special counsel be appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate meant that he or she must be a US Attorney, not that he or she must be a special appointment by the president to investigate his own administration. That wouldn't exactly make sense, now would it?


It's theoretically possible that a judge will rule in Libby's favor on this, but it is highly unlikely. You'd think that Todd would have at least picked up a phone this morning and called a legal analyst who might clue him in on the other side's arguments. When he said/she said makes sense --- as in a legal case --- they don't do it. When it comes to global warming or intelligent design they fall all overthemselves giving equal time to hucksters and fools.


Why do journalists have such a hard time understanding these distinctions?



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digby 2/24/2006 10:58:00 AM |

 
Civil War

Khalizad is worried

"What we've seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone's attention that Iraq is in danger," Mr. Khalilzad said in a conference call with reporters.

The country's leaders, he added, "must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country."

Mr. Khalilzad's comments are the most explicit acknowledgment so far by an American official of the instability of the situation, and the fragility of the entire American enterprise here. The killings and assaults across Iraq that began Wednesday have amounted to the worst sectarian violence since the American invasion.

...In the deadliest assault, 47 people returning from a protest were pulled off buses south of Baghdad on Wednesday and shot in the head, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. Three journalists from Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite network, were abducted and killed Wednesday in Samarra, near the ruined shrine. Seven American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in unrelated attacks involving roadside bombs.

Political and religious leaders, including President Jalal Talabani and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose followers are believed to be involved in much of the anti-Sunni violence, called for restraint.

Bring it on, indeed. A terrible situation, and a confused one, in which al-Sadr, of all people, feels compelled to urge restraint.

For the purpose of discussion, if Khalizad is this blunt, we should probably assume that reality is far, far worse. Iraq is gone, or at the very least, rapidly moving that way.

Now what? Three states, Shia, Sunni, and Kurd? A violent, anarchic "state of nature"? How will humanitarian aid reach the sufferers if there is no Iraq left? What are the short term/long term implications for terrorism both within the Middle East and against the US and US citizens? What can be done, in any event, to counter the development of a disintegrated Iraq becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. Are efforts to "save" Iraq a priori doomed to failure?

And aside from the questions of humanitarian aid, the most crucial question: in a post-Bush world, what is the United States' - our - moral obligation to the people of the former Iraq?

Thomas Friedman once said that it's not every day you get to see a political experiment in action. Well Tom, here it is. Happy?



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tristero 2/24/2006 05:37:00 AM |

 
Extra! Extra! Neoconservatism Discovered To Be Screaming Yellow Bonkers!

by tristero

Why are the so-called "conservative intellectuals" in the United States so hellbent on reinventing a square wheel? Anyone with half a brain and half an education knows better than to bother. But there they are, with their T-squares marking off 89 degree angles - can't even get that straight - and sawing away for years on one patently idiotic idea or another before finally announcing what liberals have known all along: It was a patently idiotic idea.

For the latest, here's Francis Fukuyama's epiphany. Turns out neoconservatism is... a really bad idea. Who knew? Well I knew, and I didn't need tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq to know it. And so I think a prayer is called for:

Dear God,

Please deliver us from the hideous locust plague of conservative pseudo-intellectuals. Sinners we may be in Thine eyes, and unworthy of thy Divine Love, but Jesus Kee-rist! Cut us some friggin' slack, already! Fire and brimstone, eternal damnation, I ain't gonna argue with you. But, seriously, God, we really don't deserve any more Fukuyamas, y'know? So ease up.

Please.

Love,

Tristero



tristero 2/24/2006 03:59:00 AM |

Thursday, February 23, 2006

 
Hobgoblins

by digby


I'm quite impressed by the Washington Post editorial board's intellectual consistency

Friday, February 24, 2006; Page A14


If members of Congress really want to burnish their "tough on terrorism" credentials, they should start by focusing on real presidential lapses, which are sufficient, and forget about the phony ones. As Mr. England said yesterday, the war on terrorism demands that the United States "strengthen the bonds of friendship and security . . . especially with our friends and allies in the Arab world." That means allies should be treated "equally and fairly around the world and without discrimination," he said. And he suggested that it is the terrorists who want the United States to "become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist."

If so, they must be feeling pretty content right now.

Yes, that's right. If we become distrustful of our allies, the terrorists will have won:

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; Page A18

SHORTLY AFTER Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush famously declared that other countries must choose between supporting the United States and supporting terrorism, and that those that harbored al Qaeda would be treated as the enemy. In the years since, he has refrained from applying that tough principle in practice -- which is lucky for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Ever since the war on terrorism began, this meretricious military ruler has tried to be counted as a U.S. ally while avoiding an all-out campaign against the Islamic extremists in his country, who almost surely include Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Despite mounting costs in American lives and resources, he has gotten away with it.

digby 2/23/2006 09:11:00 PM |

 
Rockefeller Sticks In The Shiv

by digby

Glenn has been writing a lot about the administration pursuing journalists in the NSA illegal spying scandal and he sounds a very important alarm. But I think they should think long and hard about how far to take that considering their history. It's a can of worms they will regret opening. Here's a good example of what kind of ugly little fish-bait might come slithering out.

From Murray Waas:

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most “damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies.”

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: “Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.”

Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward’s book “Bush at War”.

Read the whole thing. I was unaware that the CIA had been instructed to cooperate with Woodward. I thought he was simply allowed to listen in on classified White House meetings:

One former senior administration official explained to me: “This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security—if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise—Woodward’s book.”

The Bush adminstration suffers from terminal hubris, so I am not sure they completely understand the implications of this. They seem to think they can get away with "leaking" classified information for political purposes with impunity while screaming to high heaven about real whistelblowers leaking classified information to expose wrongdoing by them. There was a time they could do that sort of thing and get away with it. I suspect that time is past. There is too much blood in the water.

This does explain why Woodward was so nervous about the Plame matter, though. He was leaked a ton of selective classified information by powerful people to help make a bogus case for war. He makes Novak look like an amateur.



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digby 2/23/2006 07:34:00 PM |

 
The Gay Governor

by digby


This guy is so uncool Republicans will assume he's one of them and vote for him by mistake. Blagojevich for president!

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wasn't in on the joke.

Blagojevich says he didn't realize "The Daily Show" was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-puzzled governor.

"It was going to be an interview on contraceptives ... that's all I knew about it," Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday's editions. "I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was 'the gay governor.' "

The interview focused on his executive order requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control.

Interviewer Jason Jones pretended to stumble over Blagojevich's name before calling him "Governor Smith." He urged Blagojevich to explain the contraception issue by playing the role of "a hot 17-year-old" and later asked if he was "the gay governor."

At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to someone off camera and said, "Is he teasing me or is that legit?"

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digby 2/23/2006 07:04:00 PM |

 
Live By Demagoguery, Die By Demagoguery


William Greider is right on the money.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf:

David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commenting on PBS, and I thought I heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted "the experts," and they assured him there's no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims--actually, by an Arab government--managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.

Of course, he is correct. But what a killjoy. This is a fun flap, the kind that brings us together. Republicans and Democrats are frothing in unison, instead of polarizing incivilities. Together, they are all thumping righteously on the poor President. I expect he will fold or at least retreat tactically by ordering further investigation. The issue is indeed trivial. But Bush cannot escape the basic contradiction, because this dilemma is fundamental to his presidency.

A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush's invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the "long war" now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush's butt in 2004.

Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President's open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?

Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.

Bush's terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of corporate-led globalization. One practices hyper-nationalism--Washington gets to decide where it goes to war, never mind the Geneva Convention and other "obsolete" international restraints. Yet Bush's diplomats travel the world banging on governments for trade rules that defenestrate a nation's sovereign power to run its own affairs. The US government regards itself as comfortable with this arrangement since it assumes the superpower can always get its way. Most citizens are never consulted. They are perhaps unaware that their rights have been given away, too.

It would be nice to imagine this ridiculous episode will prompt reconsideration, cool down exploitative jingoism and provoke a more rational discussion of the multiplying absurdities. I doubt it. At least it will be satisfying to see Bush toasted irrationally, since he lit the match.

Indeed.

A commentator on CNN just said that if the US becomes isolationist and refuses to engage our neighbors the terrorists will have won. (I'm looking forward to hearing John Bolton sing "Blowing in The Wind" at the next meeting of the UN security council.)

The New York Times reports:

"If the furor over the port deal should go on, Mr. England said, it would give enemies of the United States aid and comfort: 'They want us to become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.'"

Republican voters, if you question the port deal, the administration
thinks you're a traitor.


Update: John Aravosis doesn't think much of Gordon England.



Update II: For unknown reasons the NY Times has scrubbed the England quote from its story. It's still in this story in the SF Chronicle.
digby 2/23/2006 04:28:00 PM |

 
Castrati Chat

by digby


Rush has been on a strange tangent the last couple of days. Aside from his strange sensitivity to the feelings of terrorist supporting middle eastern potentates (which actually makes sense when you stop and think about it) he also appears to be somewhat obsessive on other subjects:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm tempted to say that we are on "Summers's eve." We are at Summers's eve. I know Summer's Eve is also -- I think; I used to be an expert in these things -- a feminine deodorant spray, but it's also -- it also designates, ladies and gentlemen, that we are in the last days of the administration of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. And, by the way, this happened -- I think we need to change the name from Harvard to Hervard, because a bunch of angry feminazis took him out simply because he spoke the truth about diversity on campus and the differences in men and women.

The feminist movement is still alive and well, and it contains the central belief there's really no difference between men and women, we're all the same, we're all just conditioned differently, but we can all do what everybody else does, we're all equal, there is no inherent difference. Now, you think I'm laughing when I -- joking when I suggest they change the name from Harvard to Hervard; they changed the word "history" to "herstory" at one point, remember, in the militant feminist movement. In fact, maybe we can have two schools, Hisvard and Hervard, and just sequester the students. Hervard: Übersexuals need not apply, metrosexuals would be welcome, but the few slots are very competitive. Transsexuals, your scholarship's in the mail before you even apply.

And this, from the same day, is just strange:

OK, so there's that. Lemme put that aside. Next little story, and this -- this actually is from Sunday. It's an Associated Press story: "Ginsburg bears burden without O'Connor. It'll be a one-woman show in the Supreme Court starting Tuesday. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only female among the nine justices, and she's not so happy about it." So, resign. If you don't like it, resign. If you don't like being the only woman on the court, then go somewhere else. Besides, David Souter's a girl. Everybody knows that. What's the big deal? I'm talking about attitudinally, here, folks. You gotta -- you just -- Dawn [studio transcriber] agrees. She's nodding her head in agreement.

The day before that:

Speaking of Jimmy Carter, did you see what his son, Jack, said? ..."I am pro-choice as far as a woman choosing. But I am against abortion." Well, there is a totally worthless view. This is just his version of, "I support the troops, but I don't support the war." Or "I'm against slavery, but I oppose freeing the slaves. I'm for jobs, but I'm not for Wal-Mart. I'm for open government, except when a Democrat's in office, and I want to have the power to do what I want to do without anybody seeing me."

I mean these people are just -- they are so -- just total wimps. Come on, Jack, tell us what you really believe, and stand for something, and come out and lead on that basis, Jack. This is -- "No, I wanna make sure I don't offend the women." This -- this is -- here you go. Classic example of the castrati, the new castrati. Jack Carter is -- has been castrated by the feminization of this culture since he grew up. He's -- he's three years older than I am. He was subject to the same pressures I was, plus probably even more, what with his dad being in there in the White House and so forth.

You heard, of course, that he and Daryn Kagan broke up recently. (I know, I know)

It sounds like Rush has even more issues with women than he did before. It also sounds like he's heavily trolling his favorite porn sites. He's got transexuals and castrati on the brain again.



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digby 2/23/2006 12:49:00 PM |

 
Shipping News

by digby


CNN just reported that Condoleeza Rice called for Syria to cooperate in the investigation of the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister. She really ought to keep that issue quiet for the moment.

Check out this report from Robert Parry:

The Bush administration is letting the United Arab Emirates take control of six key U.S. ports despite its own port’s reputation as a smuggling center used by arms traffickers, drug dealers and terrorists, apparently including the assassins of Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Press accounts have noted that the UAE’s port of Dubai served as the main transshipment point for Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Q. Khan’s illicit transfers of materiel for building atomic bombs as well as the location of the money-laundering operations used by the Sept. 11 hijackers, two of whom came from the UAE.

But the year-old mystery of the truck-bomb assassination of Hariri also has wound its way through the UAE’s port facilities. United Nations investigators tracked the assassins’ white Mitsubishi Canter Van from Japan, where it had been stolen, to the UAE, according to a Dec. 10, 2005, U.N. report.

At that time, UAE officials had been unable to track what happened to the van after its arrival in Dubai. Presumably the van was loaded onto another freighter and shipped by sea through the Suez Canal to Lebanon, but the trail had gone cold in the UAE.

While not spelling out the precise status of the investigation in the UAE, the Dec. 10 report said U.N. investigators had sought help from “UAE authorities to trace the movements of this vehicle, including reviewing shipping documents from the UAE and, with the assistance of the UAE authorities, attempting to locate and interview the consignees of the container in which the vehicle or its parts is believed to have been shipped.”

The UAE’s competence – or lack of it – in identifying the “consignees” or the freighter used to transport the van to Lebanon could be the key to solving the Hariri murder. This tracking ability also might demonstrate whether UAE port supervisors have the requisite skills for protecting U.S. ports from terrorist penetration.

The Bush administration anticipated this and made sure this was addressed in the secret agreement:

Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible." It promised to take "all reasonable steps" to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

That "reviewing shipping documents" thing might be a little problem though. There is this:

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

Let's just hope that DHS doesn't need to look at any "business records" in order to trace terrorist activity in the US. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.


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digby 2/23/2006 12:47:00 PM |

 
Civil War

by tristero

Is there now a civil war in Iraq, as the lunatic right is so eager to have its opponents claim? And would calling the horrors going on now within Iraq a "civil war" help or even further obscure any understanding of what's going on?


Depends on the meaning of civil war which, I gather, is not at all a set definition among legitimate scholars. This, of course, lets the wingnuts play their grotestque sophistical games - Who sez it's civil war? Only by liberals' definition! - games made more perverse as the blood flows ever more freely. But there's something more important at stake than arguing over when a civil war is "officially" a civil war or just "significant civic untidiness." And that is trying to get some sort of conceptual handle with which to comprehend what is indisputably a violent, chaotic catastrophe.

How do I see the events of the last few days, the mosque bombing and the subsequent violence? I see them as making the issue of a disintegrative civil war in Iraq - and the scope of its tragic potential - an issue that is long overdue for serious focus. And make no mistake: The United States will be blamed for it. Not only Bush, but you and me. Although many of us fought as hard as we could to prevent Bush from doing anything as stupid as invading and conquering Iraq, we - and our kids- will be blamed; we will have to endure the consequences of the incompetence and stupidity of the Bush administration.

As a preliminary to a serious discussion, here are some remarks from September 16, 2005 from the Council on Foreign Relations. There is much more to be said, of course. And there are things I disagree with here. But they are interesting and thougthful comments:

Lionel Beehner,staff writer for cfr.org, asked several experts their opinions of what constitutes a civil war, and whether the situation in Iraq qualifies or not.
...

[Michael O'Hanlon] "The kind of civil war I’m worried about is of the ethnic-cleansing kind, where people form militias and clear out neighborhoods...If you saw the militia-style combats—clearing out neighborhoods, people fighting each other and getting killed in pitched gun battles versus car bombs, or leaders calling for more organized conflict—then that would constitute a civil war."
...

[Kenneth Katzman] "Civil war is organized violence designed to change the political structure or governance within a country, or internal conflict within a state...

This week [September 16, 2005] it’s definitely become clearer that we’ve entered civil war, but whether it’s a sustained or permanent feature, we don’t know. Also, I wouldn’t say it’s full-blown, that is, where it’s neighborhood against neighborhood...just because you don’t have one side fighting back doesn’t mean you’re not in a civil war. "

...

[Marina Ottaway] "To go from acts of terrorism to civil war you need two population groups deliberately targeting each other. As long as it is insurgents trying to kill people to dissemminate terror, and the population is angry at the terrorists, that does not constitute civil war. In the case of Iraq, we would talk of civil war if the insurgents, who are overwhelmingly Sunni, started to deliberately target Shiites (or Kurds) and the targeted group reacted by holding every Sunni responsible, and thus would seek revenge against all Sunnis. I’m very hesitant to say you have a civil war in Iraq now. [Again, as of September 16, 2005].

I think Iraq is sliding very closely in that direction. It’s not quite there yet, but there is no longer a viable political process underway to halt the slide into civil war."
...

[David Phillips] "It’s already civil war. Civil war is sectarian-based conflict that’s systematic and coordinated. This has been going on for some time [in Iraq]...Next, what happens is the political process breaks down and sectarian strife worsens, Iraqi Kurds withdraw their cooperation from the government, ethnic conflict ensues, and Iraq starts to fragment. This will force the United States to manage the deconstruction of Iraq, meaning the country is not viable, and the United States can’t have 140,000 troops in the middle of a civil war. We’ll have to withdraw troops to the north, draw a line in the thirty-sixth parallel [which formerly demarcated the largely Kurdish no-fly zone from the rest of Iraq], and secure U.S. national interests, in the form of Kirkuk’s oil fields and protecting democracy in northern Iraq."
...

[Thomas X. Hammes]: "I think you know it when you see it, but we’re not there yet. In a true civil war, the mass of society on both sides is involved. Civil war would require family-on-family violence. That’s not the case yet...Obviously, all sides are preparing for the possibility [of civil war], but I think as long as [Shiites and Sunnis] are talking and trying to work through the constitution, we’re OK. "

...

[Steven Metz] "It’s really a whole spectrum because when we hear the phrase “civil war,” we think of the equivilance of total war. But I think there are lots of things at lower levels that constitute civil war. In terms of its definition, it’s obviously just war primarily internal to a country, even though it could have some external involvement. I’ve said all along the chances are perhaps fifty-fifty that the ultimate outcome [in Iraq] will be some sort of major civil war. I haven’t seen anything politically or militarily that would lead me to change that position.

The bottom line is Iraqis don’t have a strong sense of national identity but rather a sense of tribal and local identities. Countries like that are only able to avoid internal conflict if they have a powerful, central government, like Iraq had under Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, a democracy is not the type of government equipped to hold together such a fractured society."

tristero 2/23/2006 11:53:00 AM |

 
Insider Outsiders

by digby

When did the mainstream DC press come to believe that they represent outside the beltway thinking?

Today, Josh Marshall notes:

...there's just nothing more precious than seeing the faux-populist poseur Post editorial writers standing tough against an entrenched "establishment" of thirty-something, tenure-desperate semioticians and lit geeks in defense of "mainstream American values", a well of mores and beliefs with which the Post is no doubt deeply in touch. (Peel away the Fred Hiatt mask and underneath it's Bruce Springsteen; cut a little deeper and he's an Iowa farmer.)

Precious indeed. I caught the same thing coming from the Wall Street Journal(!) editor "Paul Gigot, GOP good ole boy who apparently lives somewhere in rural Nebraska:"

...I didn’t speak to anybody from the White House or the vice president’s office all week on this. It was looking at it from outside the Beltway and saying where did this story stand on the relative scale of importance?

Gigot, too, evidently believes he has his finger on the heartland pulse.

This is why we are having such a disconnect with the mainstream press. They are laboring under some ridiculous belief that they are the voice of the people when they are actually the voice of the establishment --- which is, by the way, Republican.

Democrats have a very bad habit of paying too much attention to the beltway punditocrisy. Online media isn't going to change the world as we know it, but it might just be able to break up this abusive relationship and get them looking outside the beltway more. The establishment does not favor Democrats but thars gold in them thar hills if they care to look.


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digby 2/23/2006 09:38:00 AM |

 
Issues And Competence

by digby


TAPPED approvingly quotes this from a new Union blog called Laying it On The Line

We keep losing elections because the parties are fighting on two different levels. We talk about competence and issues. They talk about character and values.

We appeal to narrow self-interest and a laundry list of issues. We are down in the weeds. They appeal to a higher plane, as pollster Cornell Belcher puts it, getting a substantial number of low income whites to vote not ‘against their economic interests’ as some would have it, but for what they see as higher interests.

Democrats will continue to win on the issues but lose elections until we learn to cast our issues in terms of values and characater.

Or until people finally see that the Republican committment to values and character is nothing but a scam --- which is happening --- and they see that such things are not very well measured by someone spouting a few religious code words and being against abortion.

I'm all for inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. They are essential components of successful politics and I don't think Democrats do enough of it. But the Republicans have bastardized these concepts of "character" to mean you don't have sex and "values" to mean you are against gay marriage and abortion and they have become code words in themselves. Once people begin to separate this phony Elmer Gantry hucksterism from the actual performance of the Republican majority in office, perhaps some universal values like "honesty" and "responsibility" and "respect" might even come back into fashion. I suspect when that happens, many voters are going to be looking for teacher instead of a preacher. Issues and competence tend to become more highly valued when the shit comes down.

Update:


To clarify. Ever since Dukakis I have railed against using the "competence" argument. It's flat and technocratic and doesn't work when compared to the soaring "we are the greatest" or "we are the free-est" rhetoric coming from the right.

But right now we are seeing an epic meltdown in basic governance layered underneath years of values rhetoric, inspirational cant about freedom and democracy and fear mongering about "smokin' em out o their caves." I have a suspicion that we are going to have a couple of elections in which competence is going to be a substantial part of the discussion. The debacle in Iraq and the corruption scandals have turned the tables on the soaring rhetoric about freedom and the values arguments about personal character. They won't play the way they used to --- indeed, they are probably going to be most useful as criticism.

As I wrote, I'm a big believer in inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. I think we should get some. And I think we should talk about values like "honesty" "responsibility" and "respect." I've been relentlessly hectoring the Democrats about showing conviction and fighting for fundamental principles. I believe this is essential.

But let's not make the mistake of fighting the last war. We may just naturally be bringing something to the party that people want right now. Good government. Issues and competence are arrows we have in our quiver and we should not be afraid to shoot them when the time is right.



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digby 2/23/2006 07:53:00 AM |

 
Aw, That's Too Bad, David Irving. We Got ACLU. Austria Doesn't.

by tristero

I'm still trying to dig out from under the chaos that usually accompanies major concerts (oddly, before the performances, life stays pretty organized, why I don't know) but thought I'd briefly weigh in with some thoughts on the Austrian conviction of scumbag David Irving for the crime of...being a scumbag.

Now, the Jerusalem Post appears to approve of Irving's sentence to imprisonment for three years for denying the Holocaust. Yet their editorial takes note that Deborah Lipstadt, who famously was sued for libel by Irving - a case Irving lost and then some - believes that Irving has the right to lie through his teeth about Hitler, Jews, and the Holocaust without thereby becoming an involuntary guest of the Austrian penal system.

Of course, I agree with Lipstadt. Free speech means the freedom to offend. And that's that.

Well... Not quite. It's not that simple. Sure there's free speech. And then there's the indisputable fact that Irving is a lying, unprincipled, Nazi-loving, right wing sociopath who repeatedly has bent over backwards to exonerate Hitler for 6 million plus murders while, at the same time, ridiculing and sliming the lucky few who escaped the gas chambers and lived to tell the tale.

And so, to be perfectly blunt and honest about it, I really don't give a good goddamm what happens to David Irving. Let the bastard rot in hell. Y'think I'd lift a finger to help him? Y'kidding?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it a million times. Free speech, free speech! But when it comes to Nazi lovers, it ain't me, babe. Sure, intellectually, I get it. But if you think I'm gonna take the time truly to defend Irving's right to lie and rewrite some of the most tragic history - if not, the most tragic history - humans have endured, think again.

Ditto, if only slightly less ugly, the Danish newspaper editor behind the racist cartoons. Yup, yup, yup. He indeed had the right to publish them. But did you just say you want me to sign a petition in support of HIS free speech rights? Well, geez... you know, I have a serious case of writer's cramp right now and my doctor forbids me holding a pen for at least the next 6 months, so, no I ain't signin' nuttin.' Can't.

And that's why there's the ACLU.

Well, to be precise, that's why there would be the ACLU if these things happened here in the US. So let's now leave David Irving in Austria, and Flemming Rose in Copenhagen, and return to America and free speech here. After all, why go all the way to Austria, or Denmark, to sniff out someone rotten? There are a lot of inflammatory stinkers in this country. I don't mean only Pat Robertson and Antonin Scalia, of course. I'm thinking about that always useful nobody the right likes to smear lefties with, what's his name - Ward Cleaver? Winston something? Anyway, that guy.

Life is far too short for me to waste a moment of it worrying in detail about the civil rights of a malicious ignoramus who called my friends and neighbors "little Eichmanns." And I really don't care at all about some jerks at U of Illinois, especially when there are people whose rights I DO care proactively to defend like say, parents who want their kids to learn science and not fundamentalist propaganda in science class. For this reason, if it appears that Ward Cleaver's rights may be violated, then - because the principle of free speech and civil liberties simply must be respected regardless of my personal beliefs and feelings - it is essential to the operation of a modern democracy to support an organization like ACLU.

Strangely, many on the right and some others don't quite get ACLU's beat. Defending Oliver North or the Ku Klux Klan in no way implies endorsement of North's loopy Cro-Magnon militarism or the Klan's racism. The problem is this. Once you start infringing on Ollie's constitutional right to be a flaming asshole,fundamentalist churches any NAMBLA are next. No great loss, you say? You're right, I agree. But the problem with infringing those civil rights is that rapidly you reach the point where just about any kind of speech can be banned for any reason. And therein lies the problem.

First and foremost, the banning of speech and the curtailment of civil rights, is a political act, exercised by the powerful upon the weak. It is an immensely slippery and dangerous slope. Speech suddenly gets criminalized at the whim of the government or corporations in cahoots with the government. That is why those of us who don't have any interest in speaking up in defense of major league jerks nevertheless refuse to give up our ACLU cards when they offer their services to defend someone we utterly detest. We know that, if they get away with shutting up Ollie or a Nazi, we're next. Just as we don't like Iran/Contra criminals, we don't like NAMBLA either. But they all got rights. Or none of us really do.

It goes without saying that ACLU also defends a lot of right-on causes. Recently, ACLU was doing God's work in the Dover "intelligent design" creationism trial (no irony intended; "God's work" is an appropriate way to describe ACLU's efforts on behalf of science, religion, and American education). And that's just for starters.

But what makes ACLU so admirable is that that is not all that they do. They go beyond where my emotions can permit. Whereas I truly couldn't care less whether a Nazi lover has free speech, they care long after my anger at Irving's lies has forgotten the free speech principle that lets Irving off the hook, legally (but not morally). So by being an ACLU member, I unequivocally support free speech without ever having to speak up in defense of the Klan. So whatever flaws the organization might have, as long as ACLU cleaves to its mission to defend free speech, I will continue to support them no matter who they choose to defend. (Even, dammit, David Irving, if he ever gets in trouble over free speech issues in the US.)

I realize this appears not to be a rousing defense of freedom of speech. In fact it is. It simply takes into account that one of the best ways to uphold the principle without being exploited by cynical manipulators is to support an institution whose sole mission is to defend specific liberties like free speech without endorsing any specific ideology. Free speech - real free speech - is a complex issue, and an emotional one. Rightly so. There are ways to be pro-free speech without holding hands with the American counterparts of sleazy gits like David Irving or Flemming Rose. ACLU is one way.

[Not to rightwingers: You might object to what seems an unfair pairing of the likes of David Irving - a known liar and anti-Semite - with the Danish editor Flemming Rose (who is not known publicly to be either and who I assume in neither in private). It would appear to be obvious that I implied they are alike only in their appeal to free speech for their disgraceful behavior, but rightwing nuts have managed in the past to assume much more.

Therefore, always sensitive to the special needs of my readers on the right and their numerous cognitive challenges, let me be clear. I do not wish to enter into specious arguments as to which is a more cowardly scumbag, Irving or Rose. So, let's all agree that "sleazy" refers only to Irving in the last sentence and "gits" to both.]
tristero 2/23/2006 07:48:00 AM |

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

 
Innocent Life

by digby

As the country careens toward a supreme court showdown on Roe vs Wade, I just have to point out that columnists like EJ Dionne are full of shit when they say that most members of the right to life movement care more about a the taking of an innocent life rather than wanting to control a woman’s reproductive systems. They may think that’s what they care about but if that were true 81% of Americans, including many who call themselves "pro-life," wouldn't believe that abortion should be legal in case of rape or incest.

I hate to point out the obvious but children who are conceived in rape or incest are just as innocent as those who are conceived because birth control failed. The difference is not in the relative innocence of the children --- it’s the "innocence" of the woman. Most people believe that she should not be forced to bear the child of her molester, her relative or her rapist. And I think it’s fair to assume that they think this because they believe that the pregnancy wasn’t her “fault."

Some people would probably make the argument that having to bear a child in the case of rape or incest is too traumatic for the mother and that is why they shouldn’t have to bear the child. But people talk about giving up children for adoption as if that is somehow easier than the trauma of bearing her child concieved in rape and having to give it up for adoption. For some that might be true. But for others it most definitely is not. Indeed, it can be terribly traumatic to go through a full term pregnancy and then be unable to raise her child for any reason --- a child who would be the brother or sister of her other children.

Neither do these people allow that it would be terribly traumatic to have a child while still in high school or after already having had three children in five years or many of the other circumstances that could make a pregnancy unwanted. I don’t buy the trauma argument. I think it’s pretty clear that most “pro-life” people who hold that abortion is ok in the case of rape or incest (all but the 19% who are opposed in all cases) believe this is so because the woman did not consent to sex, which makes her “innocent” too --- and therefore she should not be punished as other women are by being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth and all that goes with that.

They seem to think that sex isn't a primary biological imperative --- meaning that succumbing to the most primitive urge we have is an act which should be punished if it results in what nature intends --- pregnancy. It is not a function of bad character. It’s a function of nature. There seem to be few people who are willing to admit that the sex drive is stronger than most people’s willpower from time to time --- and therefore unwanted pregnancy will also happen from time to time.

We could take a fair amount of chance out of this equation by simply promoting the use and availability of birth control. The more available and easy it is to obtain the less likely unwanted pregnancy will happen. We could at least educate young people and make it easy for them to get reliable birth control. If pro-lifers really cared about not killing “innocent life” they would have condom machines in school alongside the cokes and candy bars. There is no group of people on earth who are more horny, more impulsive and more likely to think there is no tomorrow than teen-agers. Yet this is the group that the pro-life people most want to punish with early pregnancy if they fail to beat back their natural urges.

But let’s face it. Even if everyone had birth control, unwanted pregnancies would still happen. Nothing is foolproof. As the Republicans remind us incessantly, the only foolproof way to ensure there is no unwanted preganancy is abstinence. That's the real message of the "pro-life" movement. If women don't want to endure forced childbirth they shouldn't have sex. Period.



Jane is asking people to contact Naral and Planned Parenthood to ask them to support Ned Lamont in the Connecticut senate race against Lieberman, whose loyalty to the Gang of 14 Milquetoasts was stronger than his loyalty to women. This is getting very serious now and it's long past time for the anti-forced childbirth groups to play hardball.


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digby 2/22/2006 02:20:00 PM |

 
The Deal

by digby


From what I just heard from Senator Warner on CNN, it's about maintaining access to the ports, as I guessed earlier. (Airfields too.) Ed Henry just said the UAE hosts more of the US Navy in the gulf than any other country. If we diss them and refuse to scratch their backs, they'll get upset and pull back permission to dock our ships in their country. It's nothing personal. It's strictly business.



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digby 2/22/2006 02:04:00 PM |

 
His Petard

by digby


From Dave at Seeing the Forest, here's Rush from yesterday:

This is the first time in four years that I can recall a Democrat seriously being concerned about this group of people, and this is racism. This is racism. We are concluding that all Arabs are terrorists. We are concluding that every damn one of them -- be they a sheik, an emir -- they are all terrorists. They all have ties to terrorists and they all seek our utter, total destruction, and we can't risk an exception to that. They're all that way -- and welcome to racism Democrats, because the Democrats are leading the show on this just as well as a lot of conservatives are. So when Democrats are illustrating their racism, their xenophobia, they're also demonstrating that they fully acknowledge we have an enemy. Well, this is a tenuous position for them to take because their kook base doesn't believe any of this.

Uhm...

All right, well, I'm watching this during the break -- the Senate hearings. I'm just watching Sen. "Dick Turban," ah, Dick Turban is doing his -- from Illinois -- he of Club G'itmo fame. Ha! I wish Roberts would have shown up in the Club G'itmo T-shirt today. Maybe, maybe a Club G'itmo java coffee cup, just for Dick Turban. Ah, but anyway, Dick Turban is up there saying, "Ah, you're going to judged here, Judge. You're going to be judged on one question, just one question. You going to expand the personal freedoms of the Americans, or are you going to restrict them? You going to expand personal freedom, or you going to restrict personal freedom?"

Illustration from the August 2005 issue of The Limbaugh Letter

[Reading from AP report] "One detainee wrapped in an Israeli flag, some were shackled hand and foot in fetal positions for 18 to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves." Ugh! I thought they did that anyway over there.

It's awfully tempting to simply answer Rush's maidenly concern about the UAE's royal family's delicate feelings with this:

If it were up to you people, we wouldn't exist as a country today. You would have given in to the Soviets long ago, you would have appeased the Soviet communists. You would appease Iran right now. You probably wouldn't have cared about the war on terror or the bombing on 9-11. You would have sought out bin Laden and tried to make a deal with him, and this country exists today only because we have been able to prevent you from gaining power to do that kind of thing. We've had our run-ins with Neville Chamberlain types, and you're the modern incarnation

.


Traitors.

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digby 2/22/2006 11:05:00 AM |

 
You Can Never Be Too Careful

by digby


Following up my post below, I'd like to recommend this diary over at Kos by hekebolos. I think this is an excellent insight into why this port issue is having so much resonance:

Time and time again, this president has said that his highest goal, superceding all others, and even superceding any previous precedent of executive authority--is to defend the American people. He has shown time and time again that neither international law, nor federal law, nor the constitution, nor the Legislative or Judicial Branches of the Government of the United States, will prevent him from executing that duty as he and he alone sees fit.

The Bush presidency has not really been the "fuck-you" presidency. Really, it has been the "I can act like a king because I do national security and after 9/11 you can never be too careful" presidency.

And right here, it all comes crashing down. Because for many Bush supporters, it doesn't really matter whether Iraq helped or harmed national security. It doesn't really matter whether the domestic spying program assisted or hindered surveillance of suspected terrorists. It doesn't really matter whether the Patriot Act helps get new leads against terror suspects--because he's trying his best to do what he thinks is right, in their view, and if they agree with him on other issues, they'll be willing to forgive whatever mistakes have been made in his quest to protect the country, because he seems to care that much.

The Portgate scandal is crucial because Bush has violated his own doctrine. When Bush said that we need to justify holding a Middle Eastern company to a higher standard, he showed that he in fact does not agree with the key point of his own doctrine: namely, that in a post-9/11 world, you can never be too careful.

He needs to be secretly spy on American citizens without a warrant and he needs to be able to hold them indefinitely in jail without a trial and he needs to be able to torture innocent people with impunity because we just can't be too careful after 9/11.

But there's no reason to go overboard by saying that we shouldn't outsource our port management to a company owned by a state whose leaders have been known to hang out with bin Laden.

Perhaps the best way to put this is that the administration seems to trust the leaders of the United Arab Emirates more than the US congress or the secret FISA Court.


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digby 2/22/2006 09:30:00 AM |

 
Blackmail

by digby

Every converstation I've had with people about this port deal, on both the right and the left, has been one of complete befuddlement. Why on earth would Bush do something this politically obtuse? After all the fearmongering and the talk about "oceans don't protect us" for the last four years it's just inexplicable that they would go to the wall for a deal that looks so terrible.

Just now I sleepily clicked over to Atrios and read this, which just makes it even more unbelievable:

The Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency's director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States on Thursday.

Had the CIA targeted bin Laden, half the royal family would have been wiped out as well, he said.

Here's the bit from the 9/11 report which doesn't explicitly name the royal family:

The Desert Camp, February 1999

Early in 1999, the CIA received reporting that Bin Ladin was spending much of his time at one of several camps in the Afghan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning of February, Bin Ladin was reportedly located in the vicinity of the Sheikh Ali camp, a desert hunting camp being used by visitors from a Gulf state. Public sources have stated that these visitors were from the United Arab Emirates.

Reporting from the CIA's assets provided a detailed description of the hunting camp, including its size, location, resources, and security, as well as of Bin Ladin's smaller, adjacent camp. Because this was not in an urban area, missiles launched against it would have less risk of causing collateral damage. On February 8, the military began to ready itself for a possible strike. The next day, national technical intelligence confirmed the location and description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates. But the location of Bin Ladin's quarters could not be pinned down so precisely.The CIA did its best to answer a host of questions about the larger camp and its residents and about Bin Ladin's daily schedule and routines to support military contingency planning. According to reporting from the tribals, Bin Ladin regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis; the tribals expected him to be at the hunting camp for such a visit at least until midmorning on February 11. Clarke wrote to Berger's deputy on February 10 that the military was then doing targeting work to hit the main camp with cruise missiles and should be in position to strike the following morning. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert appears to have been briefed on the situation.

No strike was launched. By February 12 Bin Ladin had apparently moved on, and the immediate strike plans became moot. According to CIA and Defense officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with Bin Ladin or close by. Clarke told us the strike was called off after consultations with Director Tenet because the intelligence was dubious, and it seemed to Clarke as if the CIA was presenting an option to attack America's best counterterrorism ally in the Gulf. The lead CIA official in the field, Gary Schroen, felt that the intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable; the Bin Ladin unit chief, "Mike," agreed. Schroen believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill Bin Ladin before 9/11.

Even after Bin Ladin's departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and Bin Ladin. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former Bin Ladin unit chief found out about Clarke's call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such a clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke's phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted. CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, were irate. "Mike" thought the dismantling of the camp erased a possible site for targeting Bin Ladin.

The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.

In July 1999, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hamdan bin Zayid threatened to break relations with the Taliban over Bin Ladin.166 The Taliban did not take him seriously, however. Bin Zayid later told an American diplomat that the UAE valued its relations with the Taliban because the Afghan radicals offered a counterbalance to "Iranian dangers" in the region, but he also noted that the UAE did not want to upset the United States.

What a tangled web. It certainly appears that the UAE has us wrapped around their little fingers, doesn't it? And it's not just that they are "both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem." They are holding something else over our heads as well (again via Atrios):

But he said he would withhold judgment on the deal's national security implications until after today's briefing. The United Arab Emirates provides docking rights for more U.S. Navy ships than any other nation in the region, Warner noted. He added: "If they say they have not been treated fairly in this, we run the risk of them pulling back some of that support at a critical time of the war."

This is obviously a very complicated relationship, which explains why Bush was singing kumbaaya around the drum circle yesterday asking everyone to give peace a chance.

But here's the thing. Bush has been playing politics with this complicated situation for years now, saying things like "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists." He spent the entire presidential campaign taunting John Kerry for allegedly requiring a "global test" and using his applause lines like a bludgeon:

I will never hand over America's security decisions to foreign leaders and international bodies that do not have America's interests at heart.

... the senator would have America bend over backwards to satisfy a handful of governments with agendas different from our own.

This is my opponent's alliance-building strategy: brush off your best friends, fawn over your critics. And that is no way to gain the respect of the world.

Here's some vintage Bush cowboy bullshit trash talk, from just last week:

First, when we see threats, we've got to deal with them. When I was growing up in West Texas, oceans protected us. You might remember some of those days. Old Mayor Martinez, I know he remembers those days when we felt pretty comfortable here in America. We could see a threat overseas, but oceans made it pretty clear that -- to a lot of folks -- that nothing would happen, you know. September 11th came along and made it clear that we are vulnerable, that the enemy can hit us if they -- if they want to.

And therefore, when you see a threat, you've got to deal with it. You can't take things for granted anymore. The best way to deal with this enemy is to defeat them overseas so we don't have to face them here at home, and to stay on the hunt. (Applause.) And that's what we're doing.

And we've got a coalition of countries. I spent a lot of time reminding people about the nature of the war. Listen, the tendency for folks is to say, well, this really isn't a war. I can understand that. Who wants to walk around thinking there's a war about to hit us. I mean, that's -- that's my job to worry about it, not yours. How can you have an economy recover from a recession if people are afraid to risk capital because they're worried about thinking something is going to happen? And the same thing happens overseas. People kind of want to slip to the comfortable. They don't believe it's a war, some of them, and I understand that. And so we spend a lot of time reminding people that we've got to work together because the enemy can't stand what we stand for, and that's freedom. They just hate freedom. And so we've got a good coalition, and -- and we're on the hunt. We're keeping the pressure on them. It's hard to plot and plan and execute attacks when you're on the run.

And so the first step of our strategy is defeat them there so we don't to have to face them here. And we've got some great special forces -- I met the special forces command guy here -- and there's great intelligence officers and wonderful coalition folks. We're cutting off their money. It makes it kind of hard to operate when you can't get your bank accounts full of money in order to -- we're just doing a lot of stuff. And it's important for citizens to know that there's a constant, constant pressure. I think about it every day.

And we're making progress -- Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, September the 11th plotter-planner, is incarcerated; his successor brought to justice. Slowly but surely, we're finding them where they hide, and they know we're on their trail.

Secondly, we got to deny them safe haven. These people can't operate without safe haven. It's an interesting war we're in. It's totally different from what we're used to because we're not -- we're not facing nation-states; we're dealing with an enemy that is international in nature, that hides in states.

When the President says something like, if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist, those words mean nothing unless you act upon them. And I said that to the people of Afghanistan -- the Taliban. They didn't listen. And so we acted. And removing the Taliban -- (applause) -- is a clear signal that we won't tolerate safe haven. In other words, if you harbor the terrorist, you're just as guilty as the murderers. And that's a clear signal that the United States must continue to send in order to win the war on terror.

But, it was never quite that simple was it? We aren't in a "war" as it is commonly understood, are we? Our "enemies" are sometimes our "allies" and things change from one day to the next. It's complicated and --- dare I say it --- nuanced . Our security can't be assured by simply flexing our muscles and roaring like beasts.

But, after years of that puerile chest beating he can't expect everybody to do a big 180 and accept this crap:

I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British (sic) company. I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to people of the world, we'll treat you fairly. And after careful scrutiny, we believe this deal is a legitimate deal that will not jeopardize the security of the country, and at the same time, send that signal that we're willing to treat people fairly."

Is it any wonder that this whole thing has brought about extreme cognitive dissonance?

It may be that we have gotten ourselves into a terrible position in which we cannot "offend" the UAE by blocking this deal because they may reciprocate by blocking access to their deep water ports. If that's the case, then we are being blackmailed by the UAE for big money and potentially putting our own ports in danger in the process. According to the 9/11 report they have been playing both ends against the middle for years. And we have Yosemite Sam and Quickdraw McGraw in charge of dealing with them. It's not a big surprise that the whole thing is blowing up in their faces.



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digby 2/22/2006 07:32:00 AM |

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

 
Cutthroats

by digby


Both Kos and Atrios linked to this post about how Rove smeared John Kerry fior allegedly being in cahoots with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. It was bullshit, of course, and now we find out that Rove's buddy Abramoff was selling Bush face time and cut a deal for a meeting with Mahathir for 1.2 mil. (And to think the Republicans had coronaries about those silly "white house coffees.")

This post also notes some other dirty tricks from the last electionthat I was unaware of. From a Miami Herald article dated november 1, 2004:

The visits came as the ground war escalated. The National Jewish Democratic Council reported Sunday that Kerry campaign signs were defaced with stickers reading, ''Arafat Endorses,'' suggesting Kerry has the backing of the ailing Palestinian leader.

Bush's campaign has looked to siphon off traditionally Democratic-leaning Jewish voters, and the stickers echo a Republican Party of Florida mailer that also suggests Kerry is being supported by Arafat.

Kerry supporters have pointed to the senator's 100 percent pro-Israel voting record to rebuff the Republican claims that Bush is a stronger supporter of the Jewish state.

Republican voters received a torrent of negative anti-Kerry campaign mailings Saturday, some from an organization with strong Republican ties, the Florida Leadership Council.

The group is headed by Cory Tilley, a former aide to Gov. Bush, and David Johnson, former executive director of the Republican Party of Florida.

The mailings range from images of the party's stalwart leaders -- like Ronald Reagan -- to more ominous pieces that equate a vote for Kerry as the first step in leading to a terrorist attack on South Florida.

FAKE ARTICLE

The most negative mailing from the Florida Leadership Council has a fake newspaper story from the year 2007 underneath a photo of children in a classroom wearing gas masks.

The dateline is ''Florida Red Zone,'' and the fake story reads: 'President John Kerry warned parents and children in South Florida that mandatory radiation and chemical gear would be required to be worn `for the foreseeable future' since the Suitcase Dirty Bomb terrorist attack on South Florida in the spring.''

On the reverse side of the mailing, it says ``The last line of defense must be stronger than John Kerry.

These are the people who run and win on "moral values."


Sometimes I get criticism from my readers for suggesting that the Democrats must play on the same playing field as the Republicans. They say, "we shouldn't become them." But I never suggest that the Democrats should lie, cheat or play dirty as the Republicans do. I suggest that they wise up and stop pretending that Republicans are anything but ruthless adversaries and adjust accordingly. They can be beaten with smart strategies, but not unless the Democrats internalize the connection between the nice men and women they are working with on capitol hill every day with the thugs they hire to get elected. They are all cogs in the same cutthroat political machine.



Update: When I went to put up the links, I realized that Atrios had written "Always project. Always." it reminded me of a post I did before the election called "Projection Politics" in which I noted that Rove doesn't actually attack the strengths of his opponents, as he like to say he does:

Rove has developed a campaign of projection in which he tars his opponents with his own candidates' weaknesses and then attacks them.

He attacks Kerry for phony heroism thirty years ago when just last year his own candidate had himself filmed in a little costume prancing around on an aircraft carrier pretending he'd won a war that had only begun. But, by tarring Kerry with using war as a PR stunt for his own personal gain, people can process the uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing about Iraq as not really being caused by Junior, but by his rival who is the real shallow opportunist who only pretends to be a man of proven leadership and experience.

[...]

What is interesting about Rove is that his way of dealing with his own candidates' even more glaring deficiencies is to build a Kerry straw man in Bush's exact image and then set it afire. I don't know if it will work, or even if he's aware that he's doing it, projection being epidemic in GOP circles. But, it's disarming and confusing and it makes it difficult to effectively counter attack. You end up with some defensive version of "I know you are but what am I" which doesn't really advance your position.

It's projection/innoculation. And they are very good at it. Of course, you always run the risk that it will circle right back on you, which it seems to have done.



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digby 2/21/2006 01:51:00 PM |

 
Empty Veto

by digby


So Bush says he'll veto any legislation to block the port deal. He says that his government knows what it's doing and wouldn't have ok'd the deal if it would harm the nation's security. This is the same government that did such a great job with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

Assuming that we aren't seeing some sort of kabuki here, it appears that the Eunuch Caucus is getting an earful from their constituents and see no margin in working with the lame albatross right now. He's threatened vetoes before and the invertebrate Republicans have always fallen into line. This time appears to be different.

If this is true, the Bush administration may be effectively over.

Update: Dan Bartlett is going on and on about the "rigorousness" of the process the administration undertook with this port deal. He keeps saying that they have a lot of experience with this company and that the department of Homeland Security will be in charge of security. Apparently, they have no idea that they have lost the trust of the people on exactly these kinds of things. The rigor of their planning, the "experience" with private companies and the ineptitude of Homeland Security.

They have fear mongered their way to victory for four long years, going on and on about how "the oceans don't protect us" anymore and now they act as if port security is just another contract and claim it's important for "our image" to give security contracts to state owned middle eastern companies with ties to terrorism. Wow.

They are left with nothing but the president's "resolve" to govern. They believe that if he digs in his heels everyone will capitulate out of sheer admiration for his machismo. At 39%, the power of his machismo has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. He's in very icy water now.



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digby 2/21/2006 01:02:00 PM |

 
Mixed Signals

by digby


On CNN earlier today:

NGUYEN: Well, it wasn't quite an apology, but it was an admission. Three weeks after his State of the Union address calling for energy independence, President Bush acknowledged today that his administration has been sending some mixed signals.

Mr. Bush visited one of the nation's top renewable energy labs in Colorado. He praised the work that's being done there and acknowledged that just two weeks ago the government laid off 32 workers there. Those jobs have now been restored, just in time for the president's visit.

I'm sure those 32 workers are grateful, but really. This is becoming embarrasing. I don't know if you saw him, but he was draped so far forward on the podium he looked like he was trying to crawl over it. Maybe there was a copy of "My Pet Goat" lying open on the floor.

Update: Here's the full story from the WaPo:

President Bush, on a three-state trip to promote his energy policy, said Tuesday that a budgeting mix-up was the reason 32 workers at one of the nation's premier renewable energy labs were laid off and then reinstated just before his visit.

Bush addressed the funding problem as soon as he began speaking here at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing the sort of renewable energy technologies the president is promoting.

"Sometimes, decisions made as the result of the appropriations process, the money may not end up where it was supposed to have gone," Bush said.

Right. He never meant to cut those jobs. The money just ended up where it wasn't supposed to go.




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digby 2/21/2006 12:45:00 PM |

 
Born Again Con Man

by digby


The Book Of Ralph

It'll make you you hurl.



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digby 2/21/2006 11:29:00 AM |

 
The Trifecta

by digby

If there are three hallmarks of this failed Bush administration, it is hubris, incompetence and cronyism. This port deal features all three.

The hubris is illustrated by the fact that they actually thought after years of fear mongering and beating of Islamic terrorist war drums, they wouldn't be questioned about a United Arab Emirates contract for port security. The king shall not be questioned. The incompetence feature is that they believe it is smart to outsource security, of all things, to another country. If there is one thing all sides can agree upon, it's that the US should control its own borders and ports. It's common sense.

And finally, as we should have known, via FDL, it turns out this is also another crony cock-up:

The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Bush Buddies: Doing a heckuva job, as usual.



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digby 2/21/2006 09:22:00 AM |

 
The Anti-Sentimental American

by digby

Knowing I have a penchant for Chayefsky, Arthur sent me a link to his discussion of "The Americanization of Emily" a film I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen. I'm going to get it today:

Many of the propagandists for war, 40 years ago and ever since -- and up to and most definitely including today -- consider Emily to be "anti-American" and "anti-war." It certainly is all that and more -- if your view of war is the mythic one. But Chayefsky rejects the myth and all its various aspects totally and across the board. It is unjustified to conclude that Chayefsky is "anti-war" in the sense of advocating pacifism: such a view finds no support in the film. But what Chayefsky does convey is just as threatening to the war lovers: while he may view some wars as absolutely necessary and required, that still does not make any war a "good" one, in the affirmative sense. Any war, even one dictated by the demands of self-defense, is immensely destructive and causes untold suffering. Much of that suffering is endured by people who are entirely innocent.

Chayefsky's target is the one identified by Charlie: it is the glorification of war, and the countless ways in which all of us "honor the institution." We build statues of our war heroes and name streets after them; we erect shrines to the dead. We insist on the "ideals" for which we fought, and the "goodness" of our intentions. Many of us do this in the misdirected and destructive search for "meaning" in our lives: our own stunted souls prevent us from finding fulfillment and happiness in our individual lives, so we look for "glory" by climbing over endless piles of corpses.

And what is lost in all of this is the unbearable horror and pain inflicted on individual human beings, and the particularized, specific costs of our quest for glory, or meaning, or "national greatness," or honor.

Read the whole thought provoking essay.



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digby 2/21/2006 08:52:00 AM |

 
On The Internet No One Knows You're A (Singing) Dog

by tristero

Thanks, folks, for all the nice comments about my music - including the ones that that truly were LOL. Just a few things before once again scooting back, more or less, into the closet.

I sent Digby the Times review and he asked if he could mention it. I said it was fine with me. The main reason I don't write more about what I do is that I'm really not trying to promote my musical career in my blogging.* It's not that I'm above promotion; no one is. Even Stravinsky was shameless when it came to hyping his work. It's rather that it seems like a blog is the wrong place to flack external reputations.

For me, the most interesting aspect of blogging has nothing to do with anyone's accomplishments but rather the present quality of their thought and the extent of their knowledge. While it is much less true now than it was in the olden days five years ago, it is still the case that prior reputation counts for much less in the blogosphere than it does Out There. You are read, or not read, based entirely on your ability to persuade from post to post. And in order to be persuasive, not only must you be a decent writer, but you damn well better know how to back up your assertions with convincing, relevant, links. Whether you've got a doctorate in political science from Stanford or are an 11 year old afraid to come out of your bedroom really is besides the point.

That is how it should be. If it does anything, blogging can make hash of the rhetorical fallacy of appealing to authority. One's authority as a blogger, to the extent anyone has any, comes entirely from the merit of the posts. And that is wonderful. You don't read Josh Marshall's blog because he's got a reputation as an ace reporter. You read his blog because with every post, he reports. He is actively making a reputation in a way that, say, a NY Times reporter doesn't have to. The mere act of being hired by the Times confers (even now, of course) an authoritative reputation, whether or not it is deserved. To put it into big words: At its best, blogging transmutes reified power - authority - back into something contingent. Authority is no longer a noun, but a verb. You earn your reputation with every word. It's never assumed.

And brother, do we need to stop listening to unearned authority.

In 2002, the experts in the press gave the experts in the Bush administration a free pass to market an insane, unnecessary war. It was so obviously a mistake that even a musician immediately could understand it was doomed to catastrophe. During 2002 and early '03, I went all over the world for concerts of my music. It was an exciting time, and I loved every minute of it. But there was one thing that was quite striking, wherever I went. Everyone, and I mean I everyone from cab drivers to diplomats, thought the United States had gone insane in its advocacy for an Iraq invasion. And yet, back home the experts assured us it would be a cakewalk.

A few weeks after returning from Sydney, Australia where, John Howard aside, everyone was as alarmed as I was at the impending war, I began blogging in February, 2003. I figured that, artist or no, I knew an imminent foreign policy disaster when I saw one. And to my horror, I was right. I have never wanted to be more wrong than I was about the Bush/Iraq war, but I never doubted that it would end up, more or less, where it has.

And so here I am, still blogging and hoping against hope that this country I love will no longer heed the advice of people who understand the world a lot less well than a fellow who's spent most of us life composing. It's not that I know so much, although I'm not stupid or uneducated. It's that the Bushites know so very, very little.

What the present crisis teaches us, a crisis in which the country is being led by clowns posing as experts, is that the opinions of ordinary citizens are vital to the running of a major democratic power. It's not that expertise isn't essential. Of course it is. But political expertise in a democracy must always confront the full range of public opinion in a meaningful manner. Otherwise, there lie monsters.

Today, the public discourse is so clotted and constrained, so limited to the right and far right, that it really is imperative for those of us who object to the direction the country is going to speak out, strongly and often. Not because we all deserve a prominent media role but rather in the hopes that eventually the media will be forced to broaden its coverage of political opinion to acknowledge voices like ours. Voices expert and persuasive enough to articulate alternatives to Bushism. Heaven knows we need them, and fast.

****

*When I first started to blog, I was a bit concerned about how my politics would affect my career, but didn't care that much. If anything, I care more now. By which I mean that I think it is extremely important to stand up and be counted in opposition to Bush. But I like being Tristero, it's part of who I am, and I don't see any reason to bump the guy off, any more than there's a reason to promote my music.
tristero 2/21/2006 02:33:00 AM |

Monday, February 20, 2006

 
Democrat Libre

by digby


Matt Stoller has a fiery exchange going with Hotline Blogometer and Washington Examiner opinion writer, William Buetler, about the normally navel gazing subject of the blogosphere's influence on politics. I don't have a lot to add, except to take issue with one little bit that Buetler writes in his piece:

The phrase [Vichy Democrats]was timely, punchy, and summed up the anger I saw directed against moderate and conservative Democrats.

No, no, no and no. The anger was not and is not against moderate and conservative Democrats. Paul Hackett is a conservative Democrat. It is against those who seek to either make deals with or capitulate to Republicans, particularly on issues of fundamental principle. "Vichy" is a term I don't use because I think the Republicans do such a fine job of demeaning Dems that I don't need to help them. However, it is a particular term of art that means something quite specific: to sell out your own people to the enemy.

The grassroots of the Democratic Party see something that all the establishment politicians have not yet realized: bipartisanship is dead for the moment and there is no margin in making deals. The rules have changed. When you capitulate to the Republicans for promises of something down the road you are being a fool. When you make a deal with them for personal reasons, you are selling out your party. When you use Republican talking points to make your argument you are helping the other side. When you kiss the president on the lips at the state of the union you are telling the Democratic base that we are of no interest or concern to you. This hyper-partisanship is ugly and it's brutal, but it is the way it is.

It's not "left" and "right" or "liberal," "moderate," or "conservative" that animates the grassroots. We argue some amongst ourselves on policy, of course, but that's not the rap on the establishment. It's the desire that our representatives wake up and recognise that we are in a new political era in which these designations take second place to "Democrat." That's the environment we are in whether we like it or not --- a country sharply divided by party, not ideology.

The Democratic party did everything it could to alleviate the culture war and the partisanship in the 90's by electing southern moderates to the white house and helping the Republicans pass a lot of legislation born of major compromise of Democratic principles. Nothing was good enough. The culture war raged, not on the basis of policy --- there was much in Bill Clinton's policies for a Republican to love. It was based purely on the tribal instincts of the culture warriors who insisted that liberals not only be marginalized (fair enough in politics) but that they be annihilated. They gave no quarter unless public opinion absolutely forced them to.

The grassroots believe that after all that, after moving to the right, after offering to compromise, after allowing our "red state Democrats" to run with the other side who then treated them with nothing but bad faith, now is the time for politicans to make a choice. Submit to them or stand with the resistance.


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digby 2/20/2006 04:19:00 PM |

 
What You See Is What You Get

by digby

I was just watching Bush give a speech and he said "it makes sense for the government to incent people."

I've never really subscribed to the great man theory, but I have to say that in my experience organizations do take their cues from the person at the top. When you have a president who says things this ridiculous every single day, for more than five years, I think it's safe to say that he is a boob. And his government is a perfect reflection of him: incompetent, arrogant, short-sighted, impulsive, secretive. A failure. That is the story of Bush's life. let no one ever say again that it doesn't matter who the president is becuase he'll have great people around him. Bush's government is as bad as anyone could have predicted when we saw him flub that answer about foreigh leaders back in 1999 --- he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. And he's proven it.



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digby 2/20/2006 03:18:00 PM |

 
Filling In The Blank Check

by digby


Be sure to read Glenn Greenwald's piece today about the undercurrent in DC that suggests that the Republicans aren't so sanguine about the NSA scandal accruing to their benefit after all. This is clearly becauase of the pressure coming from within, but I think that mostly has to do with Bush's unpopularity generally (as I write below.) The bottom line is that the Eunuch Caucus needs some viagra, and quick.

Glenn links to this very revealing editorial in Pat Roberts' home paper:

Many Kansans, including members of The Eagle editorial board, have long admired Sen. Pat Roberts for his plainspokenness and reputation for fair brokering of issues.

So it's troubling that Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is fast gaining the reputation in Washington, D.C., as a reliable partisan apologist for the Bush administration on intelligence and security controversies.

We hope that's not true. But Roberts' credibility is on the line. . . .

What's bothering many, though, is that Roberts seems prepared to write the Bush team a series of blank checks to conduct the war on terror, even to the point of ignoring policy mistakes and possible violations of law.

That's not oversight -- it's looking the other way.

This is Kansas we're talking about.

It's also a sign that Rovism may have run its course. His MO, after all, is to entirely dominate the party from the top down, something that only works if the "top" can wield the whip. The Cheney episode was a window into the inner workings of the white house in this respect and it's quite clear that Rove does not have the clout he once did. He couldn't control Cheney. It's going to be harder and harder for him to control this nervous congress. All lame ducks have a hard time retaining control -- a lame duck at 39% is an albatross around his party's neck.

Of course, Rove is probably a little bit distracted by certain personal matters too. And that's one very good reason to keep the pressure on. Even if we can't advance our own agenda, we can certainly help make it difficult for them to advance theirs. That's just as important to successful politics as anything else.



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digby 2/20/2006 01:21:00 PM |

 
Ombusdman On The Runway

by digby

This is rich. Julia catches Daniel Okrent, erstwhile "public editor" of the NY Times, being critical of the war coverage after he vociferously defended it in his column a while back:

He said poor press coverage lead to the Iraq war, because “in a time of war, editors being [sic] to wear epaulettes on their shoulder” and The Times' were not exceptional in jumping on the bandwagon.

I think Julia's being much to hard on poor Mr Okrent. When he was defending the media's coverage of the war, the Iraq invasion was the all the rage. Epaulettes were the new little black dress of imperialism. Sadly, it's now as out of date as stone washed jeans. He's just keeping himself on all the best invitation lists for fashion week.



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digby 2/20/2006 12:21:00 PM |

 
Institutional Apostasy

by digby

Kevin Drum has written a review of Bruce Bartlett's "Imposter" (the heretical consrevative anti-Bush tract for the Washington Monthly.

Here's an excerpt:

Put in plain terms, Bartlett's charge is simple. George W. Bush, he says on page one, is a “pretend conservative.” Philosophically, Bush actually has more in common with liberals than he does with true conservatives.

Now, there's not much question that this is overstated. Bush won't be getting an invitation to join The New York Times editorial board any time soon. Among other things, he's appointed hundreds of conservative judges, cut taxes repeatedly and dramatically, signed into law a ban on partial-birth abortions, and committed America to its biggest and costliest war of choice since Vietnam.

And yet, in a narrower but still provocative way, Bartlett makes a persuasive case. I'm a pretty conventional FDR liberal myself, but several years ago, I came to the same conclusion Bartlett did: Bush may be a Republican—boy howdy, is he a Republican—but he's not the fire-breathing ideologue of liberal legend.

Kevin may be right that Bush has not governed like a doctrinaire conservative. But what's important here is that it's not the lack of conservatism that makes a guy like Bartlett jump ship. It's the failure. As long as Bush was riding high you heard almost nothing from these people. Oh sure there was a column or two from iconoclasts like Paul Craig Roberts or the occasional jab from Pat Buchanan. But there was no real outcry over the prescription drug benefit or the steel tariffs or the deficit during the entire time Bush has been in office. Certainly the anti-conservative notion of nation building, which Bush ran on, was totally jettisoned from conservative discussion. (We are all Wilsonians now.) Conservatives supported him so enthusiastically that they frequently compared his oratory(!) to Winston Churchill's:

To a greater extent than any politician since Churchill, President Bush has set forth and defended his policies in a series of speeches that combine intellectual brilliance and philosophical gravity. Today's speech in Latvia was the latest in this series, and, like the others, it will be studied by historians for centuries to come.

This was the cult of Bush. But, as with all modern Republican presidents who become unpopular, he will be ignominiously removed from the pantheon. They did it to Nixon, they did it to Bush Sr and they are now doing it to Churchill the second. It's always the same complaint. They failed not because of their conservatism, but because they were not conservative enough. It's nonsense, of course. Even St. Reagan was no more "conservative" than the others --- highest tax increase in history, remember?

Kevin discusses this and has a great insight about why liberals loathe Bush so much:

Although the popular perception of Nixon is still that of an archconservative who infuriated liberals, Bartlett reminds us that on domestic policy Nixon routinely caved in to public opinion and betrayed his conservative principles—for example, by creating the EPA, supporting enormous increases in Social Security, and proposing a guaranteed-incomes policy. Likewise, Bush spent nearly his entire first term talking tough but then caving in with barely a whimper to any interest group that might help him win a few more precious votes in 2004. Tariffs were enacted in order to appeal to steelworkers; the Medicare bill was designed to buy the votes of the elderly; and McCain-Feingold was signed in the hope that it would provide a temporary fundraising advantage for the Republican Party. If all of these actions were precisely the opposite of what a real conservative would do, so what? As Nixon might have said, don't you know there's an election coming up?

As far as all this goes, Bartlett's argument is a good one, and the Nixon comparison even provides a neat and underappreciated explanation for why liberals hate Bush so much. After all, it's possible to respect someone with whom you have a principled disagreement, but not so easy to respect someone whose only real principle is to crush anybody who gets in his way. (Bush's alter-ego, Karl Rove, summed up this philosophy within earshot of journalist Ron Suskind when he yelled to an aide about someone who had displeased him, “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”) As with Nixon, it's not really Bush's conservatism that gets liberals seething. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's precisely his lack of political principle, combined with a vengeful ruthlessness so dark it's scary, that makes liberals break out in hives.

Exactly. He's the perfect president for Limbaugh Nation (the successor to Nixonland.) But then, that's really what the modern Republican party is all about --- the big money boys and the ruthless operatives. Everybody else in the party are just dupes:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees...Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." Michael Scanlon, former communications director to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff's first lieutenant

(And by the way, so-called principled conservatives are just another brand of "wackos" to these guys.)

Rick Perlstein knows this terrain very, very well. In the course of interviewing various ideological leaders of the movement over the years he came to see that the activists and intellectuals have an amazing capacity for compartmentalization in which they quite willingly adopt the "ends justify the means" strategy of the ruthless operatives. But they are, unsurprisingly, incredibly dishonest about it. Perlstein writes:

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 is what many Americans of good faith seem to be hearing conservatives telling them.

It is what they are telling us. But, ofcourse, the modern Republican party is not conservative by any definition of conservatism. I'm not even sure it's ideological at all, but to the extent it is, it's radical. Yet the allegedly conservative party has enthusiastically supported a president who believes that you can wage wars, lower taxes and expand government all at the same time. That's not just radical, it's magical. And they can hardly raise their heads even today to oppose an administration that is radically expanding the police powers of the federal government. But it's starting to happen. They can adjust their principles to anything except failure. A president at 40% simply cannot be a conservative. Conservatism is, after all, supposed to be tremendously popular in this country.

Here's a little preview from the ultimate Bush worshippers, Powerline:

For reasons I don't fully understand, there is something about "leaders," especially self-appointed leaders, and most especially those who are drawn to intensive participation in organizations, that tends toward liberalism. We see this in politics all the time, of course: it is one thing to vote for conservatism, something else entirely to get it from our elected leaders.

All of which makes me especially thankful, this year, for democracy, limited government and free enterprise: the best measures yet devised to protect us from our leaders.

By the time it's all over Bush is going to be seen as a coke-sniffing, frat boy hippy by the movement conservatives. This is how they do it. And then they'll go back to doing the same things they always do --- whatever it takes to win.

"Go after 'em like a son of a bitch" Richard Nixon

"I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics." Newt Gingrich

"This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS - Not only do you kick him - You kick him until he passes out - then beat him over the head with a baseball bat - then roll him up in an old rug - and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below!!!!!"Michael Scanlon, former communications director to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff's first lieutenant

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digby 2/20/2006 08:35:00 AM |

Sunday, February 19, 2006

 
Conduits

by digby


Jane is admirably doing battle with the WaPo again. Deborah Howell's column today is the usual bizarre mixture of harsh theatre critic and sycophancy. I don't get it.

I remember fondly the work of Geneva Overholser who actually worked as the readers representative and honestly attempted to analyse and assess the paper's performance. Here was her take on the Lewinsky scandal (after she left the job):

“We allowed ourselves to be used by leakers, and we gave people cover — and encouraged their underhanded methods — by constantly quoting people anonymously.”

Here was Downie's take:

In the deposition story, Downie said, the Post was asking readers to trust the paper, “which is why it is very important not to make mistakes. At the moment, I’m pleased to say to readers, look at our track record. Everything has been shown to be accurate and fair.”

That, of course, was utter crap. Read this study conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, about the behavior of the press during the Lewinsky scandal:

"The findings of the study, conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, raise questions about whether the press always maintained adequate skepticism about its sources. There were occasions, moreover, when the press got ahead of the facts in its basic reporting. Others then used that work to engage in sometimes reckless speculation and propaganda. ... Overall, the research paints a picture of a news media culture that in breaking stories usually relied on legitimate sources and often was careful about the facts in the initial account. But even in these careful stories, the press at times tended to accept interpretations from those sources uncritically and may have had a penchant to emphasize the perspective of investigators over those being investigated. ... At other times, reporting was based on sources whose knowledge was second hand, and this occasionally got journalists into trouble. ... On occasion, the press also ferried speculation, some of which could have been construed as threats, from investigators into news accounts, raising questions about whether the press was sufficiently wary of being used by sources, especially law enforcement sources."

Now we are supposed to take the reporting by people like Susan Schmidt, a primary Republican leak recipient, at face value on the Abramoff story. Sorry, fool me once ... won't get fooled again. There is no more "trusting the paper." (Not to mention that she appears to have simply worked off the report of a dead man.)

Jane links to one terrific point that Paul Lukasiak made in her comments (which was inexplicably purged from the new WaPo comments section):

Paul said (among other things):

... I mean, personally, I stopped asking for the documents that Harris, Howell, Willis, Schmidt, and the rest of the Post claims provides proof that Jack Abramoff "directed" contributions to Democrats. When I looked into what little Howell and her cohorts did provide, I discovered that their "evidence" actually disproved their assertions. So I did further research.....and there is literally nothing which in the public record that suggests that Jack Abramoff was personally and directly involved in getting any of his clients to contribute to a single Democratic candidate. Zero. NADA. NOTHING.

Now, Howell, and Brady, and Schmidt, and Willis know this as well as I do. But the more we keep asking this question, the more likely it is that they will come up with a new "spin" on the meager facts that they do have that can indirectly tie Jack Abramoff to contributions made to Democratic politicians. Of course, those "ties" are no more solid than the "ties" that connect Jack Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks because some of the terrorists visited a casino owned by Abramoff.

If Susan Schmitt and the Post wanted to build a circumstantial case implicating Abramoff with the 9-11 attacks, she could do so. If Schmitt and the Post wanted to tie Jack Abramoff to Mafia hit men involved in the murder of the former owner of his casino, she could do so. But Schmitt and the Post have decided to tie Abramoff to the Democratic Party --- with the same level of circumstantial and indirect evidence the Post could use to tie Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks and a mafia hit.

After everything they did during Lewinsky, they are back at it again without missing a beat. To make such assumptions about Abramoff's "ties" to Democrats truly is not much different than tying Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks. And in this case there is evidence of the opposite being true. The tribes had long been Democratic constituents yet gave less to Democrats than Republicans once Abramoff began representing them. Abramoff was a long time Republican operative. There is documentary evidence that Abramoff was frustrated with his clients for failing to do everything he told them to do.

As Paul points out, the only documentary evidence ever used to back up the claims of the Post and elsewhere that Abramoff "directed" funds is the fact that funds went to Democrats. That is meaningless circumstantial nonsense.

Until there is something more substantial on which to base this claim of Abramoff "directing" funds, it is nothing but rank speculation. Susan Schmidt (who actually got an award for this nearly plagiarized coverage!) is particularly not credible on any speculative reporting. I simply do not trust her unless all the facts and all the sources are on the record. Her history requires it.

Pounding the Washington Post on this issue is a good idea. We may find that Abramoff did personally direct some money to Democrats. But it is outrageous that they continue to assert this as fact when they have none. If bloggers "look bad" somewhere down the road that's a chance we'll have to take. The Post "looks bad" right now and they should have to explain why they are continuing to assert something for which they can offer no proof.


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digby 2/19/2006 04:04:00 PM |

 
Teaching Them A Lesson

by digby


I got a very interesting trackback from "Right Thinking From The Left Coast" to my post "haters vs haters" that was unfortunately zapped when blogger deleted posts and comments.

Here's an excerpt:

Sully’s got an interesting post up about how the left is more hateful than the right. First read this post, then this one. In the second post Sully links to this leftie blogger who disagrees, saying the right is more hateful.

[...]

In support of his assertion of Limbaugh’s “hatred” he offers this quote.

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.

[...]

Okay, a few comments here, if I may. I’ll preface my remarks by stating that I’m not a regular Limbaugh listener, though since Howard Stern has gone off the air I have found that I’ve tuned in to him a lot more during my ten minute morning drive. I’ll also stipulate that you could very reasonably make the argument that Michael Savage and Ann Coulter speak hatred. But Limbaugh? He’s always struck me as being provocative and opinionated, but I’ve never heard anything from him that I would consider “hatred.”

Take the quote above, which the leftie blogger has taken totally out of context. He’s not cheering the fact that people have been kidnapped. What he’s saying is that he likes the fact that, because of their own actions, these “peace” activists are being forced to deal with the consequences of their own stupid beliefs. It’s like when you have a guy who makes a living sticking his head into the mouths of alligators, and the alligator chomps down on his head. Can anyone really look at the guy with sympathy? He voluntarily stuck his head into the mouth of an alligator. Would it be “hateful” for someone like me to come along and say, “See? This is why you shouldn’t stick your head into an alligator’s mouth.” So when some raving moonbat “peace” activist assumes a haughty air of moral superiority and goes to where the Islamists are, and then the Islamists capture them and hold them for ransom, it’s not hateful at all to then say, “See? This is what your lofty ideals of peace get you.”

There is nothing hateful about enjoying the suffering of other people when that suffering is due to their own stupidity. We do this all the time. Some dumbass climbs an electricity tower and gets electrocuted. He had to climb over fifty signs warning him of the danger, telling him to keep out, yet he did it anyway. Most pragmatic people would say, “Let this be a lesson to everyone else.” I remember a story a few years back about a protest over a ban on BASE jumping off Half Dome here in California. The park service banned it because it was unsafe. To demonstrate how safe it was a bunch of jumpers climbed up there and began jumping off. One of the jumpers leaped off the edge, her chute failed to open, and she plunged to hear death. The less on to be learned here is that BASE jumping is indeed unsafe, and those who engage in it run the very real risk of dying from it. Such is the case with the peace activists.

I had a friend once a few years ago, a die hard leftie, an admitted capital-S socialist. We were discussing the situation in the Middle East, and I referred to the Islamists as our enemies.

[...]

He simply refused to recognize the fact that the Islamists would hate him simply by virtue of being who and what he was. He honestly believed that, if he had the chance, he could convince the Islamists that he was not their enemy, that they could peacefully coexist with his kind. He steadfastly refused to believe in the concept of enemies. The peace activists suffer from the same delusion. So, when people on the right say “These people hate you and will kill you,” and the lefties subsequently get kidnapped, how is this substantively different from a guy who voluntarily sticks his head into an alligator’s mouth and expects nothing bad to happen to him?

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether it's hateful to enjoy the suffering of others regardless of how "stupid" they are. (Psychologists would call it sociopathic.) Let's just say that I think it's cold and inhuman and leave it at that.

But there is a leap of logic here that's worth exploring. If it is true that this suffering and death serves as a sort of teachable moment, we should also "kind of like" the beheadings of the other civilians captured in Iraq and Pakistan. They are dead at the hands of the same people who are teaching those peace activists a lesson. And they too were told that it is dangerous to do what they did and they did it anyway.They jumped off the same cliff as the peace activists. Of course they did it for different reasons. One did it purely for money. Another lived there for years working for Lockheed. One did it to tell "a story." Another was there for decades doing humanitarian work. Should the lesson we take from their deaths be that they deserved what they got because they were too stupid to know that they might be killed?

Do soldiers deserve to die forbeing soft and doing good deeds in a violent war zone?

"When he got to Iraq, one captain was telling us that you were trained not to get out of your vehicle," said his father, James McGaugh of Springdale. "He said he looked over and Dustin was out giving candy to a bunch of kids."

Their commander in chief's stated motivation is to "help the Iraqi people" because "freedom is the Almighty's gift to each person in this world." How earnest and naive is that? Perhaps he needs to be taught a lesson about war and killing and violence too.

These enjoyable teachable moments get complicated, don't they? You really have to delve into people's minds to be able to figure out whether it's ok to enjoy their suffering or become enraged. Peace activists are easy. The right knows that they are putting their hands into the fire and deserve to get burned so they'll understand that being a peace activist in a war zone is stupid. They can't help but "kind of like it." The kidnapping and beheading of the kid who went over to build satellite towers, on the other hand, made everyone crazy with anger. But it certainly appears that he quite stupidly put his head into the alligator's mouth for no good reason at all. And the soldier who gets killed because he gives candy to children --- well, he's a hero, isn't he?

It's a good thing the right doesn't believe in moral relativism or they might really get confused.


BTW: They are still threatening to kill the four Christian peace activists.


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digby 2/19/2006 03:42:00 PM |

 
"The Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot*

by digby


You really have to wonder who is ever going to be dumb enough to ever hire Mary Matalin again? This shooting mess was clearly her deal and she couldn't have fucked it up worse than she did. She couldn't handle her client and she's still out there spinning like a top --- and badly --- when she should just shut the hell up. What a fun, fun day it was on Press the Meat.

Crooks and Liars has the full catastrophe on his web-site. Wolcott documents the strange facial expressions of the Madwoman of Chaillot.

But I haven't heard anyone comment on Paul Gigot, GOP good ole boy who apparently lives somewhere in rural Nebraska:

Not looking at this, by the way, David, from—you know, I didn’t speak to anybody from the White House or the vice president’s office all week on this. It was looking at it from outside the Beltway and saying where did this story stand on the relative scale of importance? Looked to me to be a human tragedy, the vice president made a mistake, it was probably in not disclosing it himself, letting someone else do it. But that’s a relatively minor mistake. I think scandal standards are declining in Washington if this becomes another big, huge scandal which this is supposed to be a metaphor for for governing, a bunker of secrecy which is, I think, what some of the Democrats in the Senate were saying. This is a metaphor for the way this administration operates. I just don’t think that’s true. And so I think mockery was appropriate.

[...]

Well, I think—well, let’s make some distinctions between stories that really matter ...

Yes, let's do. For instance, let's remember what it was like back when standards for scandals were much higher:

"Mr. Blumenthal’s [grand jury] testimony reveals a president doing much more than hiding an affair. He was using the powers of his office to create a false story that would destroy Ms. Lewinsky... Mr. Clinton was telling his most fervent supporter that his president was the victim of lies and a gross injustice. Wouldn’t Mr. Blumenthal want to tell everyone in the White House and around the world why his hero was innocent? If Mr. Clinton didn’t want his chief political communicator to broadcast this phony tale, he could have said so. There’s no record he did... In her interview with House managers on Sunday, Ms. Lewinsky seemed surprised when they asked her about Mr. Blumenthal’s testimony and the ‘stalker’ line. Maybe this explains the furious Democratic opposition even to videotaping her testimony."

Now that's a scandal with standards. About issues that really matter.

Gigot, I recall, was, at one time, none too pleased with those "outside the beltway" who didn't seem to be too interested in impeaching the "evil" Bill Clinton. He didn't think the American people's standards were high enough:

The good news is that Mr. Hyde can finally step back and laugh about such nonsense, which he did in an interview yesterday. With impeachment ending, the 74-year-old chairman reflected on the duty he never wanted, his errors along the way and the meaning of Senate acquittal. He's more cheerful than he has a right to be.

"I had a naive, utopian hope that as we documented the record, people who paid only passing attention would come to the conclusion that this was serious," he says. "That just never happened."

Like many others, he isn't sure why. "I'm a little bewildered by the American people," says the World War II Navy man. "I just don't know if our standards have got so low that this behavior is tolerated." He acknowledges that "this was a culture war," and maybe the 1960s' generation "revels in this guy's success. I don't know."

One culprit Mr. Hyde is certain of is modern polling, which he now believes can be politically self-fulfilling. Snapshot polls are taken and then echoed by politicians and the media until their biases harden into concrete, if not wisdom. "Nobody wants to be the oddball," he says.

Mr. Hyde won't say so, but he also wasn't helped by Ken Starr or his fellow GOP leaders. Mr. Starr waited too long to cut a deal with Monica Lewinsky, declined to indict anyone in the case, then dumped a referral on Congress that was only about Monica's case and two months before an election at that.

"You're right, we got sex, and that was the least viable topic for us to run on," he concedes, after praising Mr. Starr for his perseverence.

Gigot won the Pulitzer prize for that. And it wasn't for fiction.

Everybody let Gigot and Hyde down. The people, Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the senate --- they all failed to remove the evil Clinton from office. Now Gigot is on television complaining that our standards for scandals have been lowered.

How do these people manage to live normal lives with this lack of self awareness?



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digby 2/19/2006 12:42:00 PM |

 
Genius Over Genius

by digby

The New York Times

Should the composer Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light" be heard as an oratorio that accompanies the 1928 silent film classic "The Passion of Joan of Arc"? Or is it the film, by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, that accompanies Mr. Einhorn's 80-minute musical work?

That is the question raised by Mr. Einhorn's ambitious score. In any event, the audience that packed the Winter Garden in Lower Manhattan on Thursday night for a free performance seemed too swept away by "Voices of Light" to care about its category.

Presented as part of the World Financial Center's Arts + Events series, "Voices of Light" brought together the Ensemble Sospeso, a contemporary-music group beefed up here to an orchestra of 37, the New Amsterdam Singers, four fine vocal soloists, and Anonymous 4, the officially disbanded early-music vocal quartet, which reunited for this performance. As intended, Mr. Einhorn's work was performed while the film that inspired it was screened.

"Voices of Light" has been performed more than 100 times around the world over the last 10 years, providing a nice income source for Mr. Einhorn, who has also been a record producer. If nothing else, the composer deserves thanks for introducing new audiences to Dreyer's masterpiece, which was nearly lost.

Shortly after its premiere, the film was destroyed in a fire. Though shattered, Dreyer reconstructed an acceptable version using negatives from outtakes. Incredibly, the replacement film was lost in a second fire. For decades the work was known only through various bastardized versions. Then, in 1981, as Mr. Einhorn explained to the audience, an intact copy of the original film was discovered in a janitor's closet in a mental hospital in Oslo. When Mr. Einhorn saw this wonderfully restored print, he was moved to compose his score.

"Voices of Light" has a libretto of Latin and French texts assembled by Mr. Einhorn. Anonymous 4 sing quotations of Joan's words from the transcript of her trial for blasphemy in 1431. The chorus and soloists sing a patchwork of writings from medieval mystics, mostly women. Mr. Einhorn's sensitive score deftly shifts styles from evocations of neomedieval counterpoint to wistful modal murmurings over droning pedal tones, from bursts of Minimalistic repetitions to moments of piercing modern harmony.

While never getting in the way, the music heightens the impact of this pathbreaking film, which tells the story of Joan's trial at the hands of French clerics who supported the occupying English forces in 15th-century France. Most of the characters are shot in discomfiting close-ups. You see the faces of officious and accusing priests, with warts, creviced skin, bad teeth and bulbous noses. You are riveted by the face of Joan (Renée Maria Falconetti), which conveys an eerie mix of wide-eyed fear and delirious elation.

David Hattner conducted a calmly authoritative performance that featured Susan Narucki (soprano), Janice Meyerson (mezzo-soprano), Mark Bleeke (tenor) and Kevin Deas (bass) as the vocal soloists. The score can be heard on a Sony Classical CD. But ideally this music should be experienced as a live complement to Dreyer's stunning film.

The performance was taped for broadcast on the WNYC-FM (93.9) show "New Sounds" on March 2.

I thought you all should see this because I imagine most of you don't know that the brilliant "tristero" is also the brilliant Richard Einhorn.

If you haven't had the opportunity to see this film on DVD, accompanied by Richard's amazing score, then I urge you to get it. It's not like any silent film you've ever seen --- and of course it's not actually silent. The score speaks more eloquently than any dialog short of Shakespeare could match.

The film and score are great artistic achievements, but they are also extremely interesting for their sociological insight. Based as it is on the transcripts of Joan's trial for heresy, I never thought this film would have such resonance to events in my own lifetime --- but it does. Same as it ever was.



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digby 2/19/2006 10:50:00 AM |

 
"Insane"

by digby


Blogger ate the comments below, so I'm going to post this in response to those who felt I had gone "insane" and they would never read this blog again because I said "Bill Clinton was the best Republican president in my lifetime."

First of all, it was not meant as a slur. Perhaps I should have added that he was also the best Democratic president in my lifetime, which he was, but that was not my point. I'm a great fan of Clinton's and voted for him happily both times.

"Republicanism" is not inherently evil. Before we became ridiculously polarized by the right wing ideologues, it was common to split tickets in this country. I've done it myself a time or two and I consider myself to be a hard core liberal. And there were times that if forced to vote for certain Democrats back in the day there's no way I could have done it. A whole bunch of racist assholes used to be Democrats. The lablels are only useful up to a point.

The fact is that Bill Clinton governed in the only way he could with an out of control GOP congress and a hostile press: as a moderate centrist. All successful presidents pragmatically survey the political terrain and move forward the best way they can and Clinton was admirably successful at getting things done through a centrist triangulation strategy. I'm not criticizing him for it. I'm amazed that the man was able to pass any legislation at all. It's a testament to his gifts that his presidency wasn't a total failure considering what he had to work with.

I'm a Democrat and always have been. To call me a Naderite is absurd. But in my lifetime Republicanism wasn't always a dirty word, which is why I always couch my extreme criticism with the words "modern Republicans." Looking back, Dwight Eisenhower was a good president who moved this country forward in ways that would make any modern progressive proud. That tradition of Republicanism is good for this country. I only wish we had some today. It is in that sense that I called Bill Clinton the best Republican president in my lifetime.



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digby 2/19/2006 09:38:00 AM |

 
Blogger ate comments again. Sorry.

Political Religion

by digby

Following up on my earlier post, I just realized that Andrew Sullivan entitled his piece "Religious Left" which is very interesting. This latest dialog began with Glenn Greenwald's great post earlier this week in which he proclaimed modern Republicanism a Bush cult. It was widely read and discussed on the right as well as the left blogopshere. I disagreed a little bit with Glenn's analysis and called it a Republican Authoritarian Cult because I can already see beginning to detach from Bush and prepare the ground for whoever the next object of their authoritarian passion turns out to be.

The other day Elizabeth Bumiller did an article on Bruce Bartlett, who was portrayed as being "out in the cold;"

What happens if you're a Republican commentator and you write a book critical of President George W. Bush that gets you fired from your job at a conservative think tank?

For starters, no other conservative institution rushes in with an offer for your superb analytical skills.

"Nobody will touch me," said Bruce Bartlett, the author of the forthcoming "Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." He added, "I think I'm just kind of radioactive at the moment."

Bartlett, a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under the first President Bush, talked last week at his suburban Washington home about his dismissal, his book and a growing disquiet among conservatives about Bush.

Although "Impostor" is flamboyant in its anti-Bush sentiments - on the first page Bartlett calls Bush a "pretend conservative" and compares him to Richard M. Nixon, "a man who used the right to pursue his agenda" - its basic message reflects the frustration of many conservatives who say that Bush has been on a five-year government spending binge. Like them, Bartlett is particularly upset about Bush's Medicare prescription drug plan, which is expected to cost more than $700 billion over the next decade.

He is unhappy, too, with the president's education and campaign finance bills and his proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, which many Republicans call a dressed-up amnesty plan. The book, to be published by Doubleday on Feb. 28, also criticizes the White House for "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis" and an obsession with secrecy.

"The Clinton people were vastly more open and easier to deal with and, quite frankly, a lot better on the issues," Bartlett said in the interview, in the kitchen of his pared-down modern house on a street of big new homes in Great Falls. Bartlett hastened to add that although he admired Clinton's economic policies, that did not mean he had changed sides.

"I haven't switched to the Democratic Party," he said. "I wrote this for Republicans."

Bartlet's true apostasy is in saying that Clinton was better on the issues. (I certainly would agree that Clinton was the best Republican president of my lifetime.) As for the rest of his criticsm, he's just laying the groundwork for the eventual purge of Bushism --- a purge that is already gaining steam.


Bill Schneider had this report today on CNN:

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Cracks are beginning to appear in President Bush's conservative base. One leading conservative characterizes the view of Bush this way.

DAVID KEENE, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION: We love the guy, but...

SCHNEIDER: But what? Well, consider this. Nearly half of self- described conservatives say President Bush has done something to make them angry. Like what? Many conservatives have problems with the Bush administration's expansive view of government. They're outraged by the deficit.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: It's simply morally wrong for us to allow the expansion of government and pass that bill along to our children and grandchildren.

SCHNEIDER: This week, an all-Republican congressional committee examining the government's response to Hurricane Katrina issued a scathingly critical report. REP. TOM DAVIS (R), VIRGINIA: The president or the secretary or Andy Card or someone who'd say, "Do you have everything you need?" And he'd say yes. But there was no supervision. And they were just not engaged.

SCHNEIDER: President Bush's immigration policies have angered many conservatives.

REP. TOM TANCREDO (R), COLORADO: And if the president of the United States really wanted to, he could secure the border tomorrow.

SCHNEIDER: Some conservatives are asking, should the U.S. be engaged in nation building in Iraq?

KEENE: Part of the base belief of conservatives is that the people in Washington have neither the confidence nor the ability to tell the people of Peoria, Illinois, how to order their lives. It therefore sort of seems inconsistent to say that, "Well, we may not be able to do that, but we do know how to organize societies halfway across the globe."

George W Bush has won two elections with the unquestioning support of conservatives. In his first term he made it quite obvious that he was not a conservative in any sense that I understood conservative. From out of control spending to federalizing education to nation building and messianic foreign policy, he has simply not been conservative by any common definition of the term. None of that stopped conservatives from virtually worshipping the man. It is only now that he has become unpopular and his policies are failing that his brand of conservatism is being criticized on the right. And he's being criticized for being

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

Dave Neiwert chimed in on this discussion yesterday and wrote a very intriguing post in which he posits that the modern Republican party might more aptly be called a political religion, which, as it happens, is an acknowledged sociological designation. He writes:

I wonder if there isn't another way of framing this that can help progressives get a handle on what we're dealing with. Particularly, I wonder if it wouldn't help to think of the discrete conservative movement as a political religion.

Here's the Wikepedia entry, which is actually rather accurate on the subject:

In the terminology of some scholars working in sociology, a political religion is a political ideology with cultural and political power equivalent to those of a religion, and often having many sociological and ideological similarities with religion. Quintessential examples are Marxism and Nazism, but totalitarianism is not a requirement (for example neo-liberalism can be analysed as a political religion).

... The term political religion is a sociological one, drawing on the sociological aspects of religion which can be often be found in certain secular ideologies. A political religion occupies much the same psychological and sociological space as a theistic religion, and as a result it often displaces or coopts existing religious organisations and beliefs; this is described as a "sacralisation" of politics. However, although a political religion may coopt existing religious structures or symbolism, it does not itself have any independent spiritual or theocratic elements - it is essentially secular, using religion only for political purposes, if it does not reject religious faith outright.

Obviously, this movement embraces religious faith outright, which may give it certain advantages over more secular political religions, since it so readily taps into ordinary people's deeply held beliefs and exploits them.

Nonetheless, when we begin to run down the various aspects of political religions, the resemblance becomes even sharper:

Key memetic qualities often (not all are always strongly present) shared by religion (particularly cults) and political religion include:

Structural

-- differentiation between self and other, and demonisation of other (in theistic religion, the differentiation usually depends on adherence to certain dogmas and social behaviours; in political religion, differentiation may be on grounds such as race, class, or nationality instead)

-- a charismatic figurehead, with messianic tendencies; if figurehead is deceased, powerful successors;

-- strong, hierarchical organisational structures

-- a desire to control education, in order to ensure the security of the system

Belief

-- a coherent belief system for imposing symbolic meaning on the external world, with an emphasis on security through purity;

-- an intolerance of other ideologies of the same type

-- a degree of utopianism and the aim of radically transforming society into an end-state (an end of history)

-- the belief that the ideology is in some way natural or obvious, so that (at least for certain groups of people) those who reject it are in some way "blind"

-- a genuine desire on the part of individuals to convert others to the cause

-- a willingness to place ends over means -- in particular, a willingness to use violence

-- fatalism -- a belief that the ideology will inevitably triumph in the end

David Brooks says that the left is Stalinist. I assume that's what Sullivan's title refers to as well. Communism is often considered a secular religion, although that clearly underestimates the huge power of state coercion. If the American left is Stalinist, it certainly has been extremely ineffective. After all, conservatism now dominates all three branches of government. And I can't help but find this argument amusing considering that the primary critique of Democrats is that we have no convictions and are constantly fighting amongst ourselves. We are remarkably undisciplined totalitarians.

In one way both parties share the same religion: an all-American obsession with winning. In this I actually envy the right. When they fail, as everyone inevitably does at times, they don't lose their faith. Indeed, failure actually reinforces it.
Liberals, on the other hand, have nothing like that. We hate our leaders for failing us. It's a personal thing --- as if we are in a bad marriage and we have lost all respect for our partners. But then that's how most Americans are these days. You are a winner or a loser and nobody wants to be associated with a loser. The Republicans are smart enough to rid themselves of failure by always being able to convince themselves that the failure had nothing to do with their belief system. It must be very nice to live in a world in which you can never, ever be wrong.


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digby 2/19/2006 09:23:00 AM |

 
Haters vs Haters

by digby


This week, the issue of which side of the political spectrum is more hateful is back and it's all I can do to stop myself from crawling back under the covers and staying there. Alleged apostates Andrew Sullivan and Marshall Wittman both tut-tut the barbaric behavior of the left today, saying that it is actually much worse than the unpleasantness they sometimes hear from the right.

I don't know how many ways you can say this but I'll try again: hatefulness is not confined to any particular political persuasion --- but there is only one side that makes a fucking profit at it.

How many hateful liberal books accusing Republicans of treason, slander, being unhinged or ruining the world are there out there? A couple? Probably. But let's just say that the market for accusing political opposition of capital crimes, indulging in fantasies about their extinction and musing about how someone should be killed as a way of sending a message to others has leaned heavily on the right wing side of the equation for decades.

Which liberal radio stars are given 250 million dollar contracts to talk every day about how liberals are in cahoots with al Qaeda or indulge in hate-filled rants about hurricane victims and gays? None? Right.

Which liberal TV News nework features an exclusive line-up of outwardly liberal pundits who publicly accuse conservatives of giving aid and comfort to the enemy? None? Check.

Sullivan says this:

Yes, I get homophobic hate mail from the right all the time; and many conservative blogs have blackballed or slimed or smeared me in various ways. But that's, sadly, what you get for being provocative and opinionated on the web. Bottom line: Hugh Hewitt is not as hateful as Eric Alterman, as any reader can see for themselves.

Now, I'm not going to even bother arguing the relative hatefulness of Eric Alterman and Hugh Hewitt because that's a false equivalence. Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that Eric Alterman is hateful. As hateful as a lefty can get. And let's for the sake of argument assume that he's more hateful than Hugh Hewitt. I'll even say, for the sake of argument, that he's more hateful than all the writers of the Weekly Standard put together. He's a real son of a bitch.

But can anyone claim with a straight face that he's more hateful than Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? Is he more hateful than Michael Savage, Glen Beck, Bill o'Reilly and Sean Hannity? And, more importantly, can anyone claim that he has even a modicum of the influence these people have?

Ann Coulter was just cheered deliriously by the young conservatives assembled at the CPAC convention, where the vice president, the majority leader of the senate and many other powerful leaders of the Republican party were assembled. The same convention features bumper stickers that says things like:

"Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton"

The right wing has developed an entire industry of hate, where people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are extremely well compensated and feted with adulation and esteem by the most powerful people in the political establishment. When Rush said something so bizarre and outrageous (about the revolting treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib) that even the mainstream media woke up for a moment or two to comment, the National Review raced to defend 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.

This is the same man who said:

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.

For the record, notorious leftist hatemonger Eric Alterman has never celebrated the deaths of political rivals. Nor does any leftist hatemonger have a 250 million dollar media contract to celebrate the deaths of his political rivals. I can only assume that this is because there just isn't enough of a market to support such a thing. Before getting themselves in a tizzy about the hateful left, perhaps Wittman and Sullivan should ask why that might be so.



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digby 2/19/2006 09:22:00 AM |

Thursday, February 16, 2006

 
Scary Visions

by digby


I'm a little bit under the weather today. I think I'm hallucinating. I just tuned in to MSNBC and thought I saw a segment about ski-jumping called "Tucker In Training" featuring Tucker Carlson in a skin tight purple and yellow ski suit with a pin striped shirt under it.

I must be feverish. That can't be true, can it?



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digby 2/16/2006 02:23:00 PM |

 
H v. H

by tristero

Via Peter Daou's excellent blog of blogs , which of course includes brilliant original posting of his own, I learned that a rightwing blog posted a link to Hugh Hewitt's interview with Helen Thomas. I suggest clicking on the mp3 link and taking a listen. The wingers obviously think that Hewitt got the better of Thomas. I truly don't hear it that way and to my mind, the transcript gives a skewed notion of the way the conversation flowed. But go and judge for yourself.

In any event, I'd like to ask you about one thing, out of many that occur to me, and "who won" is not that central a question to my immediate interest here.

I'd like to suggest that it would be very instructive for liberals and Dems to look at the rhetorical strategies used by Hewitt. I'd like us to trace how a discussion that began with a simple, easy question about what Thomas thought about the vice president shooting a 78 year old man morphed into Hewitt trying to set up a faux confrontation which - while looking obviously contrived to us - was designed to make Hewitt's dittoheads think that Thomas had been reluctantly forced to concede that Saddam was an evil man.

I think we can all agree that there seems little direct causal connection between the two subjects - unless one gets snarky, and that won't accomplish much. So really, how did Hewitt move the conversation to that point? What were the strategies he used? What did Thomas do in response? Where did Hewitt mess up? Where did Thomas? How did they recover? What do you think Hewitt's point was? Did he make that point - not to you, but to his dittoheads?

Most importantly, what can the next person who's not a card-carrying Bushite learn from this in order to make it next to impossible for Hewitt to find any red meat from using these kinds of cheap tactics? I am certain this is how Hewitt interviews all those he suspects of card-carrying liberalism no matter what the topic. Knowing exactly what he does should suggest numerous ways to make it all but impossible for him to get away with it.

Not that Thomas did poorly; as I said, I think she did quite well. But I'm curious: how can the next person do even better? What would they need to do? Also, please note that I'm NOT suggesting that a single position be changed to accommodate a clown like Hewitt (or any other conservative). I am asking, "How can the next potential victim best turn Hewitt's cynical game against him?"

I think it is more than possible to do so. This guy is a piker and I think a little bit of careful thought could make him look like a buffoon even to his own followers. Yes, folks: Even if those bias studies are right and people tend to excuse hypocrisy in those they believe in, I think it is more than possible to turn Hugh Hewitt into a joke in the eyes of the people who think he's right.

And I think it would be a very good idea to do so.
tristero 2/16/2006 08:41:00 AM |

 
Herbert's Right. Dammit.

by tristero

I didn't post my suspicions, but My Smart Spouse will confirm that within minutes of first hearing the news that Cheney had shot a 78 year old man in the face, I suspected there was drinking involved. And unfortunately, I was right. This is a genuine catastrophe, because it means that Bob Herbert's call for Cheney's resignation is, as I see it, exactly right. Damn, damn, damn!

If it happens - and I suspect the odds are about 60/40 that it won't, which are lousy odds - then one of two things will happen. Either Bush will play the GOP loyalty card and we'll have Vice-President Rice, which will be extremely bad for Democrats for, oh, about the next geologically significant aeon or two. Or if he's feeling personally insecure, Bush will appoint a far right lunatic in the Santorum mold, confident that no one would dare to impeach Bush even if, somehow, Democrats manage to win majorities in the House and Senate.

Either way, it's bad news. Not only for Democrats but for the entire country. True, Cheney is bad news already. But never underestimate Bush's ability to make an awful situation far worse.

On the other hand...I've got a thought! Let's see where this leads:

Maybe Bush could really show he has the country's best interests at heart and just go for it! I'm saying, if he knows Cheney's resignation is inevitable, why not go for extra credit and resign along with him? And take the rest of the administration along as well?

Hmm... Well, to be honest, I do see maybe a few practical problems with that - like how to avoid a President Hastert, for one. And the worldwide collapse of confidence in the US, which would probably trigger a worldwide economic panic of mega-tsunami proportions.

Big deal. As George Packer might say, Hey, y'never know, it just might work. Let's give it a shot. So I say:

Resign, Mr. Cheney, and take the whole damn administration along with you.

(Note to rightwingers and other humor-impaired readers: Everything from "On the other hand" is satire. Anyone caught taking it seriously will be peppered with pixels as soon as I put down my brewski. However, I am quite serious about this: Cheney must resign.)
tristero 2/16/2006 05:59:00 AM |

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

 
Hiding From The Breathalyzer

by digby


He was drinking all day:

Cheney said he drank a beer with lunch the day of the shooting, according to his interview. The shooting took place about 5:50 p.m.

Armstrong had previously told CNN that she never saw Cheney or Whittington "drink at all on the day of the shooting until after the accident occurred, when the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house."

Lee Anne McBride of Cheney's office referred CNN to a statement from the Kenedy County Sheriff's Office Monday, which said that the investigation "reveals that there was no alcohol or misconduct involved in the incident."

That's not exactly convincing when the secret service "made an appointment" with the sheriff's office for the next day and ran off the deputy who showed up to interview Cheney at the ranch.


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digby 2/15/2006 02:34:00 PM |

 
She's So Relieved

by digby


It's just so awful when the kewl kidz have to report icky things about Republicans. It makes everybody feel so darned uncomfortable!

Candy Crowley just said:

"Assuming that nothing else comes up, I suspect this fades."

Now if Cheney had received fellatio and hidden it from his wife instead of drinking beer while on medication, shooting a man at close range and hiding it from the public, the story might not fade. Not because they would be concerned about his personal sex life, of course. It would be because of what it said about the his character.


On the other hand Jack Cafferty just slammed Cheney for running to his little friends at Fox News for his softball interview. "Talk about seeking a safe haven..."

Of course as one of my readers reminded me, Cheney has officially endorsed FoxNews:

Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last night with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Fox News styles its coverage as "fair and balanced," but it has a heavy stable of conservative commentators that makes it a favorite around the White House. It is unusual for a president or vice president to single out a commercial enterprise for public praise.

The comment came as Cheney took questions from supporters at 5,245 parties that were held in 50 states to energize grass-roots volunteers building a precinct-by-precinct army for President Bush's campaign.

"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Good girl Candy. Bow down to the administration AND your competition.



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digby 2/15/2006 01:08:00 PM |

 
"I'm The Guy Who Pulled The Trigger"

by digby


ReddHedd's doing the play by play of the Fox interview with Cheney. He keeps saying it was the worst day of his life. He'll never foreget it, blah, blah, blah. Very touching, I'm sure.

In fact he was so upset that he went back to the ranch and sat down for dinner.

But he was very worried while he ate so that's ok. In fact, he was so busy worrying and eating that he couldn't even make some calls to DC to have his press office inform the public.


And then there's this. Jesus, these people are unbelievable.

Krauthamer (from yesterday):

Cheney knew he would get a lot of heat for withholding this, and I think he did the manly thing. He decided, "I'll take the heat, but I'm going to give my host and my friend, who just got shot, a half a day of reprieve." Anyway, it's a minor issue, and to make it into this -- I mean, it was a zoo at the White House yesterday. I think the public had the right reaction. It was disproportionate and unseemly.

Well yes. Blow job and semen stains are one thing --- the country has a right to know all the details of the president's sex life. But when the vice president shoots an old man in the face and then covers it up for 24 hours, it's nobody's business but his own. All this attention is disproportionate and unseemly.

Update: ReddHedd says:

Hume says Cheney said he had a beer at lunch -- that had been hours earlier -- no one was drinking. Went back to ranch, took a break for a few hours, and then went back out hunting at 3 pm. Says it was out of his system by the time they went back out. Cheney told Hume he had BBQ and a beer a lunch. (That should be an interesting point of discussion.)

OH mygoodness. I've always heard that alcoholand guns do not mix. But certianly a man who had two DUI's and had his driver's license suspended --- back in the days when you had to be really, really drunk to get popped --- now admits to drinking on the day he shot an old man in the face. And he didn't let law enforcement talk to him until the next day.

I know it's unseemly to bring this up but shouldn't there be at least a teeny-tiny little investigation about this now? People are mouldering in jail for decades for drinking and injuring people with guns.



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digby 2/15/2006 12:13:00 PM |

 
Leaders Lead

by digby


So it looks like the Judiciary Committee is going to do the big el-foldo on the NSA spying scandal and some Democrats in the congress are going to simply vote with the Republicans make the president's illegal program legal and call it a day. Once again their losing strategists have misunderstood why Americans believe that they are weak on national security. Indeed, if they capitulate on this they will have reinforced that image much more than if they oppose it outright.

This article by Walter Shapiro on Salon discusses what is driving some Dems to play down the NSA spying issue:

Typical was my lunch discussion earlier this week with a ranking Democratic Party official. Midway through the meal, I innocently asked how the "Big Brother is listening" issue would play in November. Judging from his pained reaction, I might as well have announced that Barack Obama was resigning from the Senate to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. With exasperation dripping from his voice, my companion said, "The whole thing plays to the Republican caricature of Democrats -- that we're weak on defense and weak on security." To underscore his concerns about shrill attacks on Bush, the Democratic operative forwarded to me later that afternoon an e-mail petition from MoveOn.org, which had been inspired by Al Gore's fire-breathing Martin Luther King Day speech excoriating the president's contempt for legal procedures.

A series of conversations with Democratic pollsters and image makers found them obsessed with similar fears that left-wing overreaction to the wiretapping issue would allow George W. Bush and the congressional Republicans to wiggle off the hook on other vulnerabilities. The collective refrain from these party insiders sounded something like this: Why are we so obsessed with the privacy of people who are phoning al-Qaida when Democrats should be screaming about corruption, Iraq, gas prices and the prescription-drug mess?

Again, aside from the ridiculous fantasy that they will be able to "neutralize" the terrorism issue and move on to prescription drugs (again!), they have made a huge error in their analysis of why the Republicans have the edge on national security and every time they genuflect to the administration's wacky plans they drive the image home. The problem for Democrats isn't that they are seen as soft on national security. It's that they are seen as not believing in anything and therefore are not strong on national security.

Every time the Democrats first speak out strongly and then fall in behind Republicans on national security like this, selling out their principles and the deep concerns of their constituents, they reinforce the image that there is nothing the Democrats are willing to fight for and the national security vote goes to the Republicans who have shown they are willing to fight for everything.

Via Rick Perlstein's book "The Stock Ticker and The Super Jumbo" here are some typical focus group answers about what people think of Democrats:

"I think they lost their focus"
"I think they are a little disorganized right now"
"They need leadership"
"On the sidelines"
"fumbling"
"confused"
"losing"
"scared"



Republicans openly defied the polls when they impeached a president who had a 60 percent approval rating. (They had the help of the press, of course, but it never made any difference in public opinion.) They used the language of principle and "the rule of law" and paid no price for what they did beyond the loss of a few seats in 98. People do not hold it against politicians for standing up for principle even if they know there is political intent. They do hold it against politicans if they are seen as having no principles at all.

Capitulating on issues of such huge importance is even more damaging when it's clear that it's the Eunuch Caucus who are truly soft on this issue, not the Democrats. The Republicans hold both houses and have the power to defy this presumptuous administration on a matter of fundamental principle to the conservative cause: unfettered government power. The few who managed to squeak out a tiny protest just caved in response to arm twisting from president Dick Cheney. Apparently when he wasn't drunkenly shooting old men in the face, he found time to put the metaphorical shotgun to the heads of his own party who promptly fell to their knees and kissed his ring. They are invertebrate, cowardly eunuchs who cannot even muster enough courage to defy this lame duck jerk when he openly regards the US Senate as his personal pack of spayed retreivers.

The polls today show that more than half of the country believes the president broke the law with this program and that it was wrong for him to have done it. And the press is in the most danger they've been in since since the Pentagon Papers, which was the last time whistleblowers came forward with such important revelations about government secrecy and lawlessness. So Democrats do not have to fear the press on this --- particularly if they remind them who their friends are on this issue. The Republicans are split on it, with the libertarian wing and the doctrinaire conservatives finding themselves having to swallow their disgust or break with the party. Democrats are in a much better position than they think to turn this into a positive and drive a wedge through the Republican coalition while they do it.

If the Democrats in congress simply stood together on principle instead of listening to overfed, out of touch strategists who have misdiagnosed the problem for years, they would begin to crawl out of this hole on national security. In order for the nation to trust them to defend the country the first thing they must do is stop believing that going along with the Republican Eunuch Caucus will ever improve their lot. People trust leaders who lead not followers who fall in line.


Glenn has more on this, here.


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digby 2/15/2006 11:40:00 AM |

 
Sending A Message

by digby


Bush is at the Wendy's Headquarters giving a speech about how many great jobs he's created since he took office. I'm not kidding.



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digby 2/15/2006 09:21:00 AM |

 
Abu Ghraib: More Pictures

by tristero

60 more photos, including six corpses, and what appear to be wounds from shotgun pellets (and no, I don't find any humor or irony in comparison. Torture takes away my ability to laugh or smirk.) The Bush administration has been trying to prevent Americans from seeing these new pics but 15 of the 60 are published in a slide show with the article. They are sickening.

The rest are to be shown on an Australian tv show. Note the very different way the incident is described by a press that is not American, which seems to my mind not only to imply culpability but also a cover-up of the involvement of superiors:

Seven US guards were jailed following publication of the first batch of Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004.

Hit, tip, Kevin.

No doubt there are many more pictures, and videos, that have fallen beyond the legal control of the US.

[Update: One sentence removed, one revised, one added after original post. ]
tristero 2/15/2006 02:16:00 AM |

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

 
Journalistic Venereal Disease

by digby


Glenn has another great post up today in which he throws down the gauntlet to the right wing bloggers like the Old Perfesser who are all quick to require that Democrat purge the party of radicals while they cheer and applaud the eliminationist fascists in their own midst.

Republicans have been playing this game for years. They wildly inflate the importance of fringe, extremist figures and then -- every time one of those individuals makes an intemperate remark or comment that can be wrenched out-of-context and depicted as some sort of demented evil -- they demand that Democrats ritualistically parade before the cameras and either condemn those individuals or be branded as someone who is insufficiently willing to stand up to the extremists "in their party."

I've written dozens of posts on this topic myself and it never fails to amaze me how deeply the right believes in its own righteousness. We on the left are not perfect, but by God, when leftist radicals start talking wistfully about killing Republicans we don't make them into best selling authors and cheer them like rock stars.

But I think there is another dimension to Glenn's observation and one that lets the right wing bloggers off the hook just a little. You can't really hold them responsible for Ann Coulter when the woman is profiled on the cover of TIME magazine and characterized as some sort of kicky, ascerbic comic. The writer of that article said:

"the officialdom of punditry, so full of phonies and dullards, would suffer without her humor and fire."

Here are a few more choice quotes from that article, (gathered by the incomparable Howler:)

CLOUD: Coulter's speech was part right-wing stand-up routine—she called Senator Edward Kennedy "the human dirigible"—and part bloodcurdling agitprop. "Liberals like to scream and howl about McCarthyism," she concluded. "I say, let's give them some. They've had intellectual terror on the campus for years ... It's time for a new McCarthyism." Curtain.

CLOUD: [S]he told me several times that, as she put it in an e-mail, "most of what I say, I say to amuse myself and amuse my friends. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about anything beyond that."

CLOUD: So which is it? Is she a brave warrior or a shallow hack? Or is Ann Coulter that most unlikely of conservative subspecies: a hard-right ironist?

CLOUD: [A]s Coulter herself points out in Is It True What They Say About Ann?, "I think the way to convert people is to make them laugh or to make them enraged ... Even if I could be convinced that if I had gone through 17 on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hands, I might convince one more liberal out there, I think I'd still write the way I write, because it gives me laughs." Coulter told me that when her editor suggests cutting a line from a column to save space, "I'll ask him, 'But is it funny?' And if he says it's funny, I'll cut an actual fact [instead]."

CLOUD: People say that Jon Stewart has blurred the line between news and humor, but his Daily Show airs on a comedy channel. Coulter goes on actual news programs and deploys so much sarcasm and hyperbole that she sounds more like Dennis Miller than Limbaugh.

CLOUD: One theory about Coulter is that she is less Joe McCarthy and more a right-wing Ali G, acting out a character who utters what the rest of us won't.

Why Coulter is just a female Ali G! Hilarious!

When Eric Alterman had the temerity to call Cloud on this utter swill, the author fell back on journalism's tedious false equivalency crutch:

Eric Alterman calls my piece on Ann Coulter a "moral, professional, and intellectual abomination" as well as, redundantly, a "moral and intellectual scandal." He says Time has "a journalistic venereal disease." This is the left-wing equivalent of an Ann Coulter attack: callous and intended to create as much friction as possible (words I use to describe Coulter in my alleged puff piece). But that's really what my story was about--the kind of take-no-prisoners dialogue that Coulter has helped create and popularize. Now Alterman, it would seem, is trying to out-Coulter Coulter.


[...]

What Alterman wants is for people to ignore Coulter, to pretend as though she doesn't exist and isn't one of the most loved--and hated--figures on the public scene. I would rather engage her, examine her ideas and her popularity, and challenge her. My story does all of those things. It's true that I don't list every single mistake Ann Coulter has ever made, although I do print some new ones. My job was not to fact-check all of Coulter's 1,000 columns, the 1,300-odd pages of her books and the hundreds of TV appearances; it was to profile her. Nonetheless, I do list several Coulter errors and also correct the record on some mistakes by others who have written about her--including Alterman. In his book on the media, Alterman asserts that Coulter said to a Vietnam vet, "People like you caused us to lose that war." She did not. In fact, the vet had just gotten his facts wrong, and Coulter responded sarcastically, "No wonder you guys lost." Harsh words, yes--sort of like saying Time has a venereal disease--but Alterman got the quote wrong.

Yes the phrase "TIME has journalistic venereal disease" (meaning that this rhetoric is passed along through intimate contact) is equivalent to "my only regret is that he [McVeigh]didn't blow up the NY Times building. Right. Exactly the same.

I wrote about this nonsense last spring when the Coulter profile was published:

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn't. For instance, he doesn't say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn't say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn't say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn't put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn't, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it's a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.

I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions. Slowly, slowly the water is heating up.

It's kind of funny that I and others spent last week arguing whether Democrats ought to be encouraging Hollywood to stop selling sex, (which even David Brooks agrees doesn't seem to correlate to any real negative change in the way kids behave.) But, here we have a real problem, a real coarsening of the discourse which has resulted in our politics becoming so polarized and rhetorically violent that it's as if we live on two different planets.

While Ann Coulter makes the cover of Time for writing that liberals have a "preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason," her followers actually side with Iraqi insurgents against an American charity worker. At freeperland and elsewhere they laughed and clapped and enjoyed the fruits of the enemy's labor. This is because if you listen to Ann and Rush and Sean and Savage and all the rest of these people you know that there is no greater enemy on the planet than the American liberal. That's what Ann Coulter and her ilk are selling and that is what Time magazine celebrated with their cover girl this week.

Ann Coulter and her violent, racist eliminationist rhetoric is considered funny and mainstream by the Washington post and TIME magazine. Considering that, why should the right wing bloggers believe they have any responsibility to hold themseloves to the standard to which they hold liberals with an outlying provocateur like Ward Churchill? In thier view, and most of the poltiical establishment, Ann Coulter is perfectly respectable.

I ended this post on the same subject with this comment from the racist website RedState:

Ann Coulter doesn't go on television ranting and raving like the liberals do. Remember Lawrence O'Donnell? Paul Begala? James Carville? Try Maureen Dowd. Ann is nothing like these losers but she does have a sharp wit and biting tongue and knows how to dish it out. These conspiracy theory wingnuts deserve nothing less.

That is the problem with Republicans. They don't know how to go for the throat while the Democrats are pros at aiming for the head.

I hope Ann keeps it up and never gives an inch. She is a strength for us conservatives, not something to be ashamed of.

Here's a cute little quote from that fun little minx's biting tongue:

"Liberals hate America, they hate flagwavers, they hate abortion opponents. They hate all religions except Islam post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do; they don't have the energy; if they had that much energy they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

Adorable.


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digby 2/14/2006 03:26:00 PM |

 
He Stands Ready To Assist

by digby


Yesterday McClellan kept saying that the vice president and his staff couldn't get all the facts together because they were concentrating so hard on making sure Whittington was ok. The implication was that Cheney must have been intimately involved, pressing down on an artery or administering CPR for hours since he didn't bother to even call Bush until much later.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that the first priority was making sure that Harry Whittington, Mr. Whittington was getting the medical care that he needed, and I think that's where everybody's attention should have been focused and was focused when the hunting accident took place. And in terms of here in Washington, there was information that we were continuing to learn about throughout the course of that evening and into early Sunday morning. The initial report that we received was that there had been a hunting accident. We didn't know who all was involved, but a member of his party was involved in that hunting accident. And then additional details continued to come in overnight.

And it's important always to work to make sure you get information out like this as quickly as possible, but it's also important to make sure that the first priority is focused where it should be, and that is making sure that Mr. Whittington has the care that he needs. And the Vice President went to the hospital yesterday to visit him. The Vice President was pleased to see that he was doing well and in good spirits. And the President is, as well.

Today,post heart attack, they are again saying the the Veep is standing by (waiting to be called into the operating room to monitor his vital signs orsomething.)

A statement from Cheney's office said, "The vice president said that he stood ready to assist. Mr. Whittington's spirits were good, but obviously his situation deserves the careful monitoring that his doctors are providing."

The funny thing about all this is that during the long night that Cheney was supposed to have been rolling bandages and mopping Whittington's fevered brow, he was actually "focused" on having his dinner:

She said Cheney stayed “close but cool” while the agents and medical personnel treated Whittington, then took him by ambulance to the hospital. Later, the hunting group sat down for dinner while Whittington was being treated, receiving updates from a family member at the hospital. Armstrong described Cheney's demeanor during dinner as “very worried” about Whittington.

"Man I hope that old bastard doesn't kick. Can you pass the butter?"


I have to say that judging from the cable gasbags today, this is the first scandal I've seen handled by the press like the Lewinsky scandal --- with everyone sitting around breathlessly speculating about what really happened and "what it all means." I suspect it's because it fits a larger narrative, as this diary on Kos, only partly tongue in cheek, shows. In fact, I just heard Bob Shrum say on Hardball that this story is a metaphor for the entire Bush administration: the gang that couldn't shoot straight.


But, seriously. What in the hell are they hiding? What?



Update: Ok. I think something very serious is happening behind the scenes. There is simply no way that a normally functioning white house would let their most powerful propaganda voice say this:

"Would you rather go hunting with Dick Cheney or riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy?” Limbaugh asked. "At least Cheney takes you to the hospital.”

Is that really where they want to go with this? Yow.



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digby 2/14/2006 01:23:00 PM |

 
Laziness Doesn't Begin To Explain It.

by tristero


Dear Kevin, You're wrong. I was there. I remember.

Laziness doesn't explain why George Stephanopoulos failed to mention on the proceeding Sunday show in February that millions of people in the United States marched the day before to oppose Bush's insane plans for war. Oh he mentioned Europe but not a word about the US marches. That's right, Kevin: Stephanopoulus failed to mention what was almost certainly the largest US demonstration in history the day after it happened. That wasn't laziness. And it's not laziness that the February and March '03 marches been all but eliminated from the official memories of 2002/2003. (Except to bring up ANSWER's involvement in organizing them and dismiss all those millions of mothers, fathers, and kids as green-haired goofballs.)

Kevin, I read somewhere that at least one of the networks began planning a year before the invasion to cover it (I'll try to look it up if you don't believe me). Meanwhile the voices opposed to war - and there were millions - were systematically excluded. Think about it. "Fuck, Saddam. We're taking him out," Bush joked (haha) a year before. It was in no one's interest in the media to include serious dissent to rush to war. Not only on Sunday bloviations, but throughout the week, the token representatives of opposition to Bush that were permitted on the major shows were ridiculed and smeared. Hey remember Scott Ritter, that shrill, hysterical, obnoxious guy who seemed slightly crazed? Laziness doesn't explain why Ritter's personal problems suddenly followed him whenever he confidently asserted that Saddam couldn't possibly have wmd - problems that, while no doubt truly ugly, didn't in any way disqualify his expertise. Remember when a liberal meant Michael Moore and only Michael Moore, a comic filmmaker who voted for Nader? The genuine major voices opposed to war weren't permitted anywhere near an effective microphone, but they were known. When Jessica Mathews of Carnegie Endowment - as sober an American as one could ask for and certainly known within the media - started to make a convincing case on NPR that democracy by invasion was a crazy pipe dream, even that relatively unimportant network was too big. William Kristol personally called up and horned in on her time with ludicrous assertions designed to prevent the conversation from touching upon the substantive issues at stake.

Hey, do you remember the Turkey angle, Kevin? Boy, I do. By that time, I was trying full time to understand why my country had gone insane. In the months before invasion, the press in the US was reporting a "coalition" attack - i.e. US - from Turkey was a done deal. But I smelled a rat. I asked friends for translations of articles overseas, including from Turkey. My, my what a different picture one got of that done deal! We were lied to and laziness doesn't explain that. It couldn't possibly happen given some 95% of the country was opposed to the US invading from Turkey. We were lied to. The press lied to the American people.

That is the truth. Oh yes, the press was, and is lazy. In booking guests on Sunday or reporting the news from Turkey. But that was hardly what uniquely characterized 2002/2003. What happened was that the press became an active collaborator in the single worst decision ever made by a United States president. Ever. A decision my 9 year old daughter will have to endure the consequences of, in ways large and small, every day for the rest of her life.

Laziness excluded anti-war voices on Sunday shows? After what we've all seen of the Bush/Cheney obsession with information control? Laziness? Please, Kevin. You're smarter than that. And you know you're smarter than that, as your half-hearted attempt to make nice all-but-concedes.

Before Bush/Iraq, it may have seemed cleverly political - cute - to take your tack, to not blame the press but ever so gently suggest they are getting bored with the same tired faces. It lets them save face after all and accomplishes the same thing. But after Bush/Iraq, it's gonna take a lot more than kind gentle suggestion to make sure that the US press never, ever deliberately abandons its gadfly role out of fear of retaliation from any presidency whose lust for power and control is well-nigh psychotic. As the current presidency is. And was particularly successful at enforcing in the prelude to disaster... sorry, I meant the war.

It's going to take an angry, assertive polis fully prepared to take on the establishment press and hold both its lazy foot AND its sycophantic foot to the fire. And do whatever it takes - even if it leads to resignations and reorganizations - to ensure the American people get the information it must have to govern itself.

Laziness. Yeah, right.

Love,

tristero

{Update: Kevin examines whether ratings tipped the balance in the run up to war}. Why does the name Howard Beale come to mind when I hear this argument? And why do phrases like, "we're talking about war, goddammit not a popularity contest" keep going throught my head? As for blaming Democrats for being boring, that is NOT what happened. That is NOT what makes the run up to war one of American journalism's most shameful period. What happened, what is still happening, is that voices that were right about Iraq in 2002 are still systematically excluded. They were/are not excluded because they are boring, but because they are unwanted. There's a difference.]
tristero 2/14/2006 12:02:00 PM |

 
Cheney's Victim Has Heart Attack.

by tristero

Okay, the official reports - which only a fool would believe are telling us how badly Whittington was shot or what actually happened - are getting less and less funny. Let's just hope he recovers and Cheney's weapons are confiscated.
tristero 2/14/2006 11:25:00 AM |

 
Oooooh Baby

by digby

The Poorman spends Valentine's day with the ladies of Wingnuttia. He knows what they need and gives it to them.


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digby 2/14/2006 10:21:00 AM |

 
A Difficult Public Face

by digby


Via Kevin and Atrios I see that Media Matters has released more data today about the cable news networks' partisan imbalance:

* The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton's second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush's first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.

* Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton's second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush's first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent -- nearly three times as large.

* In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.

* In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats/progressives than with Republicans/conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans/conservatives.

* The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has appeared 124 times. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003.

* In every year examined by the study -- 1997 - 2005 -- more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many righttitled panels as left-tilted panels.

* Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.

Again, none of this is surprising to those of us who have been watching this stuff from our side of the aisle for the last decade or so.

Kevin and Atrios both focus on the interesting fact that there was a total lack of anti-war voices in the run-up to the war. Kevin says:

Why did the anti-war side get shunned so badly by the talk shows?

I suspect the chart on the right contains the answer. Aside from documenting the insane love affair that Sunday hosts have with John McCain, it shows that eight of the ten most popular Sunday talkers were senators and every single one of them voted for the war resolution. The reason that anti-war senators didn't get much air time was just simple laziness: the talk show bookers kept booking their favorites regardless of what was happening in the outside world and regardless of whether that meant they were shortchanging their viewers. They were on autopilot.

Actually, it was not just laziness at all. We have evidence that this was a conscious decision on the part of the news networks:

While "Donahue" does badly trail both O'Reilly and CNN's Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even the highly promoted "Hardball With Chris Matthews."

Although Donahue didn't know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.

That report--shared with me by an NBC news insider--gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the "America's News Channel," have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace."

The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war......He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

And wave it they did. Just as a refresher, let's recall how the networks actually ended up covering the war:

Networks quickly scrambled to give names to their war coverage, with corresponding graphic logos that swooshed and gleamed in 3D colors accompanied by mood-inducing soundtracks. CBS chose "America at War." CNN went with "Strike on Iraq." CNBC was "The Price of War," while NBC and MSNBC both went with "Target: Iraq"—a choice that changed quickly as MSNBC joined Fox in using the Pentagon's own code name for the war—“Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The logos featured fluttering American flags or motifs involving red, white and blue. On Fox, martial drumbeats accompanied regularly scheduled updates. Promo ads for MSNBC featured a photo montage of soldiers accompanied by a piano rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” All of the networks peppered their broadcasts with statements such as, "CNN's live coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom will continue, right after this short break.” Every time this phrase came out of a reporter’s mouth or appeared in the corner of the screen, the stations implicitly endorsed White House claims about the motives for war.

The networks also went to pains to identify with and praise the troops. Fox routinely referred to U.S. troops as "we" and "us" and "our folks." MSNBC featured a recurring segment called "America's Bravest," featuring photographs of soldiers in the field. Regular features on Fox included "The Ultimate Sacrifice," featuring mug shots of fallen U.S. soldiers, and "The Heart of War," offering personal profiles of military personnel.

Much of the coverage looked like a primetime patriotism extravaganza, with inspiring theme music and emotional collages of war photos used liberally at transitions between live reporting and advertising breaks. Bombing raids appeared on the screen as big red fireballs, interspersed with "gun-cam" shots, animated maps, charts and graphics showcasing military maneuvers and weapons technology. Inside the studios, networks provided large, game-board floor maps where ex-generals walked around with pointers, moving around little blue and red jet fighters and tanks.

"Have we made war glamorous?" asked MSNBC anchor Lester Holt during a March 26 exchange with former Navy Seal and professional wrestler turned politician Jesse Ventura, whom it had hired as an expert commentator.

"It reminds me a lot of the Super Bowl," Ventura replied.

Never mind all the dead people and the hundreds of billions of dollars flushed down the toilet.




This article has more about NBC's directives in the run up to the war. Disgusting.


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digby 2/14/2006 09:06:00 AM |

 
The Times Gets Off One Of Its Knees

by tristero

The NY Times coverage of "intelligent design" creationism is improving somewhat from the days when Jodi Wilgoren (who has since changed her name to Rudoren) cheerfully fellated Christian Reconstructionists - the folks behind "intelligent design" - as they, along with other wackos, pursued the Wedge Strategy to inflict their racist, theocratic trash on the rest of us.

Today, Neela Banerjee and Anne Berryman turn in a good article on church celebrations of Darwin's 197th birthday:

The event, called Evolution Sunday, is an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, started by academics and ministers in Wisconsin in early 2005 as a response to efforts, most notably in Dover, Pa., to discredit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.

"There was a growing need to demonstrate that the loud, shrill voices of fundamentalists claiming that Christians had to choose between modern science and religion were presenting a false dichotomy," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the major organizer of the letter project.

Mr. Zimmerman said more than 10,000 ministers had signed the letter, which states, in part, that the theory of evolution is "a foundational scientific truth." To reject it, the letter continues, "is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."

"We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator," the letter says.

There are nuances in the descriptions a scientist might quibble over, but the article's approach is quite reasonable.

And this morning, Rudoren herself has a mediocre article on the rapid collapse of "intelligent design", mere mediocrity being quite an improvement for her. Rudoren does a pretty good job summarizing how quickly "intelligent design" is collapsing:

A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for "critical analysis" in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.

A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge's ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

A small rural school district in California last month quickly scuttled plans for a philosophy elective on intelligent design after being challenged by lawyers involved in the Pennsylvania case. Also last month, an Indiana lawmaker who said in November that he would introduce legislation to mandate teaching of intelligent design instead offered a watered-down bill requiring only "accuracy in textbooks." And just last week, two Democrats in Wisconsin proposed a ban on schools' teaching intelligent design as science, the first such proposal in the country.

Unfortunately, Rudoren wastes space, and the reader's time, passing on a stupid quote from the Christian Reconstructionist beard group, the Discovery Institute, without correction or comment. This is just one of several faux-balance quotes that maintain the fraud that there actually is a legitimate controversy over "intelligent design."

Still, it's something of an improvement from her Grand Canyon days.
tristero 2/14/2006 02:03:00 AM |

Monday, February 13, 2006

 
If It Ain't Broke

by digby

Three former associates of Jack Abramoff said Monday that the now-disgraced lobbyist frequently told them during his lobbying work he had strong ties to the White House through presidential confidant Karl Rove.

The White House said Monday that Rove remembers meeting Abramoff at a 1990s political meeting and considered the lobbyist a "casual acquaintance" since President Bush took office in 2001.

[...]

Abramoff was a $100,000 fundraiser for Bush and lobbying records obtained by the AP show his lobbying team logged nearly 200 meetings with the administration during its first 10 months in office on behalf of one of his clients, the Northern Mariana Islands.

The contacts between Abramoff's team and the administration included meetings with Attorney General John Ashcroft and policy advisers to Vice President Dick Cheney, the AP reported last year.

Abramoff's former assistant, Susan Ralston, went to work for Rove in 2001. Abramoff's legal team declined comment Monday night.

[...]

Asked about the three former Abramoff associates' account, the White House said Rove shared a common past with Abramoff as leaders of a young Republicans group decades ago.

"Mr. Rove remembers they had met at a political event in the 1990s," White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said. "Since then, he would describe him as a casual acquaintance."

I can't quite put my finger on it, but that reminds me of something. Darn it. I hate when that happens.

Oh well. In other news, I see that Kennyboy Lay's trial proceeds apace.

Oh right:

When Governor Bush—now President Bush—decided to run for the governor's spot, [there was] a little difficult situation—I'd worked very closely with Ann Richards also, the four years she was governor. But I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and some of the things he did to work for his father, and so did support him."

—Interview with Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay for Frontline's 2001 documentary, "Blackout: What Caused the Power Crisis in California? And Who's Profiting?"

[...]

"I got to know Ken Lay when he was the head of the—what they call the Governor's Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994 ... And she had named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken. …"

—President George W. Bush, answering reporters' questions in the Oval Office Jan. 10.

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digby 2/13/2006 10:29:00 PM |

 
What A Shame

by digby

I didn't have a dog in the Hackett Brown fight, but I can't help but be disappointed that Hackett is checking out. That man has the shinin' and we have precious little of that in Democratic circles. I have to think that the powers that be may have failed to comprehend that some people have to be dealt with differently than your average pol. That's why they call them "authentic" and it's important to handle them like the thoroughbreds they are. They are always high maintenance, like most stars, but they are very, very useful in projecting an appealing national image for the party. Ask the best bet to be the Republican nominee in 2008: John McCain.



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digby 2/13/2006 10:28:00 PM |

 
Dispatches From The Fever Swamp

by digby


Jason Zengerle over at the Plank gives Mickey Kaus props for being wrong and then discusses every Joementum Democrat's favorite new theme: the "fever swamp" of the liberal blogosphere. He quotes Kaus:

Much of Democratic politics seems to now consist of embracing and fanning similarly comforting, but ultimately deceptive, liberal memes. Enron has fatally damaged Bush, Abu Ghraib has fatally damaged Bush, Katrina has fatally damaged Bush, Abramoff has fatally damaged Bush, the Plame investigation will fatally damage Bush--you can catch the latest allegedly devastating issue every day on Huffington Post or Daily Kos (and frequently in the NYT).

And then adds:

I'd add a few other suspects to that last. But I think Kaus is on to something here. The drip-drip-drip of scandals and screw-ups should, collectively, take a toll on the Bush administration. But liberal bloggers have too often viewed and hyped each individual scandal as a silver bullet; and when that bullet misses--picking off, say, Scooter Libby instead of Karl Rove--they inevitably experience a letdown, and simply move onto the next supposed silver bullet, failing to capitalize on what, were it not for their unrealistically inflated expectations, would have been considered a significant scandal.

That is a very interesting observation and it makes me quite proud to be part of the liberal blogosphere. It means we are doing our jobs. The president's approval rating is stuck at around 40% and I think it's pretty clear that it isn't the reporting in the mainstream media or by the "reasonable" Democrats at the New Republican that brought that about. If left up to them the Republicans would be coasting to another easy re-election.

I don't say this because I think that liberal blogs are taking over the world and have changed the face of politics as we know it. I say it because I know that without us there would have been virtually no critical voices during the long period between 2001 and the presidential primary campaign during 2003. We were it. The media were overt, enthusiastic Bush boosters for well over two years and created an environment in which Democratic dissent (never welcome) was non-existent to the average American viewer. In fact, it took Bush's approval rating falling to below 40% before they would admit that he was in trouble.

I believe that if it had not been for the constant underground drumbeat from the fever swamps over the past five years, when the incompetence, malfeasance and corruption finally hit critical mass last summer with the bad news from Iraq, oil prices and Katrina, Bush would not have sunk as precipitously as he did and stayed there. It literally took two catasprophes of epic proportions to break the media from its narrative of Bush's powerful leadership. And this after two extremely close elections ---- and the lack of any WMD in Iraq.

Kevin Drum and Atrios both have featured posts today highlighting new data about about the dearth of liberal voices in the mainstream media. From Paul Waldman's article in the Washington Monthly:

This ideological imbalance isn't only evident in the "official" sources that are interviewed: the elected officials, candidates, and administration officials who make up most of the shows' guests. It is even clearer in the roundtable discussions with featured journalists, [where] it has been a frequent practice for a roundtable to consist of a right-wing columnist or two supposedly "balanced" by journalists from major newspapers.

....The consequence of all this is that in every year since 1997, conservative journalists have dramatically outnumbered liberal journalists, in some years by two-to-one or more. Why would the producers of the shows believe that a William Safire (56 appearances since 1997) or Bob Novak (37 appearances) is somehow "balanced" by a Gwen Ifill (27) or Dan Balz (22)? It suggests that some may have internalized the conservative critique of the media, which assumes that daily journalists are "liberal" almost by definition, and thus can provide a counterpoint to highly partisan conservative pundits.

Yes, it does suggest that. We in the fever swamps have observed this phenomenon for many years so it comes as no surprise to us. The liberal point of view has pretty much disappeared from the mainstream discourse. And yet, if one were to poll the grassroots, one would find that their views are not out of the mainstream at all. Indeed, on many more issues than not, we are in line with the vast majority of Americans.

And as much as we are unsurprised to see that the statistics bear out our observations that liberals aren't represented on news programs, neither are we surprised that right wing talk radio, right wing publishing and right wing cable news dominate the media and that we have nothing like it on our side. This is why we shake our heads in wonder when David Brooks says there are more "nuts" on our side or that we insist upon "Stalinist" discipline. (Ask Bruce Bartlett about Stalinist discipline.)

Rush Limbaugh gets paid 25 million dollars a year to say things like this:

OK, folks, I think I got enough information here to tell you about the contents of this fax that I got. Brace yourselves. This fax contains information that I have just been told will appear in a newsletter to Morgan Stanley sales personnel this afternoon.... What it is is a bit of news which says...there's a Washington consulting firm that has scheduled the release of a report that will appear, it will be published, that claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton, and the body was then taken to Fort Marcy Park.

This is, of course, the same Rush Limbaugh who interviews the Vice President on his show.

And while it is true that the producers of news programs may have internalized the "liberal" media meme and therefore book journalists who are required to be as objective as possible to spar with overt Republlican partisans, the greater problem is that the journalists themselves internalize the criticism and go out of their way to avoid being called liberal. This also explains journalists' somewhat overheated hostility to liberal bloggers: they have a target to prove to conservatives that they aren't liberals after all.

I actually think this is a good thing. We bloggers can take it. We're openly partisan and extremely aggressive. We aren't right wingers so we don't have their natural gift for organized top-down character assassination, but we have our own methods and we are learning. The mainstream media are, for the first time in memory, being pulled by both sides of the ideological spectrum. And maybe, just maybe, we might just save them in spite of themselves.

I have written before about this and made it clear that I do not wish to destroy the mainstream media. I do not believe that this country can do without a credible press. But after waiting in vain for more than a decade for the press to shake off its torpor and exert its perogatives as the fourth estate, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that our (and their) only hope was to join the fray and pull as hard as we can on the opposite end of the rope.

I see that the press does not know what to make of this. And I see that many Joementum Democrats don't get it either. They remain convinced that the country will wake up one day and see that our arguments are superior. They are wrong. This political era will be remembered for its brutal partisanship and sophisticated media manipulation in a 50/50 political environment. Democrats have been at a huge disadvantage because of the Republican message infrastructure and the strange servility of the mainstream press. So, we are pushing back with the one tough, aggressive partisan communication tool we have: the blogosphere.

The mainstream press is going to have to get used to us because we aren't going anywhere. I suspect they are actually somewhat relieved that somebody on our side has stepped up to take the slings and arrows of the vast right wing conspiracy and provide them with some cover. (No need to thank us. Just report the truth.)

Joementum Dems, on the other hand, need to recognize that we are in a partisan time and that requires a partisan strategy. We are going to hit them hard every time they repeat Republican talking points and otherwise enable the opposition to dominate the media discourse. There is no more room for bipartisan gestures that only benefit the GOP side of the equation. David Gergen said yesterday on This Weak that Republicans are much better at message than Democrats but they aren't so good at governing. Nobody knows this better than those of in the grassroots who have been forced to watch this trainwreck from the sidelines for more than a decade. It's why Bush is at 39% today and yet there is no guarantee that Democrats will win in the fall or any sense in the media that the Republican Party has failed. We cannot afford any more Democratic complicity with Republican memes and we are going to work against those who do it.

It's a new day. We angry denizens of the fever swamps have emerged from the slime to fight back. We couldn't wait any longer for the professionals to get the job done. At the rate they're going we'd be extinct within the decade.


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digby 2/13/2006 11:30:00 AM |

 
Do The Hustle

by digby


Scottie is making things much worse than they already were. He keeps saying that it took all that time to "gather the facts" and that their priority was to "help the victim." I guess we're supposed to believe that Cheney was so busy monitoring the man's vital signs that he couldn't pick up as phone and tell anybody what happened until the following morning.


Apparently, it took 12 hours to inform even McClellan that Cheney was the shooter. Both Card and Rove were involved very early. And Big Dick himself is said to have spoken to Armstrong about releasing it to her local paper, contrary to what she already said. A rather crude and bizarre press strategy for this group wouldn't you say? Why?


McClellan said that he knew about the shooting the evening it happened but didn't know until the next morning that it was Cheney. Asssuming he's telling the truth, I think it's fair to assume that they spent about 12 hours deciding whether Cheney or "someone else" actually fired the gun. I can't think of any other (believable) reason they would have waited --- unless there's even more to this story than we already know.


And how about that little bit about the deputy down in Texas who was told to back off asking any questions by the Secret Service? What's up with that?

developing super duper hardlike....



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digby 2/13/2006 09:48:00 AM |

 
Sourpuss

the digby

The Republicans really hate this shooting story. Hate it. The future ex Mrs Rush Limbaugh looks like she just sucked a lemon as she reported that Cheney went postal over the week-end. It isn't easy being a gargantuan right wing gasbag's girlfriend and having to pretend that you are unbiased. Sometimes it's impossible. She appeared to be barely able to keep her disgust in check contemplating what the comedians are going to say tonight.

So get your jokes on, moonbats. Let's torture us some wingnuts.


Just to get you started, here are the Top Ten Cheney Excuses For Shooting that Guy, courtesy DallasDem at Kos.

Update:

Then again, they aren't really quick enough to know a joke when they see one. I wrote this yesterday and Hilzoy over at Obsidion Wings did a fine riff on it last night. Sadly, it was a little bit too subtle for the folks apparently. I won't say it...



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digby 2/13/2006 08:45:00 AM |

 
Cheney's Law

by tristero

Always blame the victim:

"This all happened pretty quickly," Ms. Armstrong said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, "did not announce — which would be protocol — 'Hey, it's me, I'm coming up,' " she said.

"He didn't do what he was supposed to do," she added, referring to Mr. Whittington. "So when a bird flushed and the vice president swung in to shoot it, Harry was where the bird was."

Mr. Whittington was "sprayed — peppered, is what we call it — on his right side, on part of his face, neck, shoulder and rib cage," she said, noting that she, too, had been sprayed on her leg in a hunting accident.

"A shotgun sprays a bunch of little bitty pellets; it's not a bullet involved,"

Must news reporters always exaggerate and say Vice President Cheney "shot" someone? That's just not true!

It's not as if he actually fired a big bad bullet. Just little bitty pellets. Couldn't harm a fly. And, good heavens, Harry wasn't even "sprayed" with little bitty pellets. He was just peppered. You ever pepper steak tartare? Oh, dear, that wasn't in good taste, was it? Tee hee!

Now run along like a good little girl and don't you dare go talking to anyone else who was there. Just do what you're supposed to do, write what I said, and you won't get hurt. Like Harry.

Besides, my child, it was his own fault, now, wasn't it?
tristero 2/13/2006 01:09:00 AM |

Sunday, February 12, 2006

 
Bad Jack

by digby

The Democratic Daily has a scoop. Here's a taste:

There was a good Jack and a bad Jack. Most people today only know the bad Jack. I didn’t know that man at all. The Jack I knew was funny engaging and after hours he was decent and true to his beliefs. Apparently he had some misguided impression of how to influence government.

There is something terribly wrong with our nation's capital.


Here's a little more about "the bad Jack."



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digby 2/12/2006 09:34:00 PM |

 
Edgy New Media

by digby


It was awfully good to see Jim Brady finally come forth with the scholarly, meditative disquisition about the effects of blogging on modern media for which we've all been waiting. We were in desperate need of some lucid, unimpassioned analysis of what happened in the Deborah Howell affair.

My career as a nitwitted, emasculated fascist began the afternoon of Jan. 19 when, as executive editor of the Post's Web site, washingtonpost.com, I closed down the comments area of one of our many blogs, one called post.blog. Created primarily to announce new features on the Web site, the blog had become ground zero for angry readers complaining about a column by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell on the newspaper's coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. If I had let them, they would have obliterated any semblance of civil, genuine discussion.

As it was, things got pretty ugly, and it's worth figuring out why. In her Jan. 15 column, Howell erred in saying that Abramoff gave campaign donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. In fact, Abramoff directed clients to give to members of both parties, but he had donated his own personal funds only to Republicans.

Howell's inadvertent error prompted a handful of bloggers to urge their readers to go to post.blog to vent their discontent, and in the subsequent four days we received more than a thousand comments in our public forum. Only, the word "comments" doesn't convey the obscene, vituperative tone of a lot of the postings, which were the sort of things you might find carved on the door of a public toilet stall. About a hundred of them had to be removed for violating the Post site's standards, which don't allow profanity or personal attacks.

To my dismay, matters only got worse on Jan. 19 after Howell posted a clarification on washingtonpost.com. Instead of mollifying angry readers, the clarification prompted more than 400 additional comments over the next five hours, many of them so crude as to be unprintable in a family newspaper. Soon the number of comments that violated our standards of Web civility overwhelmed our ability to get rid of them; only then did we decide to shut down comments on the blog.

So was I suppressing free speech? Protecting the Bush administration? That's what you'd think, judging by the swift and acid reaction to my move. They couldn't get to post.blog, but they sure let me have it elsewhere in the blogosphere. I was honored as "Wanker of the Day" on one left-wing blog. Another site dissected my biography in order to prove that I was part of The Post's vast right-wing conspiracy.

It's so refreshing, isn't it, to see real journalism in action instead of the snide, snippy attitude displayed so often by sophomoric bloggers?

Now contrast that dry piece of expository writing with this wild, insane drivel written by one of the bloggers Brady so justifiably takes to task in his article: (From Alternet, naturally.)

When Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell published the false claim on Jan. 15 that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats, the paper got a loud, swift and public lesson in the new realities of online interactivity and instant accountability. It was like watching a woolly mammoth being hauled shrieking and dripping with ice-age detritus into the 21stt century.

This lesson came in large part from the blogosphere, in the form of comments made on the newspaper's website and in posts made to political weblogs, such as DailyKos, Eschaton, and my own blog, Firedoglake. The collective daily readership of the largest political blogs now runs in the millions. We are news and politics junkies, instantly able to recite the last six jobs of Senate staffers and the names of reporters who cover every beat. We follow politics in real time and have zero tolerance for the kind of sloppy mistake Howell made. Hundreds of us swarmed to the site and immediately made our feelings known.

The paper's insistence on remaining silent in the wake of this was a clear indication that management did not understand that the days of one-way "we speak, you listen" information flow are over. It is no longer possible for a newspaper to simply publish erroneous information and then stonewall critics as they wait for everything to blow over.

Mercy! Can't someone put a muzzle on that crazy shrew? Can she not control her acid tongue and name calling even for a minute to explain her position? Apparently not. (Wooly Mammoths!!!? My God. Has she no decency? )

Unlike the wise, level-headed analysis you see in the first piece, here we have a writer who is so angry and hysterical she can't even begin to explain her position.

In these two pieces we have seen the contrast: crazed, hysterical demagoguery based purely on one's personal, emotional reaction to a story vs a sober, rational explanation of the events at hand. This is what separates "journalism" from "blogging." Perhaps someone would like to invite Mr Brady to the next blogger ethics panel to show us how it's done.



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digby 2/12/2006 03:57:00 PM |

 
Irresponsible

by tristero

Jeebus. Cheney shot someone. Let's hope the victim fully recovers. Meanwhile, TalkLeft discusses the legal issues.

Regardless, obviously Cheney just can't be trusted with the responsiblity of handling firearms. For God's sakes, confiscate the sumbitch's guns. Now. Before he kills someone.
tristero 2/12/2006 03:16:00 PM |

 
Find Me A Watermelon Immediately

by digby

We've got some ballistic tests to do. This doesn't pass the smell test:

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until nearly 24 hours after it happened.

OK, folks, I think I got enough information here to tell you about the contents of this fax that I got. Brace yourselves. This fax contains information that I have just been told will appear in a newsletter to Morgan Stanley sales personnel this afternoon... What it is is a bit of news which says... there's a Washington consulting firm that has scheduled the release of a report that will appear, it will be published, that claims that this shooting took place in an apartment owned by Lynn Cheney, and the body was then taken to the ranch.

This needs to be looked into. And if it's determined to be an accident it needs to be looked into again. And again.



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digby 2/12/2006 03:10:00 PM |

 
Fallen Statues

by digby


Way back in November of 2000, people were chattering online about government overreach, specifically the rubber stamp FISA court:

"Franz Kafka would have judged this to wild to fictionalize. But for us - it's real"

---

"As quietly as possible (although it sometimes breaks out into the open, usually with the sound of gunfire and the death of innocents), a "shadow government" has been set up all around us my friend. It's foundation is not the constitution, but Executive Orders, Presidential Procalamations, Secret Acts, and Emergency Powers.

It has all the tools to be an absolute tyranny and those behind it (on both sides of the aisle) who crave power and their form of "governance" continue to move towards it while we are distracted by so many other goings on."

---

"The article strives to make it clear that the targets of the Kafka Kourt are foreign nationals, but then it also reveals that once a "target" is "approved" all of his or her contacts are also investigated.

[...]

Outlandish? Yes. But then, so is this whole Kafka Kourt outlandish."

---

"This is one of those ideas that has a valid purpose behind it, but is wide open to terrible abuse. And there's no way to check to see if it is abused.

Like all things that don't have the light of day shining on them, you can be sure that it is being twisted to suit the purposes of those who hold the power."

---

"The targets need not be under suspicion of committing a crime, but may be investigated when probable cause results solely from their associations or status: for example, belonging to, or aiding and abetting organizations deemed to pose a threat to U.S. national security.

This was discussed previously on FreeRepublic along with a Justice Department list of organizations to target. I saved it but unfortunately have lost it.. there were a lot of pro-life and pro-2nd Amendment groups on the list if I recall correctly. One group they targeted was a pro-life organization run by Catholic priests!"

Yes, that was from a Free Republic thread. It would appear that 9/11 changed the liberty loving, bill of rights supporting, self-sufficient freepers into a gaggle of snivelling little babies who were so traumatized by the terrorists that they now think this jack-booted FISA court is too much oversight and the president actually has the power to spy on any damned citizen he wants to. (Or they are partisan robots, you be the judge.)

I got that link from a great post by Glenn Greenwald about the new authoritarian cult conservatives (reminding me of my own little bon mot: "Conservative" is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals.")

He writes:

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

I think the cult of Bush is actually representative of something else. A few months ago Rick Perlstein gave a talk about Barry Goldwater at a gathering of conservative intellectuals on the subject of The Conservative Movement: Its Past, Present and Future. To a room filled with the biggest thinkers on the right he said:

As an unabashed ideological liberal in the depths of the age of Clintonian triangulation, I found the recollections of the risks you all took for a cause absolutely inspiring.

In a sense, I considered you political role models.

The name that came up over and over in my interviews with these veterans of Young Americans for Freedom was "Richard Nixon." They came to the 1960 Republican National Convention determined to draft Barry Goldwater for vice president. They left after making a breathtaking ad hoc run at drafting Goldwater for president instead, and taking down the presumptive nominee as an unprincipled sellout.

Richard Nixon once instructed a new staffer, Richard Whalen, "Flexibility is the first principle of politics." The conservative movement has understood itself to be the people who unflaggingly answered back to Nixon: "Principle rises above politics." That's a quote from Alf Regnery, in a profile of him this fall in the Washington Post. In the same article, David Keene related his answer to someone who criticized the ACU for attacking congressional spending, because Republicans were the ones in charge of it: "Well, that's too bad." The man here to my right, Lee Edwards, got the money quote: "What we have here is the principled conservatives vs. the pragmatic conservatives."

[...]

What to make of the fact that some of the names who pioneered this anti-Nixonian movement of principle showed up in the dankest recesses of the Nixon administration? People like Douglas Caddy, of course, the co-founder of the effort to draft Goldwater for vice-president in 1960 and YAF's first president, who was the man the White House called on to represent the Watergate burglars in 1972. And people like the guy inaugurated as YAF's chair in the 1965 with those stirring words about truth: Tom Charles Huston--who, as the author of the first extra-legal espionage and sabotage plan in the Nixon White House, can fairly be called an architect of Watergate.

It is a thread one finds throughout the annals of the Nixon presidency. The notion that what they were doing was moral, the eggs that need be broken in the act of redeeming a crumbling West. Jeb Magruder told the Senate Watergate Committee: "Although I was aware they were illegal we had become somewhat inured to using some activities that would help us in accomplishing what we thought was a cause." That message came straight from the top. "Just remember you're doing the right thing," the president told Bob Haldeman on Easter Sunday, 1973. "That's what I used to think when I killed some innocent children in Hanoi." Then he briefed him on how to suborn perjury from an aide concerning the blackmailing of the Watergate burglars.

I would argue that the lawlessness of the Reagan administration was similarly couched in moral terms. Yes, the congress may have explicitly prohibited the president from aiding the Nicaraguan contras, but helping the contras was an act of redeeming a crumbling west (saving the world from communism), so more eggs had to be broken. I don't think I need to point out the huge fluffy omelette this administration is cooking up --- to redeem the crumbling...well, you know the drill.

So, it isn't precisely a cult of George W. Bush. It's a cult of Republican power. We know this because when a Democratic president last sat in the oval office, there was non-stop hysteria about presidential power and overreach. Every possible tool to emasculate the executive branch was brought ot bear, including the nuclear option, impeachment. Now we are told that the "Presidency" is virtually infallible. The only difference between now and then is that a Republican is the executive instead of a Democrat.

This must be a function of psychology more than ideology. David Gergen said this morning on This Weak, that the Republicans are much better at "messaging" than the Democrats, but that they aren't good at governing. This is true. They win by selling a fantasy of freedom and riches ---- and govern as despots. You can see from the examples cited above that there is no real conservative ideology. If they can jettison their most cherished ideals (small government, balanced budgets, checks and balances, states' rights, individual liberty etc.) whenever a Republican holds office, it is quite clear that what they care about is the power, not the "message" on which they ran.

Today I read that Bob Barr, a man who made his bones by calling for Clinton's impeachment even before the Lewinsky scandal broke, is now being booed by a room full of arch-conservatives for suggesting that the president saying "trust me" is not adequate. We know very well that if the president were a Democrat, everyone in that room would not find it adequate.

Perlstein ended his speech with this:

For the stations of the cross of a conservatism in power include not merely Sharon, Connecticut, but Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; not merely Mont Pelerin, but the competing Indian casinos whose money was laundered by conservative groups on Jack Abramoff's behalf. Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson's ties to Bobby Baker. Now Republicans have made Bobby Baker their majority leader. His K Street Project is a lineal descendant of the attitudes and actions that constituted Watergate: Richard Nixon calling for the heads of Democratic donors and howling, "We have all this power and we're not using it." The American Conservative Union has made defending him to the death a point of conservative honor.

Ask yourself, What would Barry Goldwater say?

I believe now that Goldwaterism was nothing more than public relations and the "conservative movement" that sprang from his failed presidential campaign was nothing more than an elaborate con job. Throughout all the years that they decried Stalinism, it wasn't an idealistic belief in human rights and democracy that drove them. It was quite the opposite, in fact. It was envy. All that control over other people. The huge police and military apparatus. The forced conformity. The only thing they genuinely hated about the Soviet Union was its economic philosophy. The totalitarian system, not so much. When you read about the "conservative movement" you find over and over again that the anti-communists immersed themselves in Stalinism and modeled their organizational style on it, often quite openly admiring its efficient application of power. And as we know, one of totalitarianism's most obvious features is the cult of personality that always grows up within it.

The modern Republicans do show all the hallmarks of an authoritarian cult. But I believe that the metaphorical statue of George W. Bush will be toppled very shortly after he leaves office after an "election" based on a message of "reform." They must restore the fantasy. His statue will be replaced, of course, with another infallible leader. That's how it works.









The Princeton Symposium is now available online. Check out the whole line-up of thinkers on the Right. Perlstein really went into the belly of the beast.


Update: Kevin coincidentally finds a very nice illustration of what I'm talking about.
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digby 2/12/2006 08:29:00 AM |

Saturday, February 11, 2006

 
Educational Week-end

by digby


I am going to be out most of the day so I want to leave you all with some good reading from around the blogosphere:

This article by Arthur Silber about the inevitability of action in Iran is spot on. We are not dealing with rational actors. And he's not talking about the Iranians.

This post by Pastordan at Street Prophets about heresy in the Evangelical church is quite instructive. As usual the media gets it wrong.

Eric at Wampum answers my question about how the Democrats should answer the Republicans on national security with a fascinating reminder that there are still sharks in the blue water.

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution informs us of other things that Al Qaeda forgets.

Bill at Liberal Oasis tells the opposition party how to be an opposition party.

Gavin at Sadly No! writes about how it might happen here.

Gary Farber discusses datamining.

Assparrot (apparently still hungover) holds a "Digby nailed it ..." contest.

Oh, and in case you have been in a coma for the last four decades, this article in the Washington Post may help you understand that you are not crazy for noticing that all the racists are now Republicans.



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digby 2/11/2006 06:49:00 PM |

 
Wet Dreams

by digby

Uhm, would anybody care to speculate about why William Donohue, president of the Catholic league is so obsessed with incest and sodomy? Yesterday he said:

DONOHUE: Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face. You know, it's such a cop-out to talk about freedom of expression.

My he has quite an imagination doesn't he? Don't blame Hollywood. I don't think they've been making any movies featuring such scenes. I don't even think the porno industry has been making movies featuring such scenes. That lovely image came right out of that sick fuck's twisted subconscious.

(In case you didn't catch the show, Donohue was talking about Muslim intolerance, by the way.)

Apparently, he just can't stop thinking about it:

After all, 15-year-olds, they go to abortionists. They get their babies killed without parental consent. The new Puritans [those criticizing The Passion of the Christ] don't seem to worry about that. They like gay sex. They like [the film] The Dreamers, a brother and sister who bathe together and stuff like that. The same people in The New York Times who say this movie, I don't think it's not really right for kids, they have no problems when it comes to sodomy. It's smoking they don't like and Catholicism. [MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 2/25/04]

Mothers, brothers, sisters. (What, no dear old Dad?) Yeah, it's Hollywood that's got a problem.



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digby 2/11/2006 06:43:00 AM |

 
Literary Terrorism

Guest post by Thumb

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed new details on Thursday of a thwarted al Qaeda plot to use shoe bombs to hijack a plane and fly it into a Los Angeles building, as he sought to justify his tactics in fighting terrorism.

With critics questioning the legality of his authorization of a domestic spying program, Bush used newly declassified details of a previously revealed plot to show that the threat of terrorism has not abated.

"America remains at risk, so we must remain vigilant," Bush said.

He said that in early 2002 the United States and its allies disrupted a plot to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles.

But he got the name of the building wrong, saying the "intended target was Liberty Tower." He meant Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower, that at 1,017 feet (310 metres) high is the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River.

It seems Bush wasn't the only one confused by the name of the tower. This shocking leaked NSA intercept of two of the shoe-bombers shows even the terrorists were confused:

AQ#1: Have you received our target yet?

AQ#2: Yes. The Literary tower in Los Angeles.

#1: The Literary Tower?

#2: Yes. You know, the really tall one.

#1: Fool, you mean the LIBERTY Tower, not the...

#2: No no no, the Literary Tower, I remember specifically. That's the big one. With all their books.

#1: Their books?? Who cares about the infidel's books? The plan is to strike down their liberty. That makes our target the Liberty Tower, not the Literary tower. Are you sure we're talking about the same tower? Do you have a map? We are talking about Los Angeles, aren't we?

[paper shuffling]

#2: Um... uh... I can't figure this out. Oh, who cares what it's called. It's the tallest one. How many tallest buildings can there be in Los Angeles, anyway?

#1: Three? Four?

#2: ...Well, it doesn't matter. Any one of them will do. Do you have the information on our weapons?

#1: Yes, I am told we will hide high explosives in our shoes, and then...

#2: Uh, say that again? It sounded like you said "high explosives" and "shoes."

#1: Yes. Explosives. In our shoes. We'll use them to gain access to the cockpit...

#2: Uh, Mohammed?

#1: Yes Mohammed?

#2: Something, um, doesn't sound right. Are you quite sure...

#1: Of course I'm sure. It says right here [sounds of more paper shuffling] that we are to use high explosives to gain access to the cockpit, where we then threaten to blow up the rest of plane if they don't fly it into the Liberty...

#2: Literary...

#1: Liberty, Literary... I don't... [sighs] Look, just tell the pilot "The tall one." I'm quite sure they'll know which building you're talking about. Just tell them that if they don't immediately fly the plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles, you'll blow them up with your Sneakers of Mass Destruction. They won't want that, I can assure you.

#2: Uh... there's something I don't understand.

#1: Yes?

#2: How do we explode our way into the cockpit and still threaten to blow up the plane?

#1: Fool, that's why we hide the explosives in our shoes. Just use one shoe on the cockpit door. That way we still have the other shoe to threaten to blow up the rest of the plane with.

#2: Ooooh. That makes sense. Sort of. [long pause] We get to take them off first, right?

#1: I assume. Let me check [paper shuffling]. Well, I don't see where it says we can't. So I suppose it should be okay. [pause] Wait. Did you hear that?

#2: Yes, I did. Is there somebody else on the line? You don't have a party line, do you? Please tell me you paid for a private line...

#1: Yes, of course this is a private line. Now shut your hookah-hole, I'm trying to listen. ["if you'd like to continue this wiretap for another --ten-- minutes, please insert an additional --75-- cents"] ACK! I think this line is being tapped!

#2: Do Americans have such technologies?

#1: Damn. I once read where they did, but I completely forgot about that.

[click]
digby 2/11/2006 06:26:00 AM |

 
Ah, Brownie.

by tristero

I didn't see the hearings but if this description of what he said is accurate, one can only wish he had been half as good a FEMA chief as he is a Republican loyalist:

Mr. Brown said that he told a senior White House official early on of the New Orleans flooding, and that the administration was too focused on terrorism to respond properly to natural disasters...

The Bush administration, as a whole, he said, did not seem to care enough about natural disasters and had relegated natural disasters to a "stepchild" of national security.

"It is my belief," Mr. Brown told the senators, that if "we've confirmed that a terrorist has blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could."

Did they actually let him get away with that nonsense? Did nobody point out the obvious which Atrios immediately saw? That there is no essential difference between a response to a terrorist blowing up the levee or a hurricane blowing it? That you cancel your vacation and get your butt in gear 'cause you got a serious, serious emergency - thousands of lives are at stake - that requires the full attention of the fucking president?

Was Brown forced to concede that the Bush "intense focus on terrorism" is really a perverse obsession with the publicity at the expense of reality? Those of you who saw Brown testify - did anyone make that point?

Apparently not. Yes, Brown blamed the White House for the failure in Katrina rather than his own ineptitude; given the amount of trouble he's in, he had no choice. Even so - this is incredible! - he re-emphasized, without contradiction or explanation, THE single most important Republican talking point:

Republicans make national security and fighting terrorism Priority 1.

And while he spewed this partisan bullshit, Democrats "gently" urged him to keep his chin up and "keep fighting!" Brownie, you truly have done a heckuva job.
tristero 2/11/2006 01:21:00 AM |

Friday, February 10, 2006

 
Testy, testy

by digby


Mr Victoria Toensing just had a hissy fit on Wolfie because his co-pundit Richard Ben-Veniste agreed that Cheney didn't break the law but pointed out that it was hypocritical for Cheney to lecture people about leaking when he was authorizing his staff to selectively leak to reporters under cover of anonymity.

Mr Toensing rose up and bared his claws at Wolf because he had apparently agreed to come on to only discuss the "legal" issues and not to get into a partisan discussion. He's just an old non-partisan, country lawyer, you know. He doesn't do politics.



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digby 2/10/2006 04:35:00 PM |

 
Born Yesterday

by digby

White House aides had arranged for only the first few minutes of the session to be open to reporters. But an apparent mistake left a microphone on for longer than anticipated.

In the interim, he said, "I support the free press, let's just get them out of the room. ..."

"I want to share some thoughts with you before I answer your questions," he went on to the Republican House members. "First of all, I expect this conversation we're about to have to stay in the room. I know that's impossible in Washington."

He then moved to a defense of the NSA program that allows wiretaps without court warrants as part of certain terrorist investigations.

"I wake up every morning thinking about a future attack, and therefore, a lot of my thinking, and a lot of the decisions I make are based upon the attack that hurt us," Bush said.

Referring to the controversy surrounding whether the program is legal, he said, "We put constant checks on the program."

"I take my oath of office seriously. I swear to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States," Bush said.

Isn't he terrific? Even in private he is exactly the same as he is in public. Boy oh boy, it sure is a good thing he didn't say anything controversial, though. That "technician" (who is coincidentally named Karl Rove --- go figure) would have been given a first class ticket to the woodshed. But our preznit is the same stalwart patriot no matter who he is speaking to so that technician knew he had nothing to worry about.



Update: Wolfie fell for it.


hat tip to FauxReal



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digby 2/10/2006 03:25:00 PM |

 
More Angry Leftists

by digby

Uh oh, better tell the Beltway Quilting Bee and Ladies Circle Jerk Society that the Angry Left is at it again. One of them infiltrated the annual Republican Decency In Public Discourse Convention and reported on their confidential internal discussion. These leftist barbarians have no shame:

Before an overflow crowd of at least 1000 young right-wing activists, Coulter took her brand of performance art to new heights. Afterwards, I caught up with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to ask him about Coulter's characterization of Muslims as "ragheads." Before I reveal his indignant response, here are a sampling of Coulter's most memorable lines.

Coulter on Muslims:

"I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'" (This declaration prompted a boisterous ovation.)

Coulter on killing Bill Clinton:

(Responding to a question from a Catholic University student about her biggest moral or ethical dilemna) "There was one time I had a shot at Clinton. I thought 'Ann, that's not going to help your career.'"

Coulter on moderate Republicans:

"There is more dissent on a slave plantation then amongst moderates in the Republican party."

Coulter on the Holocaust:

"Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and the NY Times have made submissions."

Coulter on the Supreme Court:

"If we find out someone [referring to a terrorist] is going to attack the Supreme Court next week, can't we tell Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalito?"

After Coulter's speech, I approached Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the CPAC exhibitor's hall. I asked him what he thought of Coulter's characterization 15 minutes earlier of Muslims as "ragheads." HIs reply? "I wasn't there so I better not comment."

Something's going to have to be done about all these rude leftwing bloggers. They have no business sneaking around asking Senator Frist questions like that. Don't these people have any manners at all?

Update: Jane finds even more grubby angry leftists pretending to be journalists. Lock your doors and hide the wimminfolk.


Update II: Kevin at Catch reports that certain right wing blogs are unhappy with Coulter's tasteless comments. That's surprising. They never said anything before. She's been wowing 'em at the CPAC for years.


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digby 2/10/2006 02:39:00 PM |

 
Careerist Crooks

by digby

Josh Marshall has posted an interesting piece of correspondence from a Democratic staffer regarding the Abramoff affair. There are as number of things in the letter that are worth discussing, but there is one point that offers an intriguing talking point:

The vast majority of Democratic staffers work on the Hill, despite the miserable pay and long hours, to try to achieve some measure of good. Many, many Republican staffers- convinced that government is an evil- work here in order to make money off that necessary evil. That breeds corruption. When you have a majority of members and staffers that could care less about policy ad governing and more about power/influence/money/profit Abramoff is inevitable. When the hard, tedious work of legislating and oversight is done by people motivated by careerism rather than professionalism not only do you have Abramoff, but you have Michael Brown, Halliburton, and illegal NSA wiretapping.

We need to think about ways to communicate why this "culture of corruption" is so pervasive in GOP government and why it is unique to them. This is one good way to explain it:

When Republicans are in charge, watch your wallets. Corruption and incompetence naturally stem from sending people who hate the government to Washington. They obviously aren't there to be responsive to the public because they don't believe the government can or should be responsive to the public. They are either there to exercize power for power's sake, make contacts and build their careers or they are second rate hacks who can't make it in the private sector. Democrats come to Washington to do good. Republicans come to Washington to feed at the trough.


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digby 2/10/2006 01:52:00 PM |

 
Professional Journalamalism

by digby

Most people have already heard how poor little Brownie took down that unctuous haircut with lips, Norm Coleman, this morning. What you may not know is that shortly afterward on MSNBC, professional journalist Bob Kur used Coleman's attack as an example of bipartisan anger at poor little Brownie --- identifying Coleman as a Democrat. .


Somebody get Duncan on the phone. He's going to have to clear his schedule for another blogger ethics panel.



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digby 2/10/2006 01:50:00 PM |

 
Call Comey

by digby

I wrote sometime back that we had reached a point with this administration that we were entirely dependent upon the integrity of a few members of the legal community to save the country. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I think it may literally be true.

I'm not usually a big friend of tough prosecutors. I hate the drug war and I think they play fast and loose when trying to take down a target by squeezing people who are only peripherally involved. There is always tension between civil libertarians and the government and that is as it should be. It's that balance that allows us to live in a (mostly) civilized society.

When a government becomes corrupt and power mad one normally depends upon the political opposition and the press to sound the alarm --- and to some extent that has happened. But due to a corporate media that pumps non-stop sensation into people's heads 24 hours a day, the signal to noise ratio is seriously out of whack, even when something very important happens. Only terrorist attacks and catastrophic natural disasters can break through the static. As Peter Daou writes today, the sheer number of scandals makes it almost impossible for the press and the public to see any of them clearly.

And even if something begins to break through, we know from the Plame scandal and others that the administration exerts an iron grip on the media almost as painful as the one with which it chokes dissenters in its own party. After all, when Scooter Libby called Tim Russert to complain about Chris Matthews' coverage, bureau chief Russert didn't simply say that Matthews had a right to his opinion or that NBC always provided a forum for the administration to rebut any claims and leave it at that. No, he reported Libby's complaints to the president of NBC, Matthews' bosses. I think that pretty much tells the tale of the Washington press corps in a nutshell. I wouldn't count on them to help us out of this mess.

In addition, our two party tradition provides for very little real power to be invested in an oppostion party on its own --- the rules have been devised for bipartisan compromise. When you have a very disciplined majority (even if only with a slight numerical advantage) the minority party can be virtually shut out of government, as in a parliamentary system. We have little experience with this kind of government and without the open floor debate and partisan press that exists in other systems, this makes for very lopsided power structure.

The structural political imbalance, the media cacophany and the overwhelming numbers of crises and scandals both large and small have virtually paralyzed this country's ability to deal with the very serious constitutional crisis that is developing over the president's assertion of unlimited executive and warmaking powers. I think the law is our only backstop on this. It's appearing more and more that we are going to have to ask certain lawyers, cops and judges who understand that their duty to their country is bigger than their duty to this president to step up. And that brings me to James Comey.

All evidence suggests that I would not agree with James Comey's politics, but I can't be sure since he has scrupulously guarded his poltical leanings. I very much doubt that this law and order prosecutor sees the world through my ACLU lens. However, like many of the growing numbers of law enforcement officers who have grown alarmed by this administration's lawless governance, he is by all accounts a straight arrow. He was the number two man in the Justice Department when all the recent affronts to the constitution (torture, spying, the death of habeus corpus, indefinite detention, presidential infallibility) were delivered and from what we know he objected vociferously. It is, therefore, no surprise that this non-political career civil servant is no longer in government.

It is vital that he testify in a future hearing on the illegal NSA spying hearings. I do not know what he will say, and he may even defend the program on some level. But there is a reason why Comey refused to sign off on reauthorizing this program, forcing Gonzales to go to the hospital and try to strong arm a man who just had surgery to sign off on it instead. In his testimony earlier this week, Gonzales implied that it may have been a problem with another program. How very interesting.

We need to know just what in the hell was going on during the period between the time the program was instituted and the time Comey and others refused to reauthorize it. Why was it suspended? We need to know if there were other illegal spying programs. Comey is the man who can answer those questions.

Apparently, Comey believes that the administration may invoke executive privilege. Considering what poor little Brownie said this morning, I suspect that all former administration officials are told that if called before congress the president will likely invoke executive privilege. He is after all, infallible. But at the very least the committee should force the administration to invoke it. Let's get all the cards on the table.

I have no idea if there are other illegal programs out there or if this program has been used for domestic spying. But it's clear that something about all this stinks to high heaven and the Democrats know it. The smart money says that they've created a full-on datamining capability along the lines of Total Information Awareness and they are using it on US Citizens for god knows what purpose. Maybe Americans don't mind being subject to constant monitoring by the government. And maybe they really are so afraid of terrorists that they are willing to officially end our 230 year experiment in liberty by codifying an elected dictatorship rather than a carefully balanced representative government. But before we flush the constitution down the toilet, let's give democracy one last hurrah, shall we? Let's find out if these actions are legal and constitutional (and if the people of this country really are the bedwetting cowards the Republicans take them for.)

Firedoglake is collecting comments on this matter in the hopes that the powers that be on the Judiciary Committee will understand that the grassroots are engaged and knowledgeable on this issue and will back up any Democratic Senator who pushes for more testimony, specifically the testimony of James Comey. Either leave a comment here or go over to FDL and add your voice to the chorus if you agree.



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digby 2/10/2006 01:26:00 PM |

 
White House Knew of Levee's Failure The Night Katrina Struck

by tristero

So you're thinking, "Surprise, surprise, Bush lied." Well then just read the entire article and see if you can still maintain a cynical, world-weary attitude as the details accumulate about the sheer extent of what happened - and didn't - during Katrina. And the extent of the lying.

I'll stop here; I'm too angry to write. Unforgivable. Unforgivable.
tristero 2/10/2006 02:48:00 AM |

Thursday, February 09, 2006

 
Civilization vs The Big Babies

by digby


I just saw that fatuous gasbag Bill Bennett on CNN talking about the cartoons and was reminded once again of the seemingly limitless hypocricy of the wingnuts. I realize that it is futile to point this out to them since they have completely abandoned all claims to intellectual integrity, but we should document these atrocities anyway if only to keep things straight in our own minds. Luckily, intrepid bloggers are on the case.

First we have Kip from Long Story Short Pier subbing for Julia:

So lemme see if I got this right:

* The editorial page of a newspaper—a community organ—is a perfectly appropriate place to print ill-conceived, unfunny cartoons for pretty much the sole purpose of mocking the faith of some members of that community, and it’s irresponsible to voice even quasi-official disapproval despite the shockingly murderous backlash because, hey, free speech, they should grow up and suck it up and learn to deal;

* However, a memorial service—for a woman whose life has been dedicated to the fight for peace and justice and damn well grabbing the arc of the universe and bending it with her own bare hands—is a staggeringly inappropriate place to say much of anything at all about the fight that was her life, and the very particular strife and injustice yet afflicting her world and her country, because, hey, the president might be embarrassed, and how dare they carry on like that.

Being 'appropriate" is so difficult these days isn't it? Embarrassing a craven opportunistic president whose sole claim to civil rights credibility is having his picture taken with black children and appointing every black conservative in the country to his cabinet, is a terrible, terrible faux pas. Printing cartoons guaranteed to inflame millions of people in order to make an obscure point is the height of principled behavior. Ok.

And then there's this gem from Arthur:

The Bush war propagandists proclaimed with deafening unanimity: "Newsweek is directly responsible for the rioting and the deaths that occurred in Afghanistan after its story appeared. Freedom of the press doesn't mean you can or should publish anything you think is a 'story.' We're at war! It is the war between civilization and barbarism! Newsweek hurt America and helped our enemies. They're on the other side! That's the evil leftwing media for you!" In terms of what follows, let's remember just two examples I noted in my first post about the Newsweek story: Drudge's huge headline: "THE NEWSWEEK RIOTS," and the phrase that, predictably, Michelle Malkin injected into every war propagandist's discussion: "NEWSWEEK LIED. PEOPLE DIED."

The allocation of blame and moral culpability was of particular interest, especially given the rightwing propagandists' usual praises for personal and moral "responsibility." As one perceptive commentator noted:

What is singularly lacking from the rightwing hatefest currently sweeping across the Internets is condemnation of the killers themselves. ... The rightwing line is therefore that these murder[er]s are within their rights, are acting with justifiable outrage in killing people because of what was allegedly done, or not done, to their precious book.

He went on:

As everyone from Glenn Reynolds to the fools at Powerline to the moronic Michelle Malkin line up to condemn Newsweek, the only thing that matters to them is that they can score a few points against what they perceive to be the dreaded leftwing media. If that means turning a blind blog to the Islamic terrorists murdering people just because of a true-or-false account of damage being done to the Koran then that's just fine by them.

Score one for the case of Islamic terrorism courtesy of the rightwing scream machine.

[...]

But in the case of the cartoons, the war propagandists now tell us that every news organ in the world is obliged to print them. Nothing less than the future of civilization is at stake. I do not exaggerate: "This really is a case of civilization against the barbarians."

(Read the whole thing.)

Can you believe it? The comparison to the Newsweak flap could not be more apt. The entire wingnut apparatus went completely around the bend, blaming Newsweak for killing people because they printed a tiny blurb reporting that Korans had been desecrated. No pictures. No "depictions." The story was old news and had been reported before. But when cynical political actors in the mid-east stoked the hot coals of Muslim anger, the right didn't blame the leaders or the rioters --- they blamed Newsweak. Indeed, they claimed the magazine was personally responsible for the carnage. And the poor rioters were just responding as one would expect to such a heinous insult to their religion.

I wonder what it's like living with no intellectual consistency at all? Do you suppose they find it confusing? But, I guess they don't really need any. They're good team players. Just like the "barbarians."

And speaking of cartoons: what about the garment rending just last week over Tom Toles' political cartoon depicting "the army" as a man without arms or legs? Yes, nobody rioted. They just whined and pouted and stomped their tiny feet about how "mean" it was.

It wasn't a case of civilization against the barbarians, it's true. It was a case of civilization against the whiny ass titty babies.

Update: Oh, and that poker addicted racist calumniator is hardly one to to be going here:

ZOGBY: The policy of the Catholics during the Inquisition is not synonymous with my church, nor is the policy of the Islamic extremists synonymous with the Prophet Mohammed. Let's be fair and use one standard. I agree, we have a double standard and frankly I think the way this story is cast is the wrong double standard.

BENNETT: Here's the standard. Catholicism is as Catholicism does, Judaism is as Judaism does, and by God Islam is as Islam does and what it's doing right now I wouldn't wanted to associated with

.

As a practicing Catholic, he probably needs to stop and think about that a little bit. You don't have to go back to the Inquisition to see that he's on very slippery ground. Bennett complained about the priest scandal, but he very much remained "associated" with his church. Decades upon decades of covering up for and enabling these priests by the highest members of Bennett's church aren't wiped away by throwing a handful of sick men in jail. To this day the Church has refused to adequately deal with that horror. Bennett has some nerve lecturing to John Zogby about the morality of his religion when the shards of his glass house are lying all over the floor. Muslims should not be held to any higher standard than he is.



(To be clear, I'm not saying that Catholicism is inherently "evil" either. All religion has a dark side. But it's outrageous to cast aspersions on Islam's "theology" with the inquisition, witch burning and covering up for pedophile priests all being part of Christian history --- and in each case there was ample "theology" that could be called up to support their actions. It ain't the faith, it's the humans who interpret it and abuse the power it gives them.



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digby 2/09/2006 02:57:00 PM |

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

 
Reality-Based Science Equals Real National Security

by tristero


I really was hoping someone would get the not so subtle hint in my previous post. So I'll just spell it out.

An astute political party could easily start to nail Republicans to the wall on their atrocious national security policy simply by making a major issue of the GOP's obsession with faith-based technologies and their assault on science education.

That same astute party could also point, in contrast, to an excellent science and tech policy and promise to halt the decline in American science perpetrated by the right and make genuine science a priority if they ever got elected.

Too hard to explain? Nonsense. The NRA's opposition to an autmatic rifle ban. THAT'S hard to explain. But they they have. Making it clear that it's a bad idea to fund a missile defense system armed with the power of prayer and nothing else is child's play in comparison.

[UPDATE: It will take a lot more than this, duh, to reverse the perceptions. But, my God, you couldn't ask for a more stark situation to get started.]
tristero 2/08/2006 05:47:00 PM |

 
Political Outliers

by digby


Matt Stoller nicely deconstructs this Red State post about the King funeral that is perfectly illustrative of right wing comportment vapors and thinly veiled racism. Here's just one little bit to give you the flavor:

I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being.

One expects this kind of thing over in Freeperland. They pride themsleves on being crude and thuggish, after all. Via pandagon, here's a sampling of their cute caption contest:




“I would like another roll with dinner please.”

“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”

Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…

W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”

“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”


47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)

Ok. It's Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the "thoughtful" right wing community. They aren't quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:

You evidently did live during the civil right era. There was nothing peaceful about it.

If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.

Don't forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.

So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don't latch on to a myth and try to make it true.

----

Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.

-----

I don't know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn't it be on TV?

Whether anyone in the audience walked out in protest or not, Bush #41 and #43 were class acts and that won't be lost on reasonable viewers -- including many black families watching at home.

----

Anyone who didn't find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.

------

Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn't going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn't change their vote anyway.

Simple fact it, Dems must have the black vote to win, and even with it they loose more often than not. Yet the Dems are quite capable of taking the black vote for granted.

What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late "Queen" would find offensive.

Not simply political messages but cheap shots. Perhaps she would have been fine with such cheap shots. But the proper way to pay respect in such a situation is to not take such cheap shots, and act with dignity--irrespective if the deceased would have demanded such dignity or not.

Frankly, it ain't about her or blacks in general.

----

He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.

Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.

---

This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:

"Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?"

Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton's cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as "brown"...unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy "sienna" and "umber" in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.

It really is funny to watch you "progressives" jump all over itrytobenice for picking up the wrong crayon. Why don't you throw in a lecture on the difference between "colored people" and "people of color"?

-----

Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.

Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.

So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other "mainstream" African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful-- or even polite themselves?

---

That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same--no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral--the memories of many are going to be long.

Insulting the sitting President of the US, when he has the respect to come to a funeral to honor the deceased and the causes they/she fought for--this is going to stick with me, a long, long time.

This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre--9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they'll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.

----

blah ... blah .. blah blah
It's doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason ... not anymore.

----

And The Winner Of the Most Idiotic Moonbat Meme of the Year, for the FIFTH year running is. . .?

"You can't tell us how to mourn!"

Gee, if those Muslims burning down embassies claimed to be mourning someone (Mohammed, presumably, since Cindy Sheehan demonstrates that there's no time limit on this principle, either), I guess they'd have an airtight justification among our friends on the left.

-----

Actually, I can't wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA... hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.

Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!

Got racial hostility much?

I have written a lot about race on this blog over the last three years. It's a topic that I feel strongly about and work hard to understand. Everytime I write about it, I'm told by more than a few people that racism isn't really a problem anymore, it's a class issue.

With the amount of energy expended in that Red State thread deriding blacks for having "no class" perhaps in one respect that is true. But in the sociological sense, it is not. Class is an issue in this country, to be sure. But it is not the same as or the cause of racism. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of our culture. Lurking beneath the surface is an improvement over the blatant violence and legal segregation of the Jim Crow era of 40 years ago, but racism has not disappeared.

The comments and the disgusting picture above are indicative of the racist strain that has been a presence in both political parties but which settled on the Republican side after the civil rights movement. Over the last quarter century this impulse was regulated with coded race speech and marginalization of the worst purveyors of racist sentiment to the fringes of political life. But something seems to be changing. I'm seeing this more often all of a sudden and not just in wingnut sinkholes like Free Republic, but in mainstream blogs like Red State, the constantly recurring discussion of "The Bell Curve" and the pages of the Wall Street Journal where James Taranto writes things like this:

The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.

Fuck the blacks. They don't vote for us anyway.

But then, there's always some good reason to fuck the blacks isn't there? I wrote a comment about the continuing problem with hiring patterns some years back on Kevin Drum's old blog:

Hiring minorities is a problem because:

1955 - They are an inferior race
1965 - They aren't good workers
1975 - They make old white customers uncomfortable
1985 - Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus
1995 - They are a litigation risk for discrimination

When it comes to equal rights it's always something, isn't it?

2006: They don't know how to behave in public.







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digby 2/08/2006 03:00:00 PM |

 
Unbalanced Reporting

by digby

Did anyone catch Wolfie getting all nervous and twitchy when he thought that Cafferty hadn't been "fair and balanced" in reporting the response to his question aabout Boehner renting his apartment from a lobbyist? He was very agitated that Cafferty didn't report any emails that said it was ok if Boehner "paid fair market value and the apartment wasn't luxurious." The fact was that Cafferty did read an email that said exactly that (how odd) but Wolfe apparently didn't hear it. Unfortunately for Wolfie, his little fit made Cafferty mad and when pressed on the matter, Cafferty said that out of 700 or so emails he had received only half a dozen or so supporting Boehner. Oops. Wolfie's in the doghouse now. His masters pay him big money to manage these situations and they expect him to do it better than that. (I certainly got the feeling that somebody's been leaning on Cafferty about "balance" and he's not happy about it.)

This is reminiscent of Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post being forced to add a "Democratic scandal" to a story on recent scandals even though the Democrat in question was out of congress when the scandal happened. "Balance it out, by God, even if you have to make something up."

Man, the media are really petrified of Karl Rove, aren't they?
digby 2/08/2006 01:59:00 PM |

 
Outreach

by digby


That liberal media strikes again. Now we find out that one of MSNBC's senior employees, a man who has produced Chris Matthews in the past and now produces Banjo Boy, gives paid lectures on "How to Reach Masses of Conservative Voters with Your Cause, Policy or Political Message."

We thought that Chris Matthews and the other right wing shills on MSNBC were promoting Republicans out of their own personal beliefs. But it would appear now that this is a much more systemic problem. The Republicans have people throughout the organization who are actively working as partisans and getting paid for it.

If you haven't visited the Open Letter To Chris Matthews page lately, check it out. It has all the required links to contact MSNBC and it's advertisers. It appears tha the entire DC media establishment is in bed with the Republican Party these days. And getting paid handsomely to do it. Of course, that's why we call them mediawhores.



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digby 2/08/2006 12:19:00 PM |

 
Faintus Interruptus

by digby

I received more right wing links to the post below than any post I've ever done. I also got more right wing hate mail than ever before wherein I was called "sick," "hateful" and "fat."

Apparently we ruined their Ladies Swooning League funeral etiquette seminar. What a shame.



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digby 2/08/2006 09:17:00 AM |

 
The Lie Was Bad Enough. The Real Problems Are Far Worse.

by tristero

It is good news that George Deutsch, the illiterate, fanatical nitwit who became a public embarassment to NASA was caught lying on his resume and resigned. Lying on your resume truly is a tacky, unethical thing to do and thanks are due to Nick at scientificactivist for his efforts at exposing Deutsch's low character to the world.

It is not the main issue, however:

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."

Indeed it is. And let's be quite clear what that issue is. It's not partisanship, although Bush has far exceeded any other president in politicizing science policy. It's mis-informing and dis-informing the public that's the problem. And the odious Deutsch is just an irritating mosquito. I'm glad he's been swatted, but the scientific agencies are crawling with these pests, not only in pr but in positions that require serious decision making.

Let's be clear about this. This is the kind of incompetent behavior that right wing ideologues, obsessed with ideology and appearance over reality, repeat again and again and again. And it has consequences.

Bush's wholesale trashing of US science policy -climate change research is just one area- has the potential to lead to serious threats to our national security.

Note to Rightwingers: I suppose you noticed that the last two paragraphs were pretty partisan. But I am not to blame. It's simply not my fault that the facts and their consequences favor reality over Bushism. That's just the way it is, kids.

Reality-based science equals real national security. Bush's faith-based science is an angel wing and a prayer. Your choice.
tristero 2/08/2006 06:43:00 AM |

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