Hullabaloo

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

 
Clean And Bright

by digby


The other day I wrote about Marty Peretz's not so unconscious racism toward African Americans. And lo and behold along comes Joe Biden and he sticks his big white foot in the same stupid mouth. Apparently, a lot of privileged white people really believe they aren't racist when they separate "the blacks" between the "articulate, bright, clean" kind and "the others." (Peretz calls the others four-flushers and race hustlers. A member of my family used to call them "The Ubangis." You get the drift.)

The funny thing is that in a private conversation with Glenn Greenwald on the subject I said I thought it would take Obama or Deval Patrick to step in and show some solidarity with his fellow African American politicians for it to sink in.

Obama did just that, today:

I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but obviously they are historically inaccurate. After all, we've had presidential candidates like Jesse jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Mosely Braun and Al Sharpton. They gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns and no one would call them inarticulate.

Thank you. Maybe at least the people who are as clueless as Biden about their reflexive assumptions will think about it when they hold Obama up as a "different kind of negro."


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digby 1/31/2007 02:30:00 PM |

 
Hearing From Our Betters

by digby

Money in politics better than some people in it

From Darren McKinney

The Jan. 24 letter to the editor from Nick Nyhart and Chellie Pingree (“Full public funding of elections proven to work in states, cities,”), respective presidents of Public Campaign and Common Cause, lament the lack of public financing for all American political campaigns: “A democracy should be about all of us and not just about those who can write huge checks.”

But if Nyhart and Pingree had their way, black helicopter conspiracy theorists off their meds, the dysfunctionally unemployed, irresponsible young men and women who have multiple babies out-of-wedlock, repeat felons and various other burdens to society without means might have as much to say about our nation’s political leadership and direction as folks who soberly get up every morning, lovingly raise their children, productively hold jobs, responsibly pay taxes, and occasionally write checks, huge or otherwise, to the political campaigns of their choosing.

Though poll taxes have rightly been abolished, and every qualified registered voter willing to wait on line should certainly be free to exercise the franchise, there’s a lot to be said — though Hillary “I Won’t Take Matching Funds” Clinton is never likely to say it — for having most of our big political decisions influenced in greater measure by those who have succeeded in life and thus have a better sense of what it’ll take for our nation to succeed in the future.

Washington, D.C.

McKinney is the former spokesman of the National Association of Manufacturers and currently represents the American Tort Reform Association.



This must be that liberal elite they keep telling us about?.



*I especially like the "willing to wait on line" to vote bit. Sweet.



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digby 1/31/2007 02:11:00 PM |

 
Snake Bit

by digby

We always figured that "media strategist" and WHIG member Mary Matalin was one of the authors of the Plame smear. She's one of Cheney's intimates, she was hired to do damage control and is a mean and nasty person. Exposing "the wife" has her style all over it.

Today, it's revealed that it was her idea to have Libby call Russert to complain about Tweety:

Mr Libby called Matalin for advice. On July 8 he wrote down notes in which Rove said, "people are taking Wilson as a credible expert." 2 days go by, he calls Matalin for advice. She tells him, she gives him strategy. "We need someone who can sum it up. This is fitting into Democratic story. It has legs. The story's not going away. We need to address Wilson motivation. The President should wave his wand."

"Call Tim," [says]Mary Matalin, "he hates Chris, he needs to know it all." Underneath, Mr Libby's notes, "Wilson's a snake."

My, my, my all the dirty laundry is coming out. Here's looking forward to seeing Lil Russ on the stand.



And buy Marcy Wheeler's book "Anatomy of Deceit." It's really gooood.


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digby 1/31/2007 12:04:00 PM |

 
Believe Your Eyes

by digby


I think the thing I hate the most about Republicans is how they insult your intelligence and then dare you to challenge them on it. They installed that silly, little boy in the white house and forced us all to pretend that he was a competent leader for years or risk being called a traitor or worse even as we watched him drive the country into the ditch. They lied right in our faces about the "gathering threat" of Iraq and now they are trying to shove this bucket of swill down out throats:

The Air Force is preparing for an expanded role in Iraq that could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants, senior Pentagon officials said.

The efforts could include more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran, a senior Pentagon official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing future military plans.

Such missions also could position the Air Force to strike suspected bomb suppliers inside Iraq to deter Iranian agents that U.S. officials say are assisting Iraqi militias, outside military experts said

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Yeah, right.

One of the problems with being exposed as a liar over and over again is that you have no credibility. We've been here before and we know that they used no-fly-zone flights to try to provoke Saddam. They even discussed the idea of disguising a U2 plane with UN insignia to provoke him. It didn't work with Iraq, but we'd be fools to think they aren't trying this again. This whole Iran-supplying-the-insurgents gambit stinks to high heaven.

I realize that it's hard for people to believe they would actually start another war as this one is going so very badly. Believe it. They really do this crazy stuff as they've demonstrated over and over again.

It's obvious that everyone should be mobilizing against this next war, but once again their sheer, nutty audacity seems to have paralyzed everyone. They have a real gift for making you mistrust what you are seeing with your own eyes.


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digby 1/31/2007 10:33:00 AM |

 
Fighting Words

by digby

Free Republic posted a YouTube video of their counter-protest on Saturday. Judge for yourself. It runs about 9 minutes, but it's worth looking at. Clearly there was some point when people were able to walk closely by the counter-protesters on the sidewalk and it's possible that somebody spit on Sparling during that period. It's not captured on this film. Police are casually walking through and people are lolling about with baby strollers, so it doesn't appear to be a very dangerous scene. (You can see a woman dressed in black who appears to be interviewing Sparling at one point. Perhaps she is the NY Times reporter who observed that he was spit on?)

The video shows the Freepers with a megaphone shouting things to the protesters and protesters shouting back. The guy with the megaphone calls them things like "nutcases" and and some protesters shout back things like "asshole." (The tough guy freeper filmakers get very delicate when one of the protesters "drops the M---F-- bomb. Mercy me!) I observe no violence, however, and no shouts of "baby-killer", "you have blood on your hands," "you're just upset because you can't run." In fact, the worst thing most of the protesters say repeatedly is "enlist," which I'm sure Sparling and other veterans there found particularly insulting, but which actually isn't. The filmmakers put up some title cards that have protesters saying "go back there" but I didn't actually hear it.

There is nothing in this footage that shows Sparling speaking at the Code Pink rally to mostly polite response earlier or standing up close to the stage and loudly booing the speakers, as has been reported. Perhaps someone else has that footage.

In this film, mostly what you see is just some people shouting back and forth across two chain link fences separated by about 30 yards and a couple of people having a heated face to face interaction. (There is a lot of focus on black faces in the crowd for some reason.)

The Freepers set up shop with their megaphone clearly seeking a response from the protesters. Nobody who watches the footage can believe that they weren't asking for a response. They were "march trolls" being deliberately provocative, looking for trouble. All they got was some people shouting back at them, as far as I could tell. That they are now complaining about how terrible they were treated shows them to be whining little children. Please.

They are perfectly within their rights to do what they did. But the protesters were also perfectly within their rights to shout back. This is still America, the last I heard, and nobody is required to be polite to Freepers with a megaphone.



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digby 1/31/2007 09:09:00 AM |

 
Someone's Completely Lost His Marbles.

by tristero

And he happens to be the president of the United States:

"I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another. White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor. Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned.

And of course, immediately afterwards, Dick Cheney shot 'em all in the face.

Special note to those amongst us who think I don't understand towel-slapping rough play fratboy-style pranks. You're absolutely right, when the president does them. In Fort Worth Texas, on the morning of his death, John F. Kennedy was filmed accepting the gift of a cowboy hat while appearing at the Chamber of Commerce. He was urged to put it on so the press could take pictures. He looked at it, clearly decided it would be undignified for the president of the United States to do so. So he smiled broadly and said he'd be glad to pose in it, back in Washingon, the following Monday.

tristero 1/31/2007 07:21:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

 
Kewl Kid High

by digby

John Kerry is a decent man and he doesn't deserve this kind of treatment by the low-life little creeps who make up the DC press corps. This snotty derision from a bunch of overpaid, useless, psychologically stunted twits is a new low.

The kewl kidz are back on top and they are sharpening their claws on Democrats again. From their nasty little Clenis fantasies to talking about Hillary's "girl humor" to making shit up about John Kerry crying when he bowed out of '08, it's obvious that they are gonna party like it's 1999. I can't believe it.

Update: The Queen Bee weighs in on Senator Clinton. It's not too nasty.

This is interesting, though:

She uttered the most irritating and disingenuous nine words in politics: “If we had known then what we know now. ...”

Jim Webb knew. Barack Obama knew. Even I knew, for Pete’s sake. The administration’s trickery was clear in real time.

She's right, of course. But, Maureen Dowd has a twice weekly column in the NY Times, the most valuable journalistic real estate in the world. Does anyone remember her saying anything about that?

Update II: Actually, I stand corrected. I just went and looked and she did. The problem is that nobody took her seriously because she explained it like this:

''My head hurts. Pillow, puh-leeze! I can't find a way out of the Middle East, and if it blows sky high, I can't invade Iraq in time for the 2004 election and I'll lose the war on terror. I could end up a one-termer, just like Poppy. How did a creep like Clinton manage two?

To her credit she did write this in August of 2002, which was very early:

Like a buoyant Dr. Evil holding a napping Bush Mini-Me in a Snugli, Mr. Cheney seems to relish running the world alone. Consider how primary the secondary man is. Without Mr. Cheney, America would not be planning to invade Iraq. Who else understands why the U.S. is starting a war without provocation for the first time in its history?

Perhaps everyone should have been reading Modo for foreign policy punditry instead of Tom Friedman.



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digby 1/30/2007 08:55:00 PM |

 
Half Wrong?

by digby

Just in case anyone is in contact with the NY Times on the Sparling incident, here's his YouTube appearance with Alan Colmes and it challeges the reporter's version of events. According to him he didn't spit back.

Curiouser and curiouser. Will the NY Times stick with its story?


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digby 1/30/2007 08:43:00 PM |

 
Yes, Yes, Yes

by digby


Obama makes the bold move and it's very smart. Not only is it the right thing to do (yes, that should enter the equation) I think it's the savvy political move.

When the AUMF was being debated and all the presidential club members voted for it, I wrote that it would do them no good. If the war went well, they didn't have a chance. If it didn't their vote would hang around their neck.

The same dynamic is at play today except the stakes are much higher. This time it's McCain or Rudy who will gain if the war is going well next year. (Fat chance.) And if it isn't, people will be looking to Democrats who took a bold stand to end it, not those who played around the edges.

No Democrat will get any points for being wishy washy on the war at this point. They will get lots of points for being up front and offering a reasonable alternative.

In for a penny in for pound guys. If the presidential club is smart at all they'll sign on or up the ante. There's no margin in non-binding resolutions or adding more Friedman Units at this point. Good for Obama.


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digby 1/30/2007 07:57:00 PM |

 
More Than One Way

by digby

..to get our message across. And Joshua Sparling won't have to endure any more vicious peace marchers:

From MoveOn:

On Thursday, February 1st, 2007, we're aiming to send 1 million messages to Congress. We'll deliver petition signatures from hundreds of thousands of Americans all over the nation who are opposed to escalation in Iraq. Then, we'll call our senators all day to let them know that the Senate has to oppose the president's plan to escalate the war and that we're counting on them to block it.

Go sign up. It is a great way to keep the pressure on.


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digby 1/30/2007 06:19:00 PM |

 
Girl Humor

by digby


Chris Matthews has come up with his working thesis to explain the Hillary campaign. Apparently, this stupid "joke" about "evil men" reveals her entire strategy: she's going to win by appealing to "the girls."

From yesterday's Hardball:

Is there a strategy, Lynn Sweet, for her to simply say, OK, let‘s do it, play it my way, that she knows what she‘s doing, OK, because she can play it the other way, that she doesn‘t know what she‘s doing. And I don‘t want to do that because that‘s unfair. Suppose she says, I‘m going to be in a crowded field with seven or eight men. I‘m going into a Democratic caucus. Half the people, at least, are women. Why not play the gender card right up front and say, I‘m taking my 50 percent away from this table. Let the other guys divvy up their 50 percent.

Cuz them bitches all stick together.

Today he was banging on it again because he is sure that her joke was aimed straight at her evil husband and the people who laughed were a bunch of nasty "girls" who all enjoyed her hitting him below the belt.

Matthews: ...it's an in joke among some women. Now look at that with all that teeth and all those giggles among the girls...you don't compare a guy who killed three thousand people to somebody who had a little trouble with an intern...

Buchanan: Why is the press all over her?

Matthews: Because she won't honestly admit what she does

Buchanan: Why don't they let it go?

Matthews: Because, Mr defender-of-all-women, the problem is she won't admit a candid joke. Ok, the only reason this is an issue is, after she went back into her football formation, to her huddle backstage with the people around her, Howard Wolfson etc., says "Oh that wasn't about Bill, that was about Osama bin laden."

Buchanan: That's because guys were asking her "what's that about, who's that about" and got their pens out.

Matthews: Who's the butt of the joke?

Buchanan: She should have said, "It was a joke and moved out"

Matthews: But she didn't. You can defend her all you want but if she doesn't come clean...

Here's the problem reverend Sharpton. Everybody knows that Hillary Clinton is a calculating politician, she doesn't have the street instincts of Bill, she can't move spontaneously, she has to come with a caravan of onsultants but that's one thing. If she has to now talk to a caravan of consultants after she cracks a joke, there have been three different interpretations she came out with the other day --- is that a problem on the stumpt?

Sharpton: ... It's not like you're going to have a battle of spontanaity

Matthews: Hah! Yeah that is a problem. But I'll tell you one thing. I thought the joke was wrong because as much as I have been tough on Bill Clinton over the years I don't think it's fair to compare him to Osama bin Laden. it falls flat. It's a clinker. It's like never compare anyone to Hitler, don't compare somebody to osama bin Laden.

Buchanan: A clinker! When everybody in the room was laughting their head off?

Matthews: Because it was girl humor.About girls abnd the trouble they have with men.

And that could be her strategy. "We girls have had a lot of trouble with men. Let's face it, I've had to deal with Bill. Let's face it. Let's all giggle together."

But then if you're asked, "What did you mean by that?" It's like "Oh, I didn't mean that!"

I have never seen any man so afraid of a woman as Chris Matthews is of Hillary Clinton. I don't know if he thinks she's going to sign an executive order to castrate all the men in DC or what, but he does seem to be convinced that she's going to win by garnering the man-hating harpy vote.

After spending the last year telling everyone who would listen that red blooded men all over America might say they would vote for her, but they wouldn't "pull the lever" once they were inside the voting booth, the codpiece ogling Matthews clearly believes that "mommy party" Dems are fools to elect a person without one, especially when those bulging dreamboats Giuliani and McCain are on the other side.

I don't know who this guy hangs around with or why he's got such a problem with women, but his "giggling--girl humor" crap is insulting to decent human beings everywhere.

(And by the way, I would bet some serious money that the butt of the joke was actually evil sexist fucks like Chris Matthews. Perhaps somewhere in his lizard brain Matthews knows that which is why he's suddenly bravely defending the Clenis against his own wife.)

You won't believe how he ended the segment. He asked Sharpton whether Bill would go along with this and Sharpton said he would "play whatever position he needs to play."

Matthews replied:

In other words, if she has to paddle him at every stop of this campaign with a big wooden paddle, he'll lean over and take it.

Issues?





* Not that it has anything to do with anything, but on yesterday's show Matthews literally drooled down his chin until a big drop of saliva clung to the bottom threatening to drop off. Perhaps he had some dental work or is on drugs or something, but it was a damned disgusting thing to see. Too much spit for me this week.



Update: Bob Sommerby covers the same ground today and makes another observation that I think is spot on:

What did Clinton have in mind? Empty pundits—people like Matthews—were instantly sure that they knew. The war in Iraq continues to rage—but this was Matthews’ first topic last night. Who was Clinton joking about? He asked Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times—and Sweet embarrassed herself:

SWEET (1/29/07): Well, what I think they were laughing at is the thought that cropped into my mind, Chris, and that is Bill Clinton`s name did come into my mind. There are some people who I interviewed, and that`s what they said. It’s a Rorschach. And what is interesting here—I don’t think it matters so much what she was thinking. I think what was instructive for all of us is what people who were out there were thinking. That’s what’s the key here.

What a perfect press corps moment! Bill Clinton’s name “came into Sweet’s mind!” And not only that—she also interviewed “some people” who had the same reaction. (Were these “people” other journalists? Sweet didn’t specifically say.) To Sweet, this pretty much settled the matter. Good God! It doesn’t matter what Clinton was thinking, Sweet told her host; what really matters is what occurred to Lynn Sweet! Let us translate: Sweet wants to talk about Bill Clinton’s d*ck, and because that d*ck came into her head, she assumed that it came into everyone else’s—and she says, therefore, that this is what“matters.” Obviously, Sweet doesn’t know what the other thousand people in that crowd were actually thinking. But it’s perfect! Because Bill Clinton popped into her head, she says that is “what is interesting.”

I just heard Howard Fineman say "The joke was about her husband, OBVIOUSLY."

Was it?

Truly, I assumed she was talking about the famous "vast rightwing conspiracy" and only realized that it could be taken to mean her husband as she said it. And I also thought she wisely didn't elaborate later because she had sort of compared them to Osama bin Laden and knew that would really set off a firestorm. But then so has wingnut extraordinaire Dinesh D'Souza, so I actually don't see why that should be controversial.
digby 1/30/2007 05:07:00 PM |

 
The Queen Of All Iraq Takes The Stand

by digby

I just had a chance to catch up on today's Libby blogging and it's priceless. Judy's doing her full-on diva routine, slouching, gesticulating, sniffling and eye-rolling.

M says she doesn't remember affadvit

J is it true that you were planning to write an article

M Sir I wasn't planning to write an article [ohh, angry Judy]

J Didn't you talk to the bureau chief

M I was not going to write the story. It was not my assignment.

J puts up affadvit from Miller

M Yes I signed it.

J You did contemplate writing one or more articles in July 2003, about issues related to Wilson.

M Yes, but not about Wilson and Plame, there were other things I wanted to pursue

J You said you met with several potential sources.

J Who were the others. Can you remember just one of them?

Judy wipes nose.

She's got her chin in her hand.

Now reading through something–looks like Kristof's article.

Judy back to looking straight ahead, now lookingfown, back to not breathing, bends forward t oget something. Arms folded. Eyes roll up into head. Looking down. Back to reading whatever is in front of her. Wipes nose.

Haha.


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digby 1/30/2007 02:18:00 PM |

 
"They Tried To Kill Me"

by digby

So apparently the NY Times journalist who reported the spitting incident apparently personally saw Cpl. Joshua Sparling getting spit upon.

Hughes for America has the story:

The latest in a long line of controversies surrounding veteran Joshua Sparling, who lost part of a leg in Iraq, started with this New York Times article penned by Ian Urbina, with help from Sarah Abruzzese and Suevon Lee. "There were a few tense moments, however," the story read, "including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration's policies in Iraq. Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back."

[...]

Adding to these important questions is the account of an interesting encounter Saturday between one protester and a woman claiming to be a reporter for the New York Times. The protester, in a letter to Urbina, wrote, "[Abruzzese] turned to me and told me she had seen a protester spit on a soldier and asked for my comment. I told her I didn't believe that, and she repeated that she had seen this happen. I told her the peace movement is more supportive of the troops than anyone who supports this war, because we want our troops to come home, while those who support the war are advocating sending them into harm's way. So I really could not believe that anyone who opposed the war had spit on a soldier. My comments were not included in your story." She continues, "I was upset when I read your story the next day to see this was an 'alleged' incident and the protester had supposedly spit on the ground in front of the soldier (which is quite different from spitting ON this soldier). In other words, what was related in your story was not at all what that reporter had told me. So she either lied to me or your story is false."

In follow-up call with Urbina, the protester reports that he[Urbina] claims to have received 150-plus e-mails about the story. He also maintained that Abruzzese actually saw the incident and that the protester cited in the story spat on Sparling, not "at the ground near" him, which the Times originally reported.

So there you have it. The NY Times reporter claims that Sparling was spat upon. Why she reported it as she did remains a mystery. But, I'll take her word for it that it happened. It would now be helpful if the paper of record could clear up some of the Rashoman aspects of this incident since the reporter was in the thick of it and could set the record straight.

Sparling was everywhere relating his tale yesterday. Michele Malkin wrote about it on her blog and went on O'Reilly and talked about it.

Here is the tale Sparling told on Hannity's radio show:

Hannity: I read the reports that you got spit at.

Sparling: Yeah. That was the worst afternoon of being an American that I've ever had in my life. They actually made me ashamed to be a soldier. They kept calling me a baby killer and a murderer and said I was a disgrace, they wish I would have stayed in Iraq, that I have blood all over my hands.

One guy, before the police blocked it off and it was just them on one side and us on the other about 10 yards apart, they were allowed to walk right on the sidewalk where we were and one of the fellas just spit right on me.

The other people were too far away to hit me with theirs. But this guy did --- and the worst thing is that he had a little 82nd patch on his little backpack and I'm in the 82nd and that really got to me there.

Hannity: Did anyone see this or did you have any witnesses? Do you know who this guy is? Could you get him arrested?

Sparling: Uh, I don't know who the fella is. I just know him by his description. But I had my girlfriend there, my father was there and some of the other members of our group, the Freedom group and uh...

Hannity: Here you gave your life for your country, you go off and pur your life at risk for your country for the right of these morons to say whatever they like at their little peace rally there and the thanks you get for this is just like a lot of vets after Vietnam. You get spit at.

Sparling: You know, that's exactly ... I thought back ... and sure it wasn't as bad as it was back then, but it was like, wow, this is what what they felt like.

And speaking to them over the megaphone I had, I was... I believe that if you speak calmly and rationally to people that they'll listen, that if you scream they're only gonna scream back and you're not going to get anything accomplished whatsoever.

And so I was talking and there was people screamin "Oh you're just upset because you can't run!" Stuff like that.

People were furious just so much, by me talking and saying that I was a vet and that I believe in my cause, that they were actually rushing the police to get to me and they were threatening that they were gonna kill me and all this. Three of these individuals were actually waiting for me to try to get me when the rally was over. Thety were gonna wait for me and then take me out after it was over.

Hannity: Well look, it's an incredible story, it's sad, but it's revealing.

No kidding.

Sparling appeared this morning on Fox and Friends, where he embellished his story further:

Obviously, I'm not going to judge all of them because there were a couple of peaceful people who just walked by.

But for the most part, there was people just lining the fences, jumping over it, screaming and trying to get at us and there were a couple of people waiting with clubs to meet me with after it was over with and the police had to stop them from bull rushing us on the sidewalk.

It's a wonder that they didn't call out the riot squad.

Watch the interview. You will see Sparling's father appear and complain about being broke, which he has been doing on Hannity's show since at least January 2005. (Maybe Sean could fork over something more than an Ipod, the cheap bastard --- or help the old man get a job.)

Weirdly, while Sparling was telling his tale of slavering beasts jumping fences and threatening to kill him, there was a split screen showing the actual march. (And stick it out to the end, because you just won't believe it):



That's sweet, isn't it? (And I mean that.) I've come to believe this kid is just basking in the warmth of his FreeRepublic family and these stories are getting him lots of attention and love. (His father, however, claims he was fired because his son was sick and he's been in DC for over a year while the kid is in the hospital. I can't help but wonder if he might have spotted an opportunity.)

But be that as it may, Sparling really is hurling some awful accusations and Fox News, the wingnutosphere and talk radio are airing it.

I would be very interested to know if the NY Times reporter who witnessed Sparling being spit upon saw any of this other violent activity. I wonder if the police remember any of it. Did anyone see this man with the 82nd Airborn patch on his backpack? Is that who the reporter saw, and if so, is it absolutely certain that it was a protestor and not someone who was affiliated with the Free Republic group? Were other protesters spitting from farther away at the time and couldn't hit him, as Sparling alleges?

Lots of questions, few answers. But the NY Times put its imprimatur on this young man's story, gave it credibility and now it has legs. They should take a look at Sparling's frequent run-ins throughout the country with rude and violent anti-Iraq war Americans --- people who are such cretins that they scream, "You're just upset because you can't run," to a man who lost his leg. They deserve to be exposed if they exist.


I know that people out there must have video footage of the march and it would be probably be a good idea to start putting it up on YouTube.


Update: Media Matters has more.
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digby 1/30/2007 12:53:00 AM |

Monday, January 29, 2007

 
Why Don't We Just Crown Him King

by digby

...and get it over with:

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

The 58% of the country who just want the Bush presidency to be over with are in for a rude awakening. Bush and Cheney are racing to rape and pillage the country as much as they can until they are term limited out. They just don't give a damn what the people want, never have, and they know full well that nothing will happen to them. In fact, performance in office is now completely irrelevant.

For the full up-is-down Monty, check this out:

In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.”

Will there ever be a straw that breaks the camels back? I'm beginning to doubt it. They are just plowing through everything, domestic and foreign, getting their spoils before they are cashiered in 2009. It's the most amazing chutzpah I've ever seen.



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digby 1/29/2007 09:08:00 PM |

 
Civil Freeper Counter-protesters





Photo by Casey Y. Myers
digby 1/29/2007 07:07:00 PM |

 
America In The Balance

by digby

The right has a new obsession with "balance" just like the news media. This even translates into teaching schoolchildren crackpot science so that their cretinous parents aren't offended by the truth:

Frosty Hardison is neither impressed nor surprised that An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination last week for best documentary.

"Liberal left is all over Hollywood," he grumbled a few hours after the nomination was announced.

Hardison, a parent of seven in Federal Way, Wash., a southern suburb of Seattle, has himself roiled the global-warming waters. It happened early this month when he learned that one of his daughters would be watching An Inconvenient Truth in her seventh-grade science class.

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation - the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet - for global warming," Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

His angry e-mail, along with complaints from a few other parents, stopped the film from being shown to Hardison's daughter.

The teacher in that science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardison's e-mail she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present "controversial" materials in class.

The e-mail also pressured the school board to impose a ban on screenings of the film for the district's 22,500 students.

The ban, which the school board says was merely a "moratorium," was lifted last week, subject to rigorous conditions. Still, the action has appalled the film's producers and triggered a ferocious national backlash.

Apparently, if certain parents "believe" that 4+4 equals 278 or that the moon is made of cream cheese, the schools are now obliged to teach it in order to create some phony sense of balance.

Is it really out of line for the school district to politely say no to these people? Do they have no professional integrity? But perhaps they actually agree with this claptrap, in which case they have just made a very good argument for standards --- not of teachers, but of administrators and school boards.

This is getting out of hand. These fundamentalists are using their religion as a political bludgeon that's making this nation even less informed than it already is. And it's very badly informed:

Thirteen percent of Americans have never heard of global warming even though their country is the world's top source of greenhouse gases, a 46-country survey showed on Monday.

The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a "very serious problem" and a further 34 percent rated it a "serious problem."

"It has taken extreme and life-threatening weather patterns to finally drive the message home that global warming is happening and is here to stay unless a concerted, global effort is made to reverse it," said Patrick Dodd, the President of ACNielsen Europe.

People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming "very serious."

The United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases, the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India.

Thirteen percent of U.S. citizens said they had never heard or read anything about global warming, the survey said.

Almost all climate scientists say that temperatures are creeping higher because of heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels.

The study also found that 91 percent of people had heard about global warming and 50 percent reckoned it was caused by human activities.

A U.N. report due on Friday is set to say it is at least 90 percent probable that human activities are the main cause of warming in the past 50 years.

People in China and Brazil were most convinced of the link to human activities and Americans least convinced.

The survey said that people living in regions vulnerable to natural disasters seemed most concerned -- ranging from Latin Americans worried by damage to coffee or banana crops to people in the Czech Republic whose country was hit by 2002 floods.

In Latin America, 96 percent of respondents said they had heard of global warming and 75 percent rated it "very serious."

So you can see why it's such a good thing that there are people out there who are ensuring that American children are taught "alternative theories" to what causes global warming which presumably include the idea that it's a sign that Judgement Day is coming.

I hope Americans have enjoyed being the richest, most powerful nation on earth because it's going to be over very soon if this keeps up. A country this willfully dumb cannot stay on top.



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digby 1/29/2007 12:42:00 PM |

 
Heads Up

by digby

It looks like the media are going to be dogging Democratic presidential contenders for "botched jokes" this cycle. They managed to run Kerry out of the race with his, so why not try it on Clinton?

Word to the wise, Dems. Remember that you are auditioning before those important arbiters of comedy, the famously witty members of the DC press corps. Recall how sharp they were at the funniest Washington event in recent memory and behave accordingly. (Hint: they don't get jokes. Too complicated.)


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digby 1/29/2007 12:19:00 PM |

 
Cheney's Strategery

by digby

I continue to be astounded by Dick Cheney's bizarre public behavior. He did an interview with Richard Wolffe at Newsweek last week and it was just as weird as the one he did with Wolf Blitzer.

The whole thing is delusional, but there are a couple of points that really must be highlighted for their sheer incoherence and wrongheadedness. (Questions are in bold):

The president—and I think you also—have spoken about the possibility of regional war in case of American withdrawal, a chaos in Iraq, and I think the president referred to it as an epic battle between extremists. What's the basis for thinking that it would be a broader war? What lies behind that kind of analysis in your mind?

Well, I think it's a concern that the current level of sectarian violence—Shia on Sunni and Sunni on Shia violence would increase, and perhaps break out in other parts of the country. It's pretty well concentrated right now in the Baghdad area.

There are a lot of other concerns, as well, with what would happen if we were to withdraw from Iraq and do what many in the Democratic Party want us to do. It clearly would have, I think, consequences on a regional basis in terms of the efforts that we've mounted not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This is a conflict that we're involved in on a wide variety of fronts in that part of the world. And hundreds of thousands of people literally have signed on in that battle to take on the Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda types, in part because the United States is there, because we're committed, because we provide the leadership, and because we're working closely with people like President [Pervez] Musharraf in Pakistan, and [Hamid] Karzai in Afghanistan and so forth.

And a decision by the United States to withdraw from Iraq I think would have a direct negative impact on the efforts of all of those other folks who would say wait a minute, if the United States isn't willing to complete the task in Iraq that they may have to reconsider whether or not they're willing to put their lives on the line serving in the security forces in Afghanistan, for example, or taking important political positions in Afghanistan, or the work that the Saudis have done against the Al Qaeda inside the kingdom.

All of a sudden, the United States which is the bulwark of security in that part of world would I think no longer—could no longer be counted on by our friends and allies that have put so much into this struggle.

But would that encourage them to take a role in an Iraqi civil war? There's this idea that regional powers would step in.

No, I think—I think when you look at Iraq, you have to look at Iraq in the broader context. And you cannot evaluate the consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq only in terms of Iraq. You've got to look at it in terms of what it means in other parts of the globe, really.

Remember what the strategy is here for Al Qaeda. Their strategy is that they can break our will. They can't beat us in a stand-up fight. They never have—but they believe firmly because they talk about it all the time—that they can, in fact, break the will of the American people and change our policies if they just kill enough Americans, or kill enough innocent civilians. And they cite Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 as evidence of that, and then they see the debate here in the United States over whether or not we've got the right policy in Iraq, whether or not we ought to stay committed there as evidence reinforcing their view that, in fact, the United States can be forced to withdraw if they simply stay the course that they're on, that is to say the Al Qaeda and the terrorist extremists stay the course that they're on.

So Iraq to some extent is a test of that basic fundamental proposition. Is their strategic view that we won't complete the job correct? Or is our strategic view correct, that we can, in fact, organize people in that part of the world, as well as use our forces in order to achieve a significant victory and defeat those elements that, among other things launched an attack on the United States on 9/11 and killed 3,000 Americans.

You've made the case that a collapsed Iraq would become a terrorist haven. The president has also said that. Al Qaeda is essentially … Look at what happened to Afghanistan.


But Al Qaeda is essentially a new organization in Iraq, a Sunni organization and it has this element of foreign fighters. Isn't there a reason to think that if there was full-blown civil war, the Shia would essentially beat them and neutralize that as being a hostile force as they take control of the country?

What's the basis for that?


There are more Shia.

Well, let's look at Afghanistan. In 1996, there were no Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That's when [Osama] bin Laden moved in and found refuge there. A handful of Arabs, foreign fighters, if you will, subsequently opened up training camps, trained somewhere—estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000 terrorists in the late '90s, developed a safe haven and a base of operations from which they blew up American embassies in East Africa, attacked the USS Cole, launched the planning and training for 9/11. That all took place in Afghanistan under circumstances that are similar to what you've just hypothesized about for Iraq.

That's just a small sample of the non sequitors and muddled thinking throughout this interview. When asked about Iraq's civil war he talks about al Qaeda. When the sectarian devision in Iraq are the subject he switches to Afghanistan in the 1980's It's all over the place, bizarre and disjointed.

Wolff asks why Cheney thinks there would be a broader war if the US withdrew. Cheney says that the civil war will expand to the rest of the country. That is a false issue, since it already exists in other parts of the country. This myth that everything is peaceful except for Baghdad is one of their favorite lies. (Doh.)His strange response to Wolff's observation that the Shi'a would likely prevail over the Sunni due to the fact that they greatly outnumber them was frightening.

But it's the next part, the childlike psycho-babble blather about how we will have let down all our friends and allies and shown Al Qaeda that we can be intimidated if we withdraw, that's noteworthy. He has never wavered from day one from that idea and it's clear that it is the sum total of his strategic view of dealing with Islamic extremism: prove that we aren't cowards.

The only thing he seems to know about strategy is that if you "back down" your enemy will think you are soft and if you don't "back down," no matter what the circumstances, you will convince the enemy that they can't defeat you. Basically, he really believes the trash talk that bin Laden's been spewing all these years, --- trash talk that would not sound odd coming from the mouth of a world wide wrestling star or a seventh grade bully.

He says, "Is their strategic view that we won't complete the job correct?" Except it's not a strategic view. He doesn't seem to realize that bin Laden (and others) are practicing PR, not strategy. It's sophomoric taunting that's beneath any powerful nation to consider when making decisions about how to proceed. Militant Islamic extremism will not disappear because they finally have to admit that we are too tough to tangle with because we have not retreated from Iraq. They love having us in Iraq. They couldn't be happier.

Indeed, if one were to actually look at what bin Laden and other Islamic militants' real strategy is, I would have to think that bogging the US down in Iraq, empowering Iran and destabilizing the entire mid-east might have been a long term objective --- only they likely never dreamed we would actually fulfill it in such short shrift and with so much enthusiasm.

Cheney goes on to say that our strategic view is that we can build a western democracy and that once it flourishes we will achieve our strategic pobjective as everyone holds hands and sings "This Land is Your land." He is either lying about that or he has comoletely lost touch with what is actually happening. I suspect the former. The fact that they never listened to even one person with nation building expertise tells the tale. Indeed, until this war, they disdained the very concept.

No, I do not believe it. Their "strategy" is just what Bush and Cheney have always said it was --- prove to the world that nobody can push the US of A around. Invade Iraq and show that we're mad as hell and we won't take it anymore. Then the terrorists will run for cover. That's it. Strategery 101, just like on Saturday night Live and Junior's college "Risk" days.

It's stupid, it's puerile it's completely absurd. But that is all there is to the Bush administration's War On Terror strategy. Nothing that happens on the ground matters. All that matters is that we are there and we aren't leaving until Al Qaeda cries "Uncle."

For those who are interested in knowing what Wolff was talking about when he said, "There's this idea that regional powers would step in," read this very interesting transcript of General William Odom's prepared testimony last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here's the conclusion:

Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.

Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history

I would suggest that it is the greatest strategic disaster in our history because it wasn't really a strategy at all. It was a simple-minded reading of a complicated problem based upon some psychological need among a handful of powerful men. And vice president Cheney is clearly still very powerful. He is out there making a spectacle of himself with this talk and nobody can stop him even though it's terribly counter-productive to the current legislative and foreign policy challenges and the president's standing with the nation at large. He is a dangerous and somewhat deranged man. But the problem is that the man at whose pleasure he serves is just as deluded as he is.

It is this kind of thing that makes me believe that they will provoke a war with Iran. It is their strategy to prove that the US is the biggest toughest bastard on the planet. Iraq isn't getting that job done. Maybe doubling down will.


Fixed gibberish. Apologies.


digby 1/29/2007 11:30:00 AM |

 
More Spittle

by digby

The Cincinnatti Beacon found that people are picking up the Joshua "Zelig" Sparling spitting story as proof of the terrible treatment of veterans. One is a Vietnam Vet who recovered memories of his own spitting incident back in the 70's. (The Beacon also found that his story doesn't exactly add up --- as usual.)

Even more interesting is that the Beacon coincidentally shot some footage of Sparling standing with the Freepers. If there was spit lobbed across the wide chasm between the two opposing groups, it was an award winning projectile gob, which makes this passage by the New York Times reporter especially suspicious:

Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

As I posted earlier, the Washington Post had what appears to be a slightly more accurate report of the incident (no spitting observed) and for some reason they scrubbed the passage from later versions of the story.

Joseph Hughes of the blog Hughes for America was at the march and came up close and personal with Sparling. He reported in my comments:

As someone who was at the CODEPINK event - here's my take on that and the march in general - and who saw Sparling up close and personal, I thought I'd weigh in. We were close to the front of the event because we were there early and my girlfriend wanted a good spot to take photos. Shortly after the event began, I noticed Sparling and his small group - himself, a woman wearing the same 82nd Airborne sweatshirt and another young man - push their way to the front. By the time they made their move, the crowd was packed pretty tight, so I don't see how they
could have made it so close (just to the left of the front) without some pushing.

When everyone would cheer a particular speaker, he first stood out by loudly booing. He would also give a thumbs down gesture to accompany those boos. One of the official speakers, a woman who formerly served in the armed forces, went over to him, and the two appeared to have a civil conversation. When a man who was taking pictures went over, Sparling appeared to be shouting in his face to move the camera. Later, when the female veteran spoke, she mentioned his service and our appreciation for it and there was a good round of applause. Nothing that would lead someone to characterize anyone as un-American.

I missed his impromptu speech because myself and my girlfriend were helping keep the CODEPINK protesters on the sidewalk as we marched to the full protest. That said, I sincerely doubt Sparling was treated with disrespect on our side of the street. (I didn't notice anyone on his side of the street barring a few curious folks who appeared to be taking pictures of the counter-protesters.) The worst I saw anyone from our side do in response to a counter-protester was throw up a fist or peace sign. When someone shouted, it wasn't profane. Now, on the other hand, Sparling's Freeper friends across the street had spent the better part of an hour holding up ridiculous signs like "Anti-American peaceniks think sedition is patriotic" and "We gave peace a chance. We got 9/11". Also, they hung an effigy of Jane Fonda.

These weren't friendly people. They were people looking to provoke a response. That they got it in the form of spitting, based on everything I saw Saturday, seems laughable on its face.

Before I even noticed Sparling's leg, I thought the kid was a right-wing plant in our group. I thought we were going to be marching, peacefully, and this kid would break a window or otherwise do something to make for an ugly scene, making what was actually a peaceful protest look anything but. It looked to me like he was taking great pains to stand out in what he was doing. For anyone to portray Sparling as an innocent actor in Saturday's events while making the CODEPINK attendees out to be a rabid mob boggles the mind. Our group was 90 percent women, including children and grandmothers. Half of the guys there didn't look like they could hurt a fly. I can safely say Sparling and his group showed up looking to start something, something
that, from the looks of your citations, appears to be a pattern.

I will repeat myself here, but it's important. I suspect that what's at work here is reflexive, lazy MSM he said/she said reporting where it was important to show "the other side" of the story of a peaceful protest. As usual, this lazy and inaccurate form of reporting worked to the benefit of the right, who in this case used a young man who is a celebrity rightwing victim of numerous alleged lefty slurs to tell a mythic story. I expect this from Fox News. It's a big problem when it's the paper of record.

But there's an even bigger problem. Dave Niewert and others have done a lot of writing over the past few years about rightwing eliminationist rhetoric and subterranean groups like militias and how their poison seeps into the mainstream. The mainstream media have failed to pick up on this pernicious social and political trend. Instead they are still mired in the stereotypes of 35 years ago, which we saw this week-end are pretty stooped and grey these days. They need to turn their attention to their right.

In this instance you had a budding rightwing operative who sat with the Vice President's wife at the State of the Union address appearing with a group that hanged Jane Fonda in effigy in the middle of a peaceful protest march. The signs they held were violent, crude and purposefully provocative. Yet the mainstream media, in looking for some frisson of 60's street violence, reports it as if the protesters are the provacateurs. They had the story and they completely missed it.

The fact is that the people who are challenging social norms and mainstream behavior are not coming from the left today --- they are coming from the right. They are clever and well financed and they are being helped not just by their own rightwing media infrastructure --- the allegedly liberal NY Times and Washington Post are also helping them with their knee-jerk assumptions and phony narratives.


Update: How surprising. The AP is quoting Sparling too. No mention of hanging Jane Fonda in effigy.

Update II: Pictures of Sparling (identified as a colonel) at the protest were also picked up by World Picture News. Who's this guy's press agent? John McCain should hire him.


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digby 1/29/2007 10:51:00 AM |

Sunday, January 28, 2007

 
No Spit Zone

by digby

A bit more on the alleged spitting incident.

First of all, let me make it clear why this is a big deal. Most of you know that "spitting on veterans" is a big time hot button. We have been lucky to see very little hostility toward the troops during this war and I have seen no evidence that it is happening now. I think I speak for the vast majority of Americans when I say that we do not blame the soldiers and marines for what is happening and harbor no ill will toward them. We hold the political leaders who sent them over to that meat grinder responsible as is our right and responsibility as citizens.

But even the real hostility that we saw back in the 60's and 70's didn't actually feature people spitting on soldiers. It's an urban legend that was debunked long ago.

But it's a potent charge to this day and one that it's hard to believe Joshua Sparling (and the NY Times) didn't know would push buttons.

Here are a couple of interesting little factoids that readers have brought to my attention.

The Washington Post mentioned Sparling too in an earlier version of today's story about the march. It's been edited out of the current piece, but this intrepid blogger captured it:

Earlier in the day, a smaller rally was held at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue. About 3,000 people, many wearing pink or carrying pink signs, showed up for an antiwar protest sponsored by a women-run peace organization called CodePink.

Oriana Futrell, a Spokane, Wash., resident who said she has grown weary of going to the funerals of her friends' husbands, carried a sign also urging the return of her husband, an Army lieutenant in Iraq.

Across the street, however, was a counter-protest, staged by the Washington chapter of the conservative organization FreeRepublic.com. Those protesters, who organizers said feared that the antiwar march would hurt the U.S. anti-terror efforts, yelled and sported signs, such as one that read, "Go to hell traitors. You dishonor our dead on hallowed ground."

At least one veteran from the Iraq war tried to bridge the divide between the groups. Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, from Port Huron, Mich., who lost his right leg below the knee in an 2005 explosion in Ramadi, spoke to both groups.

Near the end of the CodePink rally, Sparling, a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital who used crutches to walk, went to the microphone and told the protesters that they are entitled to the right to demonstrate and must fight for what they believe in. But he reminded them that the situation is dire for many Iraqis and U.S. troops there believe that they are fighting to help provide a better option for the people of Iraq. He was rewarded with general applause, although a few feint boos could be heard.

When he finished, he walked across the street and spoke with the FreeRepublic group also.

Actually, according to witnesses in the comment section of the post below, it appears that Sparling was with the Freepers from the beginning.

I wonder why the Wapo eliminated this piece of the story? (I don't have any dark suspicions. It was probably space or relevance or something. Still, it's curious.)

Here, again, is how the NY Times reported the same incident. it's been changed slightly from the earlier version I quoted below, but I can't see how that changed the (misleading nature of) the story:

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.

Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

Capitol police made the antiwar protestors walk farther away from the counterprotesters.

“These are not Americans as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Sparling said.

Unfortunately, this is the version that will be googled whenever anyone looks up "antiwar+protestors+spitting."

I have no idea what is behind all the problems with the public that Joshua Sparling seems to confront all the time. Certainly, you would think that if there's a lot of this going on that it would be documented by someone other than this one young man. And I find it very suspicious that it wouldn't be covered constantly in the right wing press, at least.

The salient fact here is that Sparling was allowed to address the anti-war protestors at the Code Pink rally and was treated respectfully and then went on to say that the very people who had allowed him to speak weren't "Americans." I do not know if the spitting incident is a lie, but I believe I am justifiably suspicious of his story under the circumstances.

What I do know is that the NY Times article was so badly reported and so misleading as to be a lie. By leaving out the fact that he spoke at an anti-war rally, it appeared as if he spoke at his own rally. And it made it sound as if the protestors walking by were provoking him, when, in fact, he'd been allowed to speak to them and was treated respectfully. It was the counter-protestors across the street --- his friends the Freepers --- who were the disruptive ones. The NY Times got it exactly backwards.

That they didn't bother to even google Sparling's name, where they would have found that he's something of a rightwing celebrity for his tales of victimization at the hands of terrible lefties, is journalistic malpractice.

They need to correct this story. And they need to look into Sparling. I suspect he's being used by a bunch of creepy Freepers and swiftboat professionals. The man gave his leg. He shouldn't be exploited by these jerks on top of it.

And if he's just making stuff up, the fact that he's a wounded veteran does not excuse it.

Update: From one of the appearances Sparling's dad made on Hannity and Colmes last year, this stands out:

COLMES: How did he get chosen? How did it come about
that last night he was in the gallery? Were you with
him last night at the State of the Union address?

SPARLING: Yes. As a matter of fact, I was sitting
beside Vice President Cheney's wife.

COLMES: Did you talk to her?

SPARLING: Yes, I did.

COLMES: What did you talk about?

SPARLING: She's a very nice lady. And I can see, you
know -- very, very kind-hearted family.

HANNITY: Mike, you sent Joshua our best. Tell him
he's in our prayers. And we look forward to seeing
you guys soon. Thank you very much. And we're going
to help you with that other problem, too, as you
know, when the time comes, about the job.

SPARLING: Sean, Joshua says you still owe him that
trip to New York. And he's sorry he couldn't be here
tonight, and he loves you to death.

HANNITY: When he's ready, he comes back up and we're
going to have a great time. I'm looking forward to
having him up here, sir. Thank you.

Seems they have friends in very high places.

Update II: Apparently Sparling has also made appearances at Ollie North's "Freedom Alliance" concerts. He's a certified minor wingnut celebrity.



Thanks to reader SJS

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digby 1/28/2007 05:32:00 PM |

 
Spitting Image

by digby

So the dirty, long haired hippies spit on wounded veterans yesterday. Isn't it just like them...

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration's policies in Iraq.

Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

How awful. And it turns out that poor PFC Sparling has been treated terribly by these DFH's time and time again. Michele Malkin reported on another awful incident back in December:

Lots of readers watched Fox & Friends this morning and e-mailed about the disgusting greeting card a wounded soldier received while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thanks to reader Shari for taking these cell phone camera shots of the card displayed by co-host Brian Kilmeade:

The card front, decorated with patriotic and holiday stamps, was deceptively innocuous. But take a look at what was inside:











Yes, that's right. It says "P.S. DIE" in the lower right-hand corner.

According to Kilmeade, who visited Walter Reed on Friday, a US Army soldier named Joshua Sparling received the death wish while recovering from a gunshot wound he received in Ramadi, Iraq. It's the only Christmas card he received. Fox & Friends is urging you to counter the hate by sending your thanks and good wishes to Sparling:

Joshua Sparling
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

Shameful!

Sean Hannity took up his case too and gave Sparling an iPod. (I wonder what neat loot he'll get for being spit upon!)

He has become such a famous victim that he and his parents even went to the State of the Union address at the invitation of Dennis Hastert.

Some might find it odd that such terrible treatment would befall the same man --- first he gets a terrible Christmas card (Christmas!) that tells him to "go die." Then, he was spat upon by protestors --- a myth of the 1960's come to life right before our very eyes. What are the odds?

Luckily the New York Times, which obviously reported his spitting incident without even the most cursory google search on his name, is helping to perpetuate this story for a new generation. From now on, any search of "spitting on Iraq veterans" will turn up this incident to back up the inevitable future claims by wingnuts that they were mistreated by the dirty hippies of 2007. Good job NY Times. That's why they call it the paper of record.


I wonder if they would consider doing a profile of poor put-upon Sparling. Surely, all these awful incidents should be compiled and also put in the paper of record. One poor 24 year old soldier appears to be bearing the brunt of the entire vicious hippie movement. Seems like there's a story there.

Update: Sparling had trouble at an airport too:

We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go.”

My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out.

Thank goodness. It's hell out there for this veteran everywhere he goes.

Update II: Thanks to Julia for alerting me to this. Sparling has been in the news since 2005 when the army used him for PR purposes. Interesting.

It also seems that Sparling's horrible Christmas card was actually sent by a white supremecist nutcase named Michael Crook. (Or at least he took credit for it.) (This was noted by Malkin at the time.)

Sparling appears to be some sort of US Army Zelig with ties to white supremecists who is becoming the poster boy for veterans who feel beseiged by dirty hippies.

One wonders if John O'Neill has taken this young fellow under his wing.

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H/T to reader JS


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digby 1/28/2007 08:50:00 AM |

Saturday, January 27, 2007

 
Saturday Night At The Movies

Two Bongs Up! Or, Six Degrees of Woody Harrelson

by Dennis Hartley

Richard Linklater entered the sci-fi arena in 2006 with his adaptation of the late Phillip K. Dick’s semi-autobiographical novel A Scanner Darkly(now on DVD). Set in a not-so-distant future L.A., the story injects themes of existential dilemma, drug-fueled paranoia and Orwellian government surveillance (hmm, that’s timely) into what is otherwise a fairly standard undercover-cop-who’s-gone-too-deep yarn. Keanu Reeves stars as a dazed and confused narc who has become helplessly addicted to the mind-altering drug that he has been assigned to help eradicate (“substance D”). Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Linklater alumni Rory Cochrane are his fellow D-heads who may not exactly be whom they appear to be on the surface. Adding to the mood of hallucinatory psychosis is Linklater’s controversial use of roto-scoping (as per his underrated Waking Life). The rotoscoping technique does present challenges to the actors; Downey, with his Chaplinesque knack for physical expression, pulls it off best, while the more inert performers like Reeves and Ryder are akin to oil paintings. Linklater’s script keeps fairly close to its source material-particularly in relation to the more cerebral elements (Linklater’s propensity for lots of talk and little action may be a turn-off for those expecting another Minority Report). Depending on what you bring with you, the film is a) a cautionary tale about addiction, b) a warning about encroaching technocracy, c) an indictment on the government’s “war” on drugs, d) a really cool flick to watch while stoned, e) the longest 99 minutes of your life or f) all of the above.

More Dick Flicks-Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Abre Los Ojos (or the U.S. remake Vanilla Sky if you’re just in a popcorn mood), Paycheck (Special Collector's Edition) and Barjo (VHS only).

Speaking of the “war” on drugs-here’s a sleeper you may have missed. Grass is a unique, well-produced documentary dealing (er, pun intended) with the history of marijuana criminalization in the United States. Far from a dry history lesson, the film builds its own “counter-myth” of sorts, by exposing the hypocrisy of the government’s anti-marijuana propaganda machine over the years. It’s all there-from the laughable histrionics of the 1930’s Reefer Madness movie to the Reagan administrations sophomoric “Just Say No” campaign in the 1980’s. There is also a fascinating ongoing tally of all the tax money the various law-enforcement agencies have spent (wasted) attempting to eradicate marijuana usage from the days of Elliot Ness to the present. The filmmakers ladle some well-chosen period music over a wealth of ironic archive footage. Woody Harrelson (who has infamously lived through a series of herb-related legal problems, off-screen) narrates with winking bemusement. Whether you are for or against legalization, you should find this one quite informative and highly (er, sorry!) entertaining.

OK class, here’s some, er, further study: American Beauty, Weeds - Season One, Traffic, The Big Lebowski, Homegrown, Reefer Madness - The Movie Musical, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Up In Smoke (well, any Cheech & Chong movie), Half Baked, Bongwater, Rockers, Countryman, The Harder They Come , Word, Sound And Power. (I know, I left out your fave. I see your finger on the mouse!)



Digby here: In case you haven't been following the latest DEA "asset seizure" for no good reason saga, here's the skinny. I feel much safer now.


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digby 1/27/2007 06:00:00 PM |

 
Some Of His Best Friends

by digby

Glenn Greenwald writes one of his throughly satisfying lawyerly exposés of one of the most loathesome DC creatures of recent years, the hysterical anti-muslim, anti-arab racist, Martin Peretz. It's long overdue.

But Glenn's focus on Peretz's anti-arab diatribes unfortunately gives short shrift to his more homegrown bigotry. He has a little problem with yer african americans too. He's quite clever about it, but it's very similar to the proudly colorblind wingnuts who extoll the virtues of "good" blacks like Condi and Colin while unleashing standard racist vitriol toward "bad" negroes:

... as Michael Kazin also rightly points out, Obama is an idiosyncratic African American, although Mike doesn't use the word "idiosyncratic."

In any case, he is not a four-flusher and hustler like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who also ran for president. But he is more than just not like these men. He is a formidable candidate because he is a formidable person. More than Mark Warner or Tom Vilsack. And why shouldn't we at last have a black president? Given America's history, that's an honorable ambition for a party and for a country.

Why shouldn't we have a black president, indeed? What a bold and broadminded epiphany. Why, they're just like everybody else!

Or are they? He uses the word "idiosyncratic" to describe someone who isn't, you know, unpleasantly "Afro-American" a term he uses unself-consciously in this post:

Does Ned Lamont really want Al Sharpton's support? The reverend has lost just about all his fans in the Afro-American population, as anyone could tell by how he fared in the 2004 Democratic primary. I think he got fewer votes and fewer delegates than Kucinich, which is a great achievement. In any case, black Americans--having produced solid and achieving and aspiring politicians like Harold Ford Jr., Barack Obama and Deval Patrick (for all my carping at him)--have no reason to stick with Sharpton on anything. He has been a racist hooligan from the beginning of his career to, well, yesterday. What did he do yesterday? He accused Joe Lieberman of "race-baiting."

Heavens!

Peretz does this over and over again when the issue is race. He cannot discuss the issue without contrasting what he considers to be good african-americans with "four-flushing hustlers" like Jackson and Sharpton. (He missed an opportunity to use the word "pimp". Somebody send him a wingnut style-guide.)

It's standard modern racism. They don't just come out and say it. They don't even know they are doing it. They really, truly do like some black people. The good ones. You know, the ones who don't act .... black. And they have convinced themselves that today there is also a large silent majority of these "good" "afro-Americans" who also hate Jesse Jackson and who, in fact, believe exactly as Marty Peretz does. Which is why he isn't a racist. He and teh African-Americans are brothers under their creamy, not too black, skins.

Here's an example:

I'm a fan of young man Ford. He's religious, he is not embarrassed that he's for a strong defense, and he's a friend of Al Gore--which means a lot to me. He is also more in touch with the sentiments of black constituents than either Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, in the new tradition of Barack Obama and Corey Booker, who also are very appealing to whites. This is the fresh black leadership in the Democratic Party, and a blessing they are.

Again with the good negroes and the bad negroes. This time, he also asserts that these "idiosyncratic" african americans are more appealing to whites than the bad negroes. No word on why. And how he knows that they are more appealing to the black constituency than jackson or Sharpton is also a mystery. I guess he found that out by hanging out in black churches and hip-hop clubs with Condi and Mike Bloomberg.

Of course, this "idiosyncracy" of Obama and these others has a down side. The rightwing talk sludge slingers are now saying he isn't entitled to be considered "black" because he isn't descended from African slaves. They are calling him a "halfrican" when they aren't also tagging him as a muslim terrorist. (Don't tell Peretz, his head will explode.)

I'm reminded of many recent conversations in which I'm lectured about how the Republicans are now the party of equality because Bush put Condi and Colin in the cabinet. (Of course, there have been blacks in the cabinet before, but no matter.) What always comes out is how these fine Republican African Americans don't look and sound so much like those really black ones.

They all feel very proud of themselves and constantly pat themselves on the back for their new-found color-blindness. The mexicans and the arabs, on the other hand, are just a bunch of animals, but then everybody knows that.

Of course, there are exceptions...


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digby 1/27/2007 02:50:00 PM |

 
And The Big Tumescent Winner Is

by digby

In a bold new advance in technical awardology the annual Kippies were hosted this year on IM, by none other than the "godfather" of instant messages himself: Congressman Mark Foley. If you want to see history as it was made, read the transcript. Foley is very, shall we say....excited to be there.

*And I'm personally thrilled that my favorite columnist of all time, Richard Cohen, won this year's Purple Teardrop With Clutched Pearls Cluster. Made me all verklempt.



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digby 1/27/2007 09:52:00 AM |

 

Collective Effort

by poputonian

Today's anti-war rally in Washington brings to mind Ché Pasa's comment from last week:

The idea that physical protest doesn't matter or is ineffective is absurd on its face, and yet this idea is nearly endemic to much of high profile lefty blogistan, a matter of faith more than evidence. I've been in several set-to's with blogish proprietors over the issue, most recently over the question of whether Cindy Sheehan's protests are of any relevance or consequence, and shouldn't she and her tactics be shunned by the "serious" left? What complete garbage, but she does have a tendency to embarrass the Democratic Powers That Be, and that's her chief offense these days. But Cindy was down the street protesting last night with hundreds of others who marched and chanted and carried signs and --horrors -- disrupted traffic at rush hour, making the tired old point that this war must be brought to an END, yawn. See, nobody likes her, so why doesn't she just stay home? And all this marching and chanting and carrying signs has no appeal or effect any more, so we should all just stop it, hook in to the New Wired World, and zone out.

Perhaps that's part of the problem. Back in the Old Days, it wasn't really possible to hook in to the protest movement unless you were physically there in person. Now you can get a dose of protest vigor just by turning on your computer and visiting a site or two, where you'll find excellent rants and virtual marches out the wahzoo.

There. Done. Protest complete. Off to work, school or whatever.

Last year I posted an excerpt about Paul Revere's role in the revolutionary movement, a different 'old days' than what Ché Pasa was speaking of. In that piece, I suggested today's community of blogs are similar to the local associations that comprised part of the revolutionary movement infrastructure. Note the blend of meetings and action in historian Fischer's words:

The structure of Boston's revolutionary movement, and Paul Revere's place within it, were very different from recent secondary accounts. Many historians have suggested that this movement was a tightly organized, hierarchical organization, controlled by Samuel Adams and a few other dominant figures. These same interpretations commonly represent Revere as a minor figure who served his social superiors mainly as a messenger.

A very different pattern emerges from the following comparison of seven groups: the Masonic lodge that met at the Green Dragon Tavern; the Loyal Nine, which was the nucleus of the Sons of Liberty; the North Caucus that met at the Salutation Tavern; the Long Room Club in Dassett Alley; the Boston Committee of Correspondence; the men who are known to have participated in the Boston Tea Party; and Whig leaders on a Tory Enemies List.

A total of 255 men were in one or more of these seven groups. Nobody appeared on all seven lists, or even as many as six. Two men, and only two, were in five groups; they were Joseph Warren and Paul Revere, who were unique in the breadth of their associations.

Other multiple memberships were as follows. Five men (2.0%) appeared in four groups each ... Seven men (2.7%) turned up on three lists ... Twenty-seven individuals (10.6%) were on two lists ... The great majority, 211 of 255 (82.7%), appeared only on a single list. Altogether, 94.1% were in only one or two groups.

This evidence strongly indicates that the revolutionary movement in Boston was more open and pluralist than scholars have believed. It was not a unitary organization, but a loose alliance of many overlapping groups. That structure gave Paul Revere and Joseph Warren a special importance, which came from the multiplicity and range of their alliances.

None of this is meant to deny the preeminence of other men in different roles. Samuel Adams was especially important in managing the Town Meeting, and the machinery of local government, and was much in the public eye. Otis was among its most impassioned orators. John Adams was the penman of the Revolution. John Hancock was its "milch cow," as a Tory described him. But Revere and Warren moved in more circles than any others. This gave them their special roles as the linchpins of the revolutionary movement -- its communicators, coordinators, and organizers of collective effort in the cause of freedom.
...
In sum, the more we learn about the range and variety of political associations in Boston, the more open, complex and pluralist the revolutionary movement appears, and the more important (and significant) Paul Revere's role becomes. He was not the dominant or controlling figure. Nobody was in that position. The openness and diversity of the movement were the source of his importance.

So where the Boston radicals were meeting in taverns to plan their Tea Party, today we have virtual tools to enhance our associations. All told, I see more similarities than differences in the social and political structures of past and present. On this latter point, note how Fischer (writing in 1994) describes the opposing systems of intelligence for the British and the Americans, and see how it parallels today's wingnut organization, where information flows down from the omniscient White House inner circle, and also how it parallels today's liberal sphere that lives up (unwittingly, no doubt) to its legacy of disorder in the interest of intellectual strength.

Each side recognized the critical importance of intelligence, and both went busily about that vital task. But they did so in different ways. The British system was created and controlled from the top down. It centered very much on General Gage himself. The gathering of information commonly began with questions from the commander in chief. The lines of inquiry reached outward like tentacles from his headquarters in Province House. This structure proved a source of strength in some respects, and weakness in others. The considerable resources of the Royal government could be concentrated on a single problem. But when the commander in chief asked all the questions, he was often told answers that he wished to hear. Worse, the questions that he did not think to ask were never answered at all.

The American system of intelligence was organized in the opposite way, from the bottom up. Self-appointed groups such as Paul Revere’s voluntary association of Boston mechanics gathered information on their own initiative. Other individuals in many towns did the same. These efforts were coordinated through an open, disorderly network of congresses and committees, but no central authority controlled this activity in Massachusetts – not the Provincial Congress or Committee of Safety, not the Boston Committee of Correspondence or any small junto of powerful leaders; not Sam Adams or John Hancock, not even the indefatigable Doctor Warren, and certainly not Paul Revere. The revolutionary movement in New England had many leaders, but no commander. Nobody was truly in charge. This was a source of weakness in some ways. They wrangled incessantly in congresses, conventions, committees and town meetings. But by those clumsy processes, many autonomous New England minds were enlisted in a common effort – a source of energy, initiative, and intellectual strength for this popular movement.

The blogs and the rest of the virtual community are vital, but I agree with Ché Pasa that from time to time we need a tea party of some form to bring it all together, to physically demonstrate the movement and spread awareness of America's dissent from within. In keeping with that notion, I think the lefty blogistan should up its emphasis on the importance of rallies and protests.

In the meanwhile, here's to hoping today's march on Washington makes the news.

poputonian 1/27/2007 07:23:00 AM |

Friday, January 26, 2007

 
L'éminence Grise

by digby


This is interesting. A reader over at TPM writes:

Incidentally, Josh, you must have noticed that Bush's very expansive claims of executive authority are being made by the first President in our history to delegate to his Vice President anything close to the authority over policy and personnel that he has ceded to Cheney. Back in 1980 the GOP Convention audience was kept amused by an effort to establish a "co-Presidency" with Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, who'd have been given extensive authority if elected. Reagan decided then that it was a stupid idea; he wasn't running to be half a President. And now we have a President weak enough to make the "co-Presidency" a reality.

I was thinking along similar lines earlier today:

These people are proving that a president can get away with anything (but an illicit blowjob) if he's willing to push the envelope. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney set out to do when he chose himself to be the defacto president back in 2000.

It truly is amazing that a vice president has not only wielded such power but has also stated openly that his goal in office was to expand executive authority:

In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

"I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff," Cheney said.

Most of Cheney's colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of "disdain for the law."

Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution "does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power."

The Iran-contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power -- nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president's hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast "inherent" powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress.

Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration's hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney's staff has also been behind President Bush's record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.

A close look at key moments in Cheney's career -- from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under the first President Bush -- suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

That's a practical problem for the US government and an abstract philosophical point --- until you realize that the most powerful vice president in history, who could never have been elected president in his own right, pretty much appointed himself vice president to a man he knew was an imbecile. How very convenient.

This reminds of this essay by Michael Lind* from '03 that I've always found fascinating:

How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.

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

Never forget that John McCain's BFF in the 2000 election was Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard braintrust. They used to call it "National Greatness" conservatism or "benevolent hagemony" but they're really just obfuscatory terms for American imperialism or world domination.

These are the people who Dick Cheney, the accidental vice president, brought into the government. They did it during the truncated transition and while Junior was off on a partridge hunt with Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar and James Baker was busy in Florida:

Once in Spain, Bush, Knight and the executives were joined by Norman Schwarzkopf and proceeded to a private estate in Pinos Altos, about 60 kilometers from Madrid, to shoot red-legged partridges, the fastest game birds in the world. Bush impressed the hunting party as a fine wing shot and a gentleman -- the 76-year-old former president was not above offering to clean mud off the boots of his fellow hunters. Throughout the trip, Bush kept in touch with the election developments via e-mail. By Saturday, Nov. 11, a machine recount had shrunk his son's lead in Florida to a minuscule 327 votes. "I kind of wish I was in the U.S. so I could help prevent the Democrats from working their mischief," he told another hunter in his party.

On Tuesday, November 14, Bush and Schwarzkopf arrived in England, where Brent Scowcroft joined them and they continued their game hunting on Bandar's estate. They kept a close eye on the zigs and zags of the recount battle. As a power play to demonstrate his confidence to the media, the Democratic Party, and the American populace, George W. Bush announced the members of his White House transition team even before the Florida vote-count battle was over.

I'm not sure what it all means except that Cheney is an undemocratic, power-mad freak, which we already knew. But as I watching what's emerging from the Libby Trail, it's more and more apparent that his dark influence on the empty codpiece was .... no accident.



*Let us all add Lind to the list of intellectuals who were right about the war and are ignored by the media. He is not only an intellectual, he works at a centrist think tank, he used to be a Republican and he is from Texas. What more do they want? This piece was written in April of 2003, right after the invasion and it was right on.

But no, let's listen to all the usual suspects be wrong over and over again.


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digby 1/26/2007 08:07:00 PM |

 
Cornered Maverick

by digby

No, No, No. St. John doesn't get to punt on the McCain Doctrine by asking his "supporters" what they think. Nor does he get to differentiate himself from the most unpopular politician in the country at this late date by calling for "benchmarks" and pretending that it makes him a maverick. It was only two months ago that he was saying that such things would be a "recipe for disaster."

He's trying his damnedest to get out of the corner into which he's painted himself, but he can't. His entire strategy for 08 was to run against both the hippy Dems who wanted to cut-n-run and Bush who failed to follow his advice to send in more troops. He took that tack for good reasons. The conventional wisdom for years was that Bush would not escalate the war.

Just before the election last fall, it was all over the papers that the Army said it was on the verge of collapse:

In fact, there are no more troops to send to Iraq.

That is the unmistakable message of an Army briefing making the rounds in Washington. According to in-house assessments, fully two-thirds of the Army's operating force, both active and reserve, is now reporting in as "unready"—that is, they lack the equipment, people, or training they need to execute their assigned missions. Not a single one of the Army's Brigade Combat Teams—its core fighting units—currently in the United States is ready to deploy. In short, the Army has no strategic reserve to speak of. The other key U.S. fighting force in Iraq, the Marine Corps, is also hurting, with much of its equipment badly in need of repair or replacement.

It seemed like a free shot and a good way for a cynical opportunist with a maverick reputation to position himself. But on October 27th, 2006 he made a fatal mistake --- he got specific:

Reporters asked him to elaborate on his statement last week in Iowa that more combat troops are needed in Iraq to quell a “classic insurgency.”

“Another 20,000 troops in Iraq, but that means expanding the Army and the Marine Corps,” he said

Bush called his bluff and John Edwards very astutely immediately began calling it The McCain Escalation Doctrine.

He's since tried to distance himself from Bush by saying that he really meant 30,000 or that Bush wasn't honest about the situation on the ground or that we need benchmarks.

But Bush got this plan from him, not the other way around. It's his baby.

I hope that we can keep the press focused on this. They love them some St. John and are always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. No.

And speaking of focus, this doesn't help allay all that talk about him being in ill health.


Update: Hah. And Bush screws McCain again!

President George W. Bush met privately with House Republicans on Friday and agreed to an alternative resolution to set "benchmarks" for progress in his plan to send more troops to Iraq, party officials said.

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digby 1/26/2007 04:52:00 PM |

 
Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

by digby

I've always thought that Bush was the classic "Dad who is always mad" guy, the O'Reilly know-it-all, ordering everyone around, expecting his underlings to do what they're told, no questions asked even though they know he's completely full of shit. I expect that he's not the first president to have this attitude --- it is the refuge of slightly stupid privileged middle aged white guys the world over --- but I think he's the first to use this line with the American people and the congress.

James Wolcott nailed it years ago in his piece for Vanity Fair called "The Bush Bunch" :

Over Christmas in 2000, on the eve of W's joining his father and brother Jeb in Florida for a fishing trip (a bit of R&R after the protracted recount battle), Jenna suffered stomach troubles and was rushed to the hospital. She required an emergency appendectomy. Her mother slept at the hospital; her father wasn't present for the surgery and, never one to miss a vacation, didn't let it delay his exit. Gerhart picks up the rest of the story in THE PERFECT WIFE:

"The next day, he went on vacation to Florida just as he had planned. As he boarded the plane, reporters inquired about Jenna's condition. 'Maybe she'll be able to join us in Florida,' the president-elect said. 'If not, she can clean her room.' The reporters stared at him, stunned. 'I couldn't believe it,' one of those present later said. 'First of all, I'm a father, and I cannot imagine a scenario in which my daughter would have major surgery and I would just leave on vacation. And then he just seemed so snarly about it, like he was pissed at her.'"

Why would a father be "pissed" at his daughter for falling ill? An emergency appendectomy isn't some little sniffle. Notice how, despite his reputed ease with strong women, Bush can't resist the domestic stereotype when the safely catch comes off his mouth. When the usually punctual Karen Hughes is late for a meeting after being stuck in traffic (she recounts in TEN MINUTES FROM NORMAL), Bush, "a man who hates to wait," greets her by asking, "Did you have fun shopping?" Laura he has sweeping the porch back in Crawford like some pioneer woman. And Jenna he sentences to stay home during the family vacation and clean her room, as if she were being punished.

Dad was mad. He's always mad.

Here's another favorite:

The American people must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it. And we're going to be there for a while. I don't know the exact moment when we leave, David, but it's not until the mission is complete. The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do. The world will learn that when the United States is harmed, we will follow through. The world will see that when we put a coalition together that says "Join us," I mean it. And when I ask others to participate, I mean it.

That sounds remarkably like that pissed Dad who's telling his sick daughter to clean her room, doesn't it? Except he's talking to the American people and all of her allies around the world.

The latest creepy angry Dad routine is today's quote:

President Bush has challenged Congress not to prematurely condemn his plan for adding more troops to Iraq, telling them that he is "the decision-maker."

Mad Dad doesn't like to be questioned. And he expects results:

In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.

"He's tried this two times — it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' "

Asked if the president had elaborated, she added that he simply said, " 'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Now go sweep the porch, Nancy. And then make me a peanut butter sandwich. Or else.


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digby 1/26/2007 02:07:00 PM |

 
Strawberries

by digby

So, the big news emerging from the Libby trial so far is that Dick Cheney was so obsessively Queeglike about Joseph Wilson that he was even writing out talking points for his little dog Scooter to yap at reporters.

As predicted, this trial has also been fascinating for its insight into the relationship between the White House and the press corps. Cathie Martin, the VP press liason who testified yesterday said some things that had Dana Milbank at the WaPo all a twitter:

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

No kidding.

And let's not forget that Russert was up to his neck in the story and failed over and over again to tell his viewers that and repeatedly put on a little acting performance, pretending surprise and sometimes even referring to himself in the third person. No wonder Cheney was thrilled to use him as his favorite propaganda outlet.

Here's a fun little trip down MTP memory lane from September of 2003, where Cheney engages in his usual lies and delusions, but also pretends that he doesn't really know anything about Wilson.

We now know, of course, that by the time he gave this interview, he had been neurotically pre-occupied with Wilson for months and knew every detail of how the Niger trip went down.

Joe who?

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

Uhm ... Lie.

I guess the intriguing thing, Tim, on the whole thing, this question of whether or not the Iraqis were trying to acquire uranium in Africa. In the British report, this week, the Committee of the British Parliament, which just spent 90 days investigating all of this, revalidated their British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa. What was in the State of the Union speech and what was in the original British White papers. So there may be difference of opinion there. I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

Liar.

And here comes some world class bullshit:

MR. RUSSERT: If they were wrong, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t we have a wholesale investigation into the intelligence failure that they predicted...

VICE PRES. CHENEY: What failure?

MR. RUSSERT: That Saddam had biological, chemical and is developing a nuclear program.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: My guess is in the end, they’ll be proven right, Tim. On the intelligence business, first of all, it’s intelligence. There are judgments involved in all of this. But we’ve got, I think, some very able people in the intelligence business that review the material here. This was a crucial subject. It was extensively covered for years. We’re very good at it. As I say, the British just revalidated their claim. So I’m not sure what the argument is about here. I think in the final analysis, we will find that the Iraqis did have a robust program.

How do you explain why Saddam Hussein, if he had no program, wouldn’t come clean and say, “I haven’t got a program. Come look”? Then he would have sanctions lifted. He’d earned $100 billion more in oil revenue over the last several years. He’d still be in power. The reason he didn’t was because obviously he couldn’t comply and wouldn’t comply with the U.N. resolutions demanding that he give up his WMD. The Security Council by a 15-to-nothing vote a year ago found him still in violation of those U.N. Security Council resolutions. A lot of the reporting isn’t U.S. reporting. It’s U.N. reporting on the supplies and stocks of VX and nerve agent and anthrax and so forth that he’s never accounted for.

So I say I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did.

That’s crazy. That makes no sense. It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever. And in terms of asking questions, you bet I do. I’ve seen in times past when there’s been faulty intelligence, because they don’t always get it right; I think, for example, of having missed the downfall of the Soviet Union. And so I ask a lot of questions based on my years of experience in this business, but that’s what I get paid to do.

They got away with this nonsense for years. He said in the same breath that the intelligence services are "very good" at what they do, implying that it was ridiculous to question the intelligence,then says they don't always get it right. He claims that Saddam wouldn't say "come look" --- except he did, they found nothing, and the US invaded anyway. Nobody mentions that in April 2001, it was reported that Cheney's energy task force had been in favor of lifting the sanctions and that Halliburton had done business in Iraq when he was president of the company.

I can sort of understand it. The lies were so spectacularly dense and overwhelming, building one upon the other, that I'm not sure even a skeptical and courageous press corps could have unraveled them in real time. So total was the mendacity, spin and fantasy that it had a sort of paralyzing effect --- in our soundbite world they seemed impossible to effectively rebut, particularly when the Republicans lashed out like rabid dogs against anyone who even tried. They had done an excellent job of co-opting a large number of the opinion makers who could have made a difference before they invaded, (many of whom are still making excuses.) It was a very thorough snow job.

This is the real problem. It's been demonstrated that if an executive is willing to operate without integrity or adherence to democratic norms, he truly can get away with anything. And as we are seeing today with this escalation in Iraq and provocation of Iran, he doesn't even have to be demagogic or popular. He's the decider, he can do whatever he wants. He only answers to "history" (when he'll conveniently be dead) not the people.

These people are proving that a president can get away with anything (but an illicit blowjob) if he's willing to push the envelope. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney set out to do when he chose himself to be the defacto president back in 2000.

The Libby trial may be the only chance we have to see any of this aired in a controlled environment where both sides operate by the same rules, time is not determined by the need to advertise erection cures and people are bound to tell the truth. I'm looking forward to seeing what unfolds over the next few weeks.

And here's hoping that Libby really does call Vice President Queeg to the stand.






Update: Jane Hamsher is back blogging and getting ready to see Dick Cheney on the witness stand rolling those ball bearings between his sweaty little palms. Welcome back!

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digby 1/26/2007 11:54:00 AM |

 
Mickey Is A Wingnut

by digby


I'm sure that most of you have read about the dust-up between the blogger Spocko and ABC/Disney wherein Disney shut down his blog for posting pieces of air pollution they call talk radio at ABC's KSFO and alerting advertisers. It caused quite a stir. Disney was very angry that someone would use their clips without obtaining permission despite the fact that it was non-commercial and fell easily under fair use doctrine.

I wonder what Disney's planning to do about this:

In a move that could rekindle a heated political debate, Fox News said Thursday that it planned to broadcast footage from ABC's controversial miniseries "The Path to 9/11" that was edited out of the docudrama amid criticism that it inaccurately portrayed the Clinton administration's response to the terrorism threat.

The outtakes, scheduled to air Sunday, depict then-national security advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger refusing to approve a CIA request to attack Osama bin Laden, an event that Berger and the Sept. 11 commission say did not occur.

The final version of the movie that aired on ABC in early September still included the scene, but it had been toned down after protests from top Democrats.

Several minutes were culled, including an exchange in which Berger is depicted hanging up on then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to a Fox News producer who has seen both versions.

The previously unaired footage is scheduled to be broadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday on "Hannity's America," a new show with Sean Hannity, one of the cable news network's most popular hosts.

Fox News obtained the outtakes by taping a public talk that Cyrus Nowrasteh, writer and producer of "The Path to 9/11," gave to a World Affairs Council chapter last Friday at Cal State Channel Islands. Nowrasteh discussed making the docudrama and played several minutes edited out of the movie.

Is Disney really going to allow its rival Fox to make money from their mini-series without properly licensing that footage? Really?

I would hate to think their lawyers believe it's in the company's best interest to send cease and desist letters to internet critics of their far right radio hosts for violating copyright and will do nothing when rightwing conservative Sean Hannity does exactly the same thing for commercial purposes on a rival network.

That might make somebody think that Disney has an ongoing, demonstrable bias toward right wing conservative politics, even to its shareholders' detriment. That can't be right.


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digby 1/26/2007 09:02:00 AM |

 
Creating The Debate

by digby

Ezra and others have noticed that Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric about health care is not backed up by any kind of bold proposal:

"In possibly the most telling section," I wrote, "he gives a great riff on health care, which manages to totally inspire while not actually saying anything sweeping or controversial. Watching it, you'd swear he just promised the stars, the sky, and universal insurance, when he really just committed to electronic records."

[..]

Viewed more cynically, this is consensus-driven rhetoric. As folks involved in health policy well know, universal health care as an abstraction polls through the roof. Actual plans, policies, and specifics tend to meet with more resistance. Mirroring that relationship, Obama is advocating universal health care the idea while mentioning nothing but high-polling, broadly-agreed miscellanea. That's not to say that he couldn't step forward tomorrow morning with a brilliant, bold idea for moving this debate forward. But he's not there yet, and he is, contrary to what some protest, offering policy ideas. His specifics are electronic records, health care for kids, and more discussion. No one will disagree with those policies, but then, there's a reason for that.

Kevin Drum goes even further here.

I have no idea what Obama's intentions are, but I disagree that there is no utility in engaging in sweeping, inspirational rhetoric on this without a lot of specific proposals to back it up.

I agree that as an abstraction health care is easy. Why not? But it's also important to understand that the issue has not yet reached one of those transcendent places that makes massive change seem imperative and that's where some soaring Obama rhetoric is very useful.

This is quite good:

On this January morning of two thousand and seven, more than sixty years after President Truman first issued the call for national health insurance, we find ourselves in the midst of an historic moment on health care. From Maine to California, from business to labor, from Democrats to Republicans, the emergence of new and bold proposals from across the spectrum has effectively ended the debate over whether or not we should have universal health care in this country.

This is important. Universal Health Care, the concept, is far from settled, but Obama is just seizing the issue and saying that it is. And he's doing it with inspirational rhetoric that makes you feel as if it's an inexorable tide of progress, daring those who would try to stop it.

We are a long way from any plans and frankly I don't particularly want to hear about them yet in detail. I just want to know if the Democrats are prepared to say that they believe in universal health care. If they don't believe that then I want to hear why. That's the bright line that Obama is drawing and I think it's pretty smart.


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digby 1/26/2007 08:20:00 AM |

Thursday, January 25, 2007

 
Can We Win This Time?

by digby

Rick Perlstein has two very important articles running right now that everyone should read. I would really love it if our Democratic representatives, especially, would read them, so if any of you have some extra time on your hands and would like to forward the articles to your Democratic congressperson and Senators, you would be doing a public service.

Democrats do not understand their own history and because of that they are allowing certain GOP myths to govern their decisions about Iraq. Perlstein's articles vividly describe how the history of Vietnam has been distorted, how it was done, who did it and why the Democrats find themselves battling fake ghosts instead of riding on the backs of real ones.

First Perlstein writes in Salon about how the congress brought the Vietnam war to an end and exactly how they did it. He outlines several important lessons:

1: "Forthright questioning of a mistaken war by prominent legislators can utterly transform the public debate, pushing it in directions no one thought it was prepared to go."

2: "Congress horning in on war powers scares the bejesus out of presidents."

3: "Presidents, arrogant men, lie. And yet the media, loath to undermine the authority of the commander in chief, trusts them. Today's congressional war critics have to be ready for that. They have to do what Congress immediately did next, in 1970: It grasped the nettle, at the president's moment of maximum vulnerability, and turned public opinion radically against the war, and threw the president far, far back on his heel."

And perhaps the most important lesson in this moment:

Grass-roots activism works. The Democratic presidential front-runner back then, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, afraid of being branded a radical, had originally proposed instead a nonbinding sense-of-the-Senate resolution recommending "effort" toward the withdrawal of American forces within 18 months. He found himself caught up in a swarm: the greatest popular lobbying campaign ever. Haverford College, which was not atypical, saw 90 percent of its student body and 57 percent of its faculty come to Washington to demonstrate for McGovern-Hatfield. A half-hour TV special in which congressmen argued for the bill was underwritten by 60,000 separate 50-cent contributions. The proposal received the largest volume of mail in Senate history. Muskie withdrew his own bill, and became the 19th cosponsor of McGovern-Hatfield.

Muskie's sense-of-the-Senate resolution was the wrong thing to do -- just as Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Joe Biden's sense-of-the-Senate resolution, cosponsored with Republican Chuck Hagel, is the wrong thing to do. Congressional doves, by uniting around a strong offensive -- eschewing triangulation -- weakened the president. McGovern-Hatfield did not pass in 1970. But the campaign for it helped make 1971 President Nixon's worst political year (until, that is, Congress' bold action starting in 1973 to investigate Watergate). By that January, 73 percent of Americans supported the reintroduced McGovern-Hatfield amendment.

John Stennis, D-Miss., Nixon's most important congressional supporter, now announced he "totally rejected the concept ... that the President has certain powers as Commander in Chief which enable him to extensively commit major forces to combat without Congressional consent." In April the six leading Democratic presidential contenders went on TV and, one by one, called for the president to set a date for withdrawal. (One of them, future neoconservative hero Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, differed only in that he said Nixon should not announce the date publicly.)

This was a marvelous offensive move: It threw the responsibility for the war where the commander in chief claimed it belonged -- with himself -- and framed subsequent congressional attempts to set a date a reaction to presidential inaction and the carnage it brought. When the second McGovern-Hatfield amendment went down 55-42 in June, it once more established a left flank -- allowing Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to pass a softer amendment to require withdrawal nine months after all American prisoners of war were released. Senate doves, having dared the fight, were doing quite well in this game of inches.

They also, incidentally, did extremely well in the 1972 election.

The current presidential hopeful club is afraid because they think they are going to be "McGovern's." But they also forget that the reason Nixon resigned was because his massive game of dirty tricks in the 1972 election were exposed in Watergate. His 1972 landslide was hardly won on the merits --- a fact that was proven by the fact that the Democrats even gained a Senate seat in that election. McGovern was the wrong presidential candidate (and let's not forget, Nixon's personal choice, which is why he destroyed Muskie) but the anti-war agenda was a winner --- practically, morally and politically.

Perlstein continues:

We can likewise expect a similarly nasty presidential campaign against whomever the Democrats nominate in 2008. But we can also assume that he or she won't be as naive and unqualified to win as McGovern; one hopes the days in which liberals fantasized that the electorate would react to the meanness of Republicans by reflexively embracing the nicest Democrat are well and truly past. What we also should anticipate, as well, is the possibility that the Republicans will run as Nixon did in 1968 and 1972: as the more trustworthy guarantor of peace. Ten days before the 1972 election, Henry Kissinger went on TV to announce, "It is obvious that a war that has been raging for 10 years is drawing to a conclusion ... We believe peace is at hand." McGovern-Hatfield having ultimately failed twice, its supporters were never able to claim credit for ending the war. That ceded the ground to Nixon, who was able to claim the credit for himself instead. He never would have been able to do that if he had been forced to veto legislation to end the war

.

I highlighted that line above because it's the single thing I fear the most. I don't believe that after all these years of vicious conservatism that most liberal activists are that naive. But I do believe that all this beltway babble about bipartisanship is designed to make the media and then the electorate believe that the only way a Democrat can win is by being the most passionless bowl of lukewarm water. (Listen to our very good friend Frank Luntz's advice --- he's always got our best interests at heart, right?)

And I worry greatly that as a result the man people will look to to lead us out of the quagmire will be the war hero John McCain. He can be McGovern without the hippies, Nixon without the slush fund, a hawk who supported the war but by 2008 will have reluctantly decided that he needs to step in to end it. With a secret plan, no doubt.

One has to wonder how we got to the point where even anti-war politicians who were around at the time don't know about their own successes, or if they do, cannot acknowledge them. That's where Perlstein's other article comes comes in.

It seems that the myth of the congress "abandoning the troops" and thus leading to American defeat came from our bestest bipartisan hero, Gerry Ford:

There is a popular fantasy that liberals in Congress, somehow, at least metaphorically, abandoned American troops in Vietnam--and that, if liberals had their way, they'd do it again in Iraq. This notion was nurtured in the bosom of popular culture--as when Sylvester Stallone, in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), sent back to the jungles of Vietnam by his old commander, plaintively asks, "Sir, do we get to win this time?" But it survives even in elite discourse--as when Nixon's former defense secretary, Melvin Laird, wrote--in a Foreign Affairs article called "Iraq: learning the lessons of vietnam"--that "the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973."

[...]

Early in 1974, Nixon requested a support package for the South Vietnamese that included $474 million in emergency military aid. The Senate Armed Services Committee balked and approved about half. A liberal coup? Hardly. One of the critics was Senator Barry Goldwater. "We can scratch South Vietnam," he said. "It is imminent that South Vietnam is going to fall into the hands of North Vietnam." The House turned down the president's emergency aid request 177 to 154; the majority included 50 Republicans. They were only, as I wrote in The New Republic ("The Unrealist," November 6, 2006), honoring what Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger privately believed. They had gladly negotiated their peace deal under the assumption that South Vietnam would fall when the United States left. What would it have cost to keep South Vietnam in existence without an American military presence? The Pentagon, in 1973, estimated $1.4 billion even for an "austere program." Nixon and Kissinger were glad for the $700 million South Vietnam eventually got (including a couple hundred million for military aid), because their intention was merely to prop up Saigon for a "decent interval" until the American public forgot about the problem. By 1974, Kissinger pointed out, "no one will give a damn."

Apparently, they didn't tell Gerald Ford. He addressed the nation in April of 1975, eight months after becoming president, and implored Congress for $722 million in military aid. The speech was overwhelmingly and universally unpopular--the kind of thing that made Ford seem such a joke to the nation at the time. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak called it "blundering." Seventy-eight percent of the public was against any further military aid; Republicans like James McClure of Idaho and Harry Bellmon of Oklahoma opposed the appropriation. Republican dove Mark Hatfield said, "I am appalled that a man would continue in such a bankrupt policy"--and Democratic hawk Scoop Jackson said, "I oppose it. I don't know of any on the Democratic side who will support it." The Senate vote against it was 61 to 32.

Leading up to the vote, however, Saint Gerald made extraordinary claims--saying that "just a relatively small additional commitment" to Vietnam (compared with the $150 billion already spent there) could "have met any military challenges." With it, "this whole tragedy"--the imminent fall of Saigon--"could have been eliminated."

So much for the Pentagon's claim that $1.4 billion would be an "austere program." So much for Nixon and Kissinger's belief that "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway." Ford's miraculous $722 million somehow became enshrined in public memory as the margin that assured American dishonor. As Laird put it in that Foreign Affairs essay, "[W]e grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. ... We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973."

It is that little piece of mythic propaganda that has our current politicans turning themselves into pretzels over using the power of the purse to stop this war. It's a testament to the ongoing success of the conservative movement's potent disinformation machine.

But Democrats need to stop battling these ghosts at least long enough to look at how the anti-war movement actually operated and how the congress used wily legislative positioning to both reflect the popular will and move the president toward it.

The public memory of congressional votes on Vietnam from 1970 through 1975 is almost hallucinogenically jumbled. Republican propagandists rely on the confusion. This slender reed of a myth--that congressional liberals are responsible for the fall of South Vietnam--conflates the failed 1970-1971 votes to end the war in South Vietnam, and the overwhelmingly popular (and, on Nixon and Kissinger's terms, strategically irrelevant) vote to limit military aid to South Vietnam. It is but a short leap for a public less informed than Laird to reach the Rambo conclusion: that this was just the last in a comprehensive train of abuses--exclusively Democratic and liberal--that kept us from "winning" in Vietnam. And that, adding in the mythology about prisoners of war in Vietnam, American troops were, roughly speaking, "abandoned" there."

It requires some filthy lies to sustain. But the fact that a sad old man is allowed to propound some of them in the foreign policy establishment's journal of record shows how successful it remains. And the fact that the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination seems to take it as second nature that she has to defend herself against them shows it, too. Stop it now. No responsible American politician has ever cut funding an American troop needed to fight while he or she was in the field. No responsible American politician ever would. Limiting the number of troops in the theater of operations is not cutting funding for American troops. Neither, of course, is withdrawing them "over the horizon." Nothing's getting stabbed in the back here except reason.

Word. But that would be the standard conservative M.O. for the last decade or so.

I'm loathe to ever agree with David Brooks about anything but I'm very afraid that he may have been right when he said (about another issue):

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Legislating is a terribly difficult skill, and I don't think too many people in Congress have it right now. Lyndon Johnson obviously had it. It is incredibly difficult, incredibly complicated...And that will involve the sort of gamesmanship and insider playing and a set of skills of how to negotiate a deal that -- I think a lot of those skills have been lost in the last 20 years. I'm not sure many people have them on Capitol Hill of either party.

The only good news in that is that the president is no Johnson or Nixon so maybe it evens out.

One other thing I think is worth mentioning. As Perlstein points out in both articles, the country had turned against the war in huge numbers by the early 70's. The funding votes were bipartisan with even stalwarts like Goldwater signing on. But there were other things happening that continued to roil the country --- the counter-culture and leftist extremism. The Republicans managed to mix all that social angst into one big anti-Democratic stew that rebounded very badly on McGovern (who, as Perlstein points out, was a very bad candidate) and confused the political history of the era to this day.

But today there are no Weathermen or SLA's out there talking revolution. The main fronts in the culture war are located on the right, not on the left. It is a different day, even if those who lived through Vietnam are as muddled by the myths that sprang up later as anyone who came behind.

Whether any of us like it or not, that era is defining the present one. So, it behooves our Democratic representatives to at least decontruct this stuff for themselves so they can deal effectively with the war and wield their power as a congressional majority most effectively. To do that they need to read these two articles by the historian who has spent the last few years immersed in the politics of the period --- a man who wasn't even born until the late 60's and has no axe to grind. He has something important to tell them.


Project Vote Smart has all the contact information you need, including staff members. if you are so inclined to send these articles along, please do.



Update: Young people, educate yourselves. Seriously. It's important.


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digby 1/25/2007 02:30:00 PM |

 
DLC Dance

by digby

Harold Ford has never been my favorite Democrat and now that he's running the DLC I assumed he would set my blood boiling even more than in the past. But I just saw him interviewed by Blitzer and he did not succumb to the temptation to use liberals as his foil --- indeed, he argued with Blitzer's entire premise which was that the party was divided along crazies vs centrist lines. He even interrupted to point out that the DLC had strongly backed "progressive" legislation during the 90's like family and medical leave.

More importantly, he came out strongly against the escalation, which was my biggest concern. True, he did use Republicans Warner and Hagel as his benchmarks for seriousness, which was annoying, but it was a minor transgression compared to what I expected. (I understand the politics of claiming bipartisanship on the war, but a mention of some Democrats in there would have been helpful.)

Ford is a talented politician. It would be nice to see him use his gifts for good. If he can persuade the DLC that they do not need to reflexively trash their fellow Democrats, even when Wolf Blitzer is tossing them opportunity after opportunity to do so, then perhaps they will not be the pernicious influence on the political discourse that they grew into during the 90's and the Bush years. Baby steps.


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digby 1/25/2007 01:28:00 PM |

 
Wonder Working Hack

by digby


Bush's former speechwriter Michael Gerson, (purveyor of the evangelical dog-whistle crapola that permeated every presidential speech for years)praised his former employer's SOTU address on Tuesday to high heaven (ahem) and took Jim Webb to task for his lousy writing skills, incoherence and all around terrible speech. Yes he did.

The Democratic response by Virginia Sen. James Webb was also memorable, in a different way. Whenever a politician puts out to the media that he has thrown away the speechwriters’ draft and written the remarks himself (as Webb did), it is often a sign of approaching mediocrity. This was worse. Senator Webb made liberal use of clichés: the middle class is “the backbone” of the country, which is losing its “place at the table.” I am not even sure there is a literary term for a mixed metaphor that crosses two clichés. And Senator Webb’s logic was as incoherent as his language (the two are often related). No “precipitous withdrawal”—but retreat “in short order.” Fight the war on terror vigorously—except where the terrorists have chosen to fight it. It is, perhaps, a good thing that James Webb earned a job as senator. As a speechwriter he would starve.

Perhaps he'd go back to award winning literature instead. The man has too much dignity to stoop to churlish hit-pieces on Newsweek online, that's for sure.

Blogger and professional speechwriter Dan Conley, who thought the speech was as good as everyone but Gerson did, delivers an extremely satisfying point by point rebuttal.

An excerpt:

Gerson then throws in another analysis of Webb -- paraphrasing Webb's overall foreign policy message as "Fight the war on terror vigorously—except where the terrorists have chosen to fight it." Yes, this comes from the man who wrote "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." That line applied domestically as well as internationally ... if you cannot support the Bush approach to the War on Terror, you are one of them, the others, the evil ones. Your phone records will be taken, your conversations tapped, your mail opened and if you support an opposing point of view, you will be attacked as a traitor or coward. That's Gerson's legacy.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Michael Gerson helped Bush sell some of the worst policies and most divisive ideas in American history, all covered in goo-goo Christian rhetoric that made many people think he was speaking in grand biblical terms. Yesterday, he let his real petty and mean conservative self show through. He and Bush really are soul brothers.


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digby 1/25/2007 09:23:00 AM |

 

Cultural Quagmire

by poputonian

You could make many jokes about the re-emergence of the mutaa arrangement (temp wife) in Iraq, but the situation is too tragic to laugh about.

Temporary 'Enjoyment Marriages' In Vogue Again With Some Iraqis

BAGHDAD -- Fatima Ali was a 24-year-old divorcee with no high school diploma and no job. Shawket al-Rubae was a 34-year-old Shiite sheik with a pregnant wife who, he said, could not have sex with him.

Ali wanted someone to take care of her. Rubae wanted a companion.

They met one afternoon in May at the house he shares with his wife, in the room where he accepts visitors seeking his religious counsel. He had a proposal. Would Ali be his temporary wife? He would pay her 5,000 Iraqi dinars upfront -- about $4 -- in addition to her monthly expenses. About twice a week over the next eight months, he would summon her to a house he would rent.

The negotiations took an hour and ended with an unwritten agreement, the couple recalled. Thus began their "mutaa," or enjoyment marriage, a temporary union believed by Shiite Muslims to be sanctioned by Islamic law.

The Shiite practice began 1,400 years ago, in what is now Iraq and other parts of the region, as a way to provide for war widows. Banned by President Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led government, it has regained popularity since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq brought the majority Shiites to power, said clerics, women's rights activists and mutaa spouses.

I wonder if the mutaa is part of Cheney's claim today of "enormous successes" in Iraq. The local thinkers don't see it as such:

Many intellectuals consider ancient traditions such as these an obstacle to Iraq's effort to become a more modern, democratic society. In recent years, extremist religious groups have gained more power in Iraq.

"These steps are taking the whole country backwards and are definitely hurdles to the advancement of the country," said Hamdia Ahmed, a former member of parliament and a women's rights activist in Baghdad. "The only solution is to separate Islam from politics."

But, the guvmint sees it another way ...

Shiite clerics and others who practice mutaa say such marriages are keeping young women from having unwed sex and widowed or divorced women from resorting to prostitution to make money.

They say a mutaa marriage is not much different from a traditional marriage in which the husband pays the wife's family a dowry and provides for her financially.

"It was designed as a humanitarian help for women," said Mahdi al-Shog, a Shiite cleric.

According to Shiite religious law, a mutaa relationship can last for a few minutes or several years. A man can have an unlimited number of mutaa wives and a permanent wife at the same time. A woman can have only one husband at a time, permanent or temporary. No written contract or official ceremony is required in a mutaa. When the time limit ends, the man and woman go their separate ways with none of the messiness of a regular divorce.
...
Opponents of mutaa, most of them Sunni Arabs, say it is less about religious freedom and more about economic exploitation. Thousands of men are dying in the sectarian violence that has followed the invasion, leaving behind widows who must fend for themselves. Many young men are out of work and prefer temporary over permanent wives who require long-term financial commitments. In a mutaa arrangement, the woman is entitled to payment only for the duration of the marriage.

"It's a cover for prostitution," said Um Akram, a women's rights activist in Baghdad. "Some women, because they don't want to be prostitutes, they think that this is legal because it's got some kind of religious cover. But it is wrong, and they're still prostitutes from the society's point of view." Um Akram, like the mutaa spouses interviewed, asked that only parts of her name be published.
...
Ali had a normal marriage once. It lasted only three months because the couple did not get along. Her chances for another permanent marriage, she said, were slim. Men often prefer virgins over widows and divorced women, she said.

She welcomed Rubae's proposal because he was a well-known sheik in her neighborhood. Her family was fond of him. "He was a good guy, and he was a religious man," she said.
...
Both Shiite and Sunni Muslims allow men to have more than one permanent wife, but they disagree over mutaa.

Most Shiites believe that the prophet Muhammad encouraged the practice as a way to give widows an income. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, has sanctioned it and offers advice on his Web site.

Um Ahmed, a 28-year-old woman from Najaf, lost her husband in 2005 when he was caught in the crossfire of a fight between two Shiite militias.

Soon after his death, she had her first mutaa relationship, with a man who was in a permanent marriage. He paid her 50,000 Iraqi dinars upfront -- or $38 -- and gave her money whenever she needed it during their six-month relationship.

She said she needed it often. She is a tailor and the only one in her family of 10 who works.

"When a human being needs money, the need will make a person do anything," she said. "It's better than doing the wrong things. This is religiously accepted."

Many Sunnis believe that the practice is outdated and ripe for abuse. They also see it as more evidence of Iranian influence on Iraqi life. Mutaa is widespread in Iran's Shiite theocratic state.

"It is a big insult to women," said Ibtsam Z. Alsha, a Sunni lawyer and the head of the organization Women for the Common Good of Women.

Women's rights activists also bemoan what they say is an increase in mutaa on college campuses. Some female students do it for money. Others do it for love when their parents forbid them to marry a man from another sect.

A cultural quagmire ... and we're in the middle of it and about to send more.

poputonian 1/25/2007 07:31:00 AM |

 

My Two Moms

by poputonian

In the comments to the previous thread, Corrine notes that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe face a big dillema and could be SOL in Virginia:

... since Mary & Heather live in Virginia, under Virginia's brand spanking new constitutional amendment that declares marriage to be exclusively heterosexual, [Heather] can't claim any parental rights since the law doesn't recognize any other relationship that approximates marriage.

What to do?

Well, the family could move to Canada.

Court rules that child can have two mums

TORONTO (Reuters) - A five-year-old Canadian boy can have two mothers and a father, an Ontario court ruled this week in a landmark case that redefines the meaning of family and examines the rights of parents in same-sex relationships.

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal said the female partner of the child's biological mother could be legally recognized as the boy's third parent.

The biological father, named on the boy's birth certificate, is a friend of both women and is taking an active role in the child's life.

"It is contrary to (the child's) best interests that he is deprived of the legal recognition of the parentage of one of his mothers," Justice Marc Rosenberg wrote in the ruling, which did not name the three parents or the child.

"Perhaps one of the greatest fears faced by lesbian mothers is the death of the birth mother... Without a declaration of parentage or some other order, the surviving partner would be unable to make decisions for their minor child."

On the other hand, Dick Cheney's whole world is collapsing and he might invade up nort' -- Dena, Interrobang, Cathie, watch out -- and it looks like he would get at least some inside nutball support:

The Alliance for Marriage and Family, a coalition of several groups that promote a traditional family structure, had filed as an intervenor in the case.

"We think there are many good reasons for continuing to uphold the definition of family as two parents," said Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, one of the groups represented by the alliance.

"Once you remove it from the realm of nature and the realm of traditional moral and religious teachings, who's going to decide how many parents a child can have? What's so magical about three, maybe there could be more."

O Canada.

poputonian 1/25/2007 04:58:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

 
Crazy Man

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer and demonstrated that he has totally lost touch with reality:

BLITZER: Here is what the president said last night. "We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence would spill out across the country and, in time, the entire region would be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario." He was talking about the consequences of failure in Iraq. How much responsibility do you have, though -- you and the administration -- for this potential scenario?

CHENEY: Well, this is the argument, that there wouldn't be any problem if we hadn't gone into Iraq.

BLITZER: Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

CHENEY: Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran.

BLITZER: But he was being contained, as you well know, by the no-fly zones --

CHENEY: He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein.

BLITZER: But he didn't have stockpiles --

CHENEY: He had corrupted the entire effort to try to keep him contained. He was bribing senior officials of other governments. The Oil-for-Food Program had been totally undermined. And he had, in fact, produced and used weapons of mass destruction previously, and he retained the capability to produce that kind of stuff in the future.

BLITZER: Which happened in the '80s.

CHENEY: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do. The world is much safer today because of it.

There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically-elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it.

You can argue about that all you want. That's history. That's what we did, and you and I can have this debate. We've had it before, but the fact of the matter is, in terms of threats to the United States from al Qaeda, for example, attacks on the United States -- they didn't need an excuse. We weren't in Iraq when they hit us on 9/11.

BLITZER: But the current situation there is--

CHENEY: The fact of the matter was that al Qaeda was out to kill Americans before we ever went into Iraq.

BLITZER: The current situation there is very unstable. The president himself speaks about a nightmare scenario right now. He was contained, as you repeatedly said throughout the '90s, after the first Gulf War, in a box, Saddam Hussein.

CHENEY: He was -- after the first Gulf War, had managed to kick out all of the inspectors. He was provided payments to families of suicide bombers. He was a safe haven for terrorism, one of the prime state sponsors of terrorism, designated by our State Department for a long time. He'd started two wars. He had violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If he were still there today, we'd have a terrible situation.

BLITZER: But there is --

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There's problems -- ongoing problems -- but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically-written constitution -- first ever in that part of the world. They've had three national elections. So there's been a lot of success.


BLITZER: How worried are you --

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, and the president's put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario, that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then in the end, they're going to turn against the United States?


CHENEY: Wolf, that's not going to happen. The problem is, you've got --


BLITZER: They're -- warming up to Iran and Syria right now.


CHENEY: Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs; you've got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we've made major progress. We've still got a lot of work to do. There's a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet.

There's more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now, is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorist's strategy, that in fact what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, where the pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorist's strategy, that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task -- That we don't have the stomach for the fight. That's the biggest threat.

Awesome, isn't it?

His demeanor was extremely hostile and aggressive. Blitzer tried to inject some truth into the interview but Cheney would have none of it --- much like his earlier showdown with harpy wife, Lynn.

What with the sophomoric salvo against Clinton in the WaPo yesterday by daughter Liz, it appears that the Cheney family is having a very public meltdown.

John Amato has a nice piece of the interview up over at C&L. You'll especially like this:

BLITZER: []your daughter, Mary. She's pregnant. All of us are happy she's going to have a baby. You're going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, "Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children. Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn't mean that it's best for the child." Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: She's, obviously, a good daughter –

CHENEY: I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf.

And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate –

CHENEY: I think you're out of line.

Right. He's out of line for asking about it. James Dobson, on the other hand, is treated like royalty. These Cheneys are clearly the ones who invented conservative upside-downism, which shouldn't be surprising since Lynn wrote the book on liberal moral relativism. Black is white -- evil is good --- conservatives are moral.



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digby 1/24/2007 04:17:00 PM |

 
"Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard..."

by digby

Via TBOGG. As hard it is to believe, after being roundly ridiculed for his embarrassing "Shane" metaphor from four years ago, Howard Fineman is using those cowboy metaphors again:

George W. Bush wanted to be Harry Truman (patron saint of embattled presidents) in his State of the Union speech, but he may have reminded voters of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. You know the famous scene: the giddy pilot in a cowboy hat hops aboard his own payload to Armageddon.

Here's the thing. Nothing Bush said last night was any more "Pickens" than what he's been saying since 9/11. He never sounded like Shane.

Here's his most famous moment:

"I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!"

Here's Slim Pickens in "Dr Strangelove":

Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there.

Bush's famous bullhorn moment is no more moving and meaningful than Major T.J. "King" Kongs pep talk. Less actually. (And in fairness to Fineman, there were even more egregious metaphors: people were not just calling him "Shane," they were comparing him to Shakespeare's Henry V and Winston Churchill.)

Bush has also been making the same SOTU speech over and over and over again ever since 2002. He wasn't Shane or Hal then any more than he is now. He always looked as if he didn't understand half of what he was saying and he only got animated when he talked about boom-boom and evil.

Last night:

From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free-flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.

Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented — but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.

Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.

Here was 2003:

This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism...

To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We've broken al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.

We have the terrorists on the run. We're keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

yee. hah.

Fineman and his little friends ate it up at the time. Now they think it's foolish. It was always foolish.

It's not a new insight, by a long shot.







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digby 1/24/2007 02:59:00 PM |

 
Up To Here

by digby

Joe McCarthy Lieberman and Richard Lugar have been braying once again about how Iraq war dissenters are helping the enemy and upsetting our allies by showing that we are in "disarray."

Chuck Hagel is having none of it:



"If we don't debate this we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country."


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digby 1/24/2007 02:12:00 PM |

 
The Geico Supreme Court

by digby

I think Matt Yglesias should get the Nobel prize for this idea. Product placement (as we saw with the "Baby Einstein" colloquey in last night's SOTU) as a way to close the deficit is brilliant. Why shouldn't Disney pay for that effusive mention from the president of the United States on national television?

I don't think Yglesias goes far enough, though. Every speech, every photo-op could also be sponsored by a different corporation. And just as the sports arenas named Viagra Park and Jonny Cat Field no longer have a civic identity, we could change the name of the White House to the "Halliburton House" (for now --- the next president could have a different sponsor.) Companies would pay billions for that kind of daily mention in the free media.

It would also be much more transparent and equally efficient to have elected officials simply license their offices to industry to become the Senator from Pfizer or Congressman Exxon. At least we would know up front who we were voting for and perhaps we the people could start lobbying the industries directly for charity and pro-bono projects to patch up the safety net or do some basic scientific research and the like.

As Yglesias says, raising taxes on the rich is "desperately inside the box thinking." Product placement to fund the government is the kind of creative brainstorming that makes America great.


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digby 1/24/2007 10:30:00 AM |

 
Webb Writer

by digby

It has come to my attention from several readers that I failed to properly praise Jim Webb's speech last night. So, let me put on the record right now that I thought it was the best SOTU rebuttal I've ever heard and, moreover, it was the perfect speech at the perfect time by the perfect person. (How's that?)

I have actually praised Webb effusively many times, often for his fearless and common sense attitude. I'm a big fan of his style.

But I'm also not surprised that Webb can give a great speech as he did last night. He is an award winning professional writer, after all. I would hope that Democratic politicians everywhere take a good hard look at that speech and figure out why it was so effective. It wasn't just because it came from a manly man with a great story, as the chatterers would have it; it is because it is a very well written speech. They could all learn a thing or two from the pro in their midst about how to get these ideas across.

More of this please:

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues — those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death — we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm‘s way.

[...]

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

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digby 1/24/2007 08:52:00 AM |

 

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch

by poputonian

On the same day Bush (Conquistador-US) addressed the nation, the good citizens of New Mexico quietly went about more important business. David Swanson at afterdowningstreet.org reports:

Over 100 citizens showed up for the introduction, and there were over two hours of citizen speeches at the announcement event. Reporters from every New Mexico newspaper and the Associated Press were there, as well as ABC and NBC cameras. What they saw was a bottom-up movement for impeachment, exactly what inpeachment is supposed to be.

Like a snowball rolling.

Tuesday, January 23rd at 2PM, Senators Gerald Ortiz y Pino D-ABQ and John Grubesic D-Santa Fe introduced their resolution to impeach President George Bush and Richard Cheney. Based on a resolution crafted by Phil Burk of impeachbush.tv and the national impeachment movement, the resolution made four charges, three of which are violations of the US Constitution.

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired with others to defraud the United States of America by intentionally misleading congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 371; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has admitted to ordering the national security agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American civilians without seeking warrants from the foreign intelligence surveillance court of review, duly constituted by congress in 1978, in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired to commit the torture of prisoners in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Chapter 113C, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Geneva Conventions, which under Article VI of the United States constitution are part of the "supreme Law of the Land"; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney acted to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights by ordering indefinite detention without access to legal counsel, without charge and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the president of a United States citizen as an "enemy combatant", all in subversion of law...

Back to Swanson:

The New Mexico resolution will go to three committees in the Senate: Rules, Judiciary, and Public Affairs. Three of the eight sponsors chair those three committees. Four of the eight sit on the Rules Committee, which is the first stop, and where five votes are needed. Ortiz y Pino expected to serve on Rules but has been moved to another committee. The fifth Democrat and the needed vote will be a Navajo representative yet to be appointed.

A Navajo representative. Sweet!

The Senate Committee hearings will have to happen over the next four weeks or so to leave time for introduction and passage in the House during New Mexico's 60-day legislative session. Local organizer Leland Lehrman is confident it can be done.

Webb's SOTU response was nearly perfect. I agree. But I'm keeping an eye on the [snow]ball, since only impeachment will stop the Cowboy President ... from killing off more of the human race.

poputonian 1/24/2007 02:00:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

 
Grown-ups

by digby


I've got to agree with Atrios Thers about this (and not just because he mentioned me in the post.) This new found ardor among the cognoscenti for macho Democrats is predictably shallow, but it's also the only way to get the codpiece obsessed pundits to notice that the Democrats have something important to say.

I have written a lot about the fact that ever since the hippies grew their hair long and women fought for their right to be full members of society, the Republicans have successfully broken the parties into archetypal masculine and feminine tribes. I have long thought that this was one of our more difficult challenges. Public leadership archetypes are mostly male, after all, and the right appropriated them all.

But that's about to change, isn't it? While we justly celebrate Jim Webb's strong no-nonsense speech tonight we also saw a rising Democratic party led by powerful, intelligent women. If there's an archetype at work now it's a healthy modern family --- mom and dad are equals.

I don't know how long it will take the media chatterers to get over their odd, adolescent testosterone fixation, but most of the rest of the country, as usual, is way ahead of them. The Democrats are the party of adults, male and female. The Republicans and the media are the only ones still stuck in Junior High waiting for the football captain to ask them to the dance.




* I realize that this tracks with Lakoff's "nurturing parents" meme, but it didn't really have any meaning until women rose into leadership positions. Otherwise, it's one male working, nurturing parent and an absent mom. That's not exactly an archetypal leadership model. (And nurturing is not a good political leadership word for either gender --- it should be saved for other purposes.)


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digby 1/23/2007 08:47:00 PM |

 
He's Always Been Naked

by digby

As we await the magic moment when the Codpiece enters the capitol and wades through the adoring crowd to take to the podium and tell us what the state of our union is, I can't help but be reminded of what it used to be like when Bush made a speech or held a press conference and people like Howard Fineman said things like this:

If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family."

This was the tenor of the political discourse for years. Luckily, the country has seemed to finally noticed that this man's been walking around stark raving naked and babbling like an idiot for years. But it was a very depressing and disorienting time when the entire press corps and official punditocrisy insisted that this illiterate fool was on the par with with Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind.

There have been a lot of arguments in recent months about whether those of us who were against the war are due any particular respect for having been right. I suppose that will sort itself over time. But it behooves the critics who insist that the fact we were right does not say anything important about our judgment, to also acknowledge, at least to themselves, that we were also right about Bush.


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digby 1/23/2007 05:49:00 PM |

 
"He Is An Innocent Man And He Has Been Wrongly And Unfairly Accused"

by digby

Here's Fox News' Libby trial story on Brit Hume's show tonight. It starts off with the right lede, but goes downhill from there:

Hume: An attorney for former white house aide Scooter Libby said Libby feared the whtie house was trying to use him as a scapegoat in the investigation into the leaking of a cia employees name. That contention was a key point during opening statements in Libby's perjury trial. Chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle has the story:

Video:

Reporter: Ready for opening statements Mr Fitzgerald?

Angle: Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was tight lipped as he arrived for opening statements, a day that would be devoted to competing conspiracy theories. Once in the courtroom, Fitzgerald spent an hour laying out what he described as an administration effort to beat back critics of the Iraq war, in this case former ambassador Joe Wilson who wrote a New York Times op-ed accusing the administration of twisting the intelligence on Iraq to justify the war. Fitzgerald argued Scooter Libby, as part of a White House push back, sought to punish Wilson by knowingly exposing his wife Valerie Plame who worked at the CIA then lied about it as Fitzgerald charged when announcing the indictment.

Video:

Fitzgerald: We need to know the truth. And anyone who goes into a Grand Jury and lies, obstructs or impedes the investigation has committed a serious crime.

Angle: When it was his turn, Libby's lawyer Ted Wells flatly rejected the prosecutions claims saying "Scooter Libby is innocent,he is totally innocent, he is an innocent man and he has been wrongly and unfairly accused. This is a weak, paper thin, circumstantial case," he went on, "about he said, she said."

Wells said "Libby had no knowledge whether Valerie Plame's job was classified or not, no witness will take the stand and say that," he told the jury, "and I can't tell you whether she was or wasn't."

But no one is charged with that and Wells noted Libby didn't know that one way or the other. "People do not lie for the heck of it," he said, "Scooter Libby did not do anything wrong. He had nothing to cover up and he had no reason to lie."

Wells also sought to paint Libby as a victim, pointing to statements from the White House about those who might be involved in any illegal activity.

Video:

Bush: If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration

Angle: But when the White House later said that Karl Rove was not responsible, Libby told the Vice President he feared he was being cast as the scapegoat. "They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Wells quoted Libby as saying,"I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."

As events unfolded, though, Fitzgerald did investigate Rove but decided not to indict him, and the official who first leaked Valerie Plame's name, State department official Richard Armitage, came clean to Fitzgerald but he wasn't indicted either.

Jim Angle, Fox News

Biased much? He picked out seven or so different quotes by Ted Wells, all of which were simultaneously printed on the screen, saying that Libby is innocent, innocent, innocent. And anyway, there wasn't any real issue because Rove wasn't indicted and Armitage "came clean" and admitted that he accidentally let it slip during a gossipy little hen party with Bob Woodward.

They acted very casual about the story, no biggie, nothing to see here and moved on immediately to Bush's big speech about nothing.

This is good, though. Tweety had Trent Lott on:

Matthews: What do you think of the fact that Scooter Libby's attorney today, Ted Wells, aimed directly at Karl Rove and said he had set up his client Scooter Libby to take the fall for that leak of the the CIA agents identifica... ID. back a couple years back.

What do you make of the charge of the president's assistant, Scooter Libby, he's also the Vice president's assistant, blaming Karl Rove for shennanigans in the White House, aimed at leaving the blame for all that mess, that leak, on the vice president's man?

Lott: I didn't see it. But I had heard it, of course. And I'm frankly, uh, surprised that that would be what they'd say in the opening part of this trial. I don't know whether that's accurate or not, but certainly, uh, it's a problem, in many ways.

Matthews: Do you think your party's coming apart....?

Haha.



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digby 1/23/2007 03:52:00 PM |

 
Partial Meme Abortion

by digby


Ezra demolishes the laughable new "health care" plan that Bush reportedly plans to unveil tonight, so nobody has to spend any time even thinking about whether it might be worth meeting him "halfway" (so that he can pull the ball away, anyway.)

I'm not a health care expert, so I take the word of trustworthy wonks like Ezra about the feasibility of the plan. But I have been observing politics for a while and there is something to be said about how this pitch is going to be structured and how it will affect the upcoming health care debate.

First, Bush and the Republicans are setting up a new meme, which is that the reason that American health care is so costly is not because insurance companies are spending lots of unnecessary money on administrative costs and advertising or that the uninsured are treated late in the most expensive way possible (emergency rooms.) The reason health care costs are so high is because spoiled people are overusing the system.

This is really to say that we must save the poor put-upon insurance companies from having to pay claims to your co-worker and neighbor who goes to the doctor all the time because it's costing you money and maybe even your own healthcare. They are planning to divide Americans along lines of healthy and sick, young and old, those with good plans and those with bad ones. If nothing else it muddies the waters nicely for the insurance industry.

I don't know if it will work, but it's not a bad opening salvo. They need to break through the idea that the insurance companies are bad guys and sell one that the answer to the health care crisis does not lie with some form of universal coverage. They have to offer a rationale for opposing real reform. This is a first step. The plan has no chance of being enacted and they know this. They just want to start putting down some markers to derail anything significant.

We'll have more clues about what they have in mind when we see what kind of bullspin they put on it tonight and tomorrow.


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digby 1/23/2007 02:06:00 PM |

 
An Inconvenient Oscar

by digby

Can I just say how thrilled I am that Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and the Melissa Etheridge song "I Need To Wake Up" from the same film are both nominated for Oscars?

Hollywood was very, very, very slow off the mark with Bush and Iraq and failed to use their power for good for much too long. A bunch of people booed Michael Moore at the 2003 awards in a shameful show of chickenshit conformity. It took some Dixie Chicks, from Texas and Nashville, to show what artistic and political courage was.

So now we have an extremely important documentary (which needs to be seen by everyone on the planet) nominated for the highest achievement award the film community bestows. I know that there is a lot of controversy about how documentaries are rewarded and wehther social conscience should be a factor. But this is different. It isn't yet another film about the holocaust, as enlightening and moving as they may be --- it's about the most important challenge humankind currently faces. The notorious Hollywood liberals should earn their keep on this one and reward this film.

And I would bet money that Melissa is going to tear the roof off when she sings her song. I grant you that it's no "It's Hard Out Here Fo A Pimp" but it's a great song nonetheless.

And I would just love to see Al Gore give an oscar acceptance speech.


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digby 1/23/2007 11:24:00 AM |

 
Holy Moly

by digby


Norah O'Donnell is asking Andy Card and Leon Panetta if the president is going to have to ask Dick Cheney to resign as a result of what's being alleged at the Libby Trial. (They both punted.)

If that's the beltway chatter, look for the Republican noise machine to go into high gear. I'll be expecting to hear rumors of Patrick Fitzgerald's affinity for bestiality starting tomorrow --- mostly from Mary matalin, Dick Cheney's most vicious attack dog, who will be snarling like a caged beast over this (and thus will show herself an expert on the subject.)


Update: To be clear -- the Republicans have to go after Fitzgerald, not Libby. He's holding a cudgel over Cheney and Rove's heads and they are not in much of a position to hit back at him. The GOP will try to stir up the shit and distract everyone with an attack on the prosecutor to discredit the whole case. It's really the only move they have.

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digby 1/23/2007 10:30:00 AM |

 
Boot Scooter Boogie

by digby

I've been riveted to the FDL Libby liveblogging all morning, and if you have an interest in this case you should go over and check it out. Fascinating stuff. The prosecution is pretty much saying that Cheney directed Libby to do whatever he did. It's pretty amazing. (Atrios has the transcript of David Shuster's MSNBC report here.)

But I was most intrigued by the fact that it looks like Libby is throwing Karl Rove under a bus --- and we are getting a look inside a White House that is divided between the VP's power center and the president. Very interesting.

MSNBC had a chyron that said Libby's lawyer put it this way: "Libby was sacrificed to protect Karl Rove."

Oooh.

From Marcy Wheeler's liveblog:

Mr. Libby was not concerned about losing his job. He was concerned about being set up. He was concerned about being the scapegoat.

Mr. Libby said to the VP, "I think the WH, people are trying to set me up, people want me to be the scapegoat. people in the WH want me to protect Karl Rove." [Swopa–you owe me dinner.]

Cheney made notes of what Libby said. Notes show Libby telling VP that he was not involved in leak. [oops, Wells, accidentally said, "not involved in leak to Karl Rove."

Cheney's note: "Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

The person who was to be protected was Karl Rove. Karl Rove was President Bush's right hand person. Karl Rove was the person most responsible for making sure Bush stayed in office. He had to be protected. The person who was to be sacrificed.

And here I always thought the VP's office was part of the White House.

I suspect that when the history is written we will find more and more proof that Vice President Cheney has been running a shadow government from the very beginning and that much of the malfeasance of this era is a result of incompetent and competing power centers vying for supremacy. It begins to explain the unprecedented level of faulty reasoning and epic mistakes coming from the one administration.

It's kind of funny that Cheney is calling Rove incompetent in this matter. When it comes to lying and obstruction (the skills required for this cover Cheney's ass operation), Karl Rove is a consummate professional and Scooter Libby is a joke.


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digby 1/23/2007 09:28:00 AM |

Monday, January 22, 2007

 
Choice Quotes

by digby

Due to unavoidable problems I was unable to "blog for choice" today as I would have liked. But I have written reams about the issue over the years I've been doing this blog and my views are well known.

I come at it first from a fundamental belief in civil liberties. It's clear what the "right to life" agenda is and it has nothing to do with the fetus these people pretend to care so much for (until its born.) It has to do with sexual behavior. I wrote back in 2005:

I believe that a woman's right to choose gets to the very heart of what it means to be an autonomous, free human being. Control of one's own body is fundamental to individual liberty. If the church believes that abortion is morally wrong it should instruct its voluntary membership not to do it. Individuals must always be allowed to follow their own consciences. But there should be no legal coercion on such a morally complex personal matter.

The government could be called upon to arbitrate this complicated issue only if the fetus had an absolutely equal right to life as the woman in whose body it lives. But there is no argument about that. There is almost nobody who believes that an abortion is wrong if the life of the woman is at stake. Indeed, the vast majority (80%+) of Americans believe that abortion should be available at least in cases of rape or incest, so it is clear that the "abortion is murder" argument is illegitimate. No one can believe that it is moral to murder a person because of the way he or she was conceived, or by whom.

Therefore, the right of the fetus is not the real issue --- the reasons a woman wants an abortion are the issue. This leads us to ask which particular circumstances are so difficult for a woman that she may be allowed to have an abortion. 80% or so of Americans think that rape or incest are such circumstances. But how about a failing, abusive marriage? A terminal illness? Five other children and no job? Being 43 years old and carrying a child with serious birth defects? Being a foolish 15 year old girl in love? Should we make exceptions for some of those? Any of them? Who decides? You? Me? John Roberts?

This isn't about murder and it isn't about the right of the fetus. It's clearly about controlling women's personal moral behavior. I don't think the government has any business doing that.

This is actually a fundamental principle of the Republican party. I wrote back in 2003:

The GOP is revealing itself as the anti-privacy party. They are enabling the state to rummage through everybody’s medical records, they want corporations to be allowed to buy and sell your purchase records and any other information they may have, they are more interested in medical marijuana than the serious issue of identity theft, and they want to make permanent the ill considered Patriot Act which gave the government vast new surveillance powers.

Now, along comes Lil’ Ricky telling a reporter outright that he doesn’t believe there is any right to privacy (an article of faith in the anti-abortion cult), that he thinks gay civil rights are a slippery slope to perversion and that he further believes his view of sexual morality should be enshrined as the law of the land for everybody.

This desire and ability to invade the homes and private lives of our citizens is UnAmerican. It goes against every tenet of freedom that George W. Bush constantly preaches about, particularly the All American belief in individualism and the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Who the hell gave John Ashcroft and Rick Santorum and Jack Welch and Dick Cheney the right to information about me without my permission, to investigate me without probable cause or to tell me what I can do in my own home?

The Republicans do not believe in freedom any more than they believe in equality. This negation of the right to be left alone is coming from all GOP quarters --- religious, government and corporate and it is a potent example of their lack of patriotism and any sincere belief in traditional American values. Just what do they think liberty consists of? The freedom to be harassed and coerced by every interest group in the Republican Party until you either join up or shoot yourself in the head?

Sometimes, I think that last isn't so far fetched. I see a lot of danger ahead for a woman's right to choose, coming not only from the right but from the Democratic party. And some of it, I think, comes from the fact that the right has simply worn down the establishment elites (who never cared that much about it in the first place) with such an incessant uproar about sex and ickyness and embryos, that they are now ready to throw in the towel. It's an emerging rightwing model for rolling back progress.

Sadly, I think a powerful new interest group of anti-abortion crusaders in sheep's clothing are at work within the Democratic Party. I wrote last month:

What we are seeing is a new pincer strategy, with a slow, relentless mainstreaming of the liberal pro-life(and cowardly politicians') rhetoric which is intended to make abortion a source of shame and guilt so they can tut-tut about it in church --- and the ongoing onslaught of the conservative anti-choice agenda which is intended to enshrine the fetus as a full human with rights that trump the irrelevant vessel it lives inside of. The woman with an unwanted pregnancy is getting squeezed by everybody now.

[...]

Abortion is a messy fight, nobody disputes that. I'm all for contraception and sex education and all the other things that these abortion "reducers" are pushing. But it appears to me as if that's mainly a political ploy to appease the pro-choice crowd into believing that if they just give up a little here and there, the basic right will be preserved. It will not happen that way. With all this talk of "reducing," and "rare" and fetal pain and snowflake babies and all the rest, they are helping the right prepare the ground for a full outlawing of abortion if Roe is overturned. They aren't even trying to make the fundamental argument anymore.

I'm a big believer in the fundamental argument which is that if women don't own their own bodies they are not free. It's just that simple.


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digby 1/22/2007 09:36:00 PM |

 
Electability

by digby

Everyone's already said what needs to be said about this, but I'd just like to add one other thing. Talking about "electability" is advanced process talk and process talk is cheap and it's a way of distancing candidates from voters. I'm against it. But I'm not sure, having read the article this post was based upon, that it really was about electability.

Judging solely from the quotes and not the reporter's interpretation of events, it appears to me that Mark Penn was trying to beat back a media narrative that said Clinton was unelectable because of her negatives. It seemed to me that they were trying to rebut that by saying that it's her experience in the national spotlight that created those negatives and a national spotlight will create those negatives in anybody who enters it, so it's not a relevant factor. Maybe he said something more specific about Obama being unelectable, but I didn't get that from the quotes.

I can't blame her team for trying to convince people that Hillary is capable of withstanding the beating that the Republicans are about to inflict. It's a powerful argument that I'm sure they know they need to make explicitly. In conversations in RL, I've found people's instinct is to be immediately exhausted by the thought of another round of non-stop Clinton character assassination. But when you mention that there's nothing new to learn about her after all those years of investigations and smears, people agree that she might just be the "cleanest" candidate in that way --- no surprises. (Gore has that advantage, as well, in my conversations.)

I think we are all going to have to gird ourselves for the fact that Democrats are going to be beating up on each other for the next year at least.(It's a horrible, horrible time and I actually hate it.) But there's no other way. My position is that primaries require us to be vigilant in pointing out when candidates cross the line into character assassination or right wing memes that harm the party. (I agree that "electability" is a dangerous meme that makes it look like Democrats don't care about anything but winning.) I will not hesitate to point it out when I see it and as I said, I hate process talk and I'll point that out as well. These are bad habits that I think many pols and their handlers have internalized and we can help them see it when they are doing it. But we can't make them be nice to one another. This is tough bigtime politics and it's an open field that's going to get very ugly before it's done.

Based on that article I honestly don't think this was one of those "electability" arguments. I think it was a defensive argument against an emergent media meme, which all candidates have to do.

If someone knows what was actually said in that call and I'm all wet, I'll be more than happy to correct this post.



FYI: I am not working for any candidate and just because an ad appears on my site doesn't mean that I'm endorsing them any more than I'm endorsing Leonardo DiCaprio (although I might come out for him later.) My opinions are all mine, I tell you, mine.


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digby 1/22/2007 07:08:00 PM |

 
Big Babies

by digby

Via TBOGG, this is the funniest thing I've read in weeks:

I yield to no-one in my respect for the Clintons’ ruthless brutal demolition of Newt, and that guy who succeeded Newt for 20 minutes, and Gennifer and Kathleen and all the rest.

Oh the humanity! Poor, brave little Newtie was brutalized by the howwible Clintons. (Never mind the criminality, hypocrisy and overall ineffectiveness that led him to be stabbed in the back by his own revolutionary guard...)

Newt Gingrich almost single-handedly turned our politics into the putrid, rancid sewer it is today. That the right is now serving that merciless thug up as another of their helpless victims is more evidence of the severe, psychological disturbance that permeates their thinking.


*If you ever get a chance to see the documentary "The Rise And Fall Of Newt Gingrich", do. (Here's a review.) It's an incredible look at Newt during the 1998 elections when he confidently predicted a 30 to 40 seat gain and instead they ended up losing 5. That (and his own caucus gunning for him) is what ultimately cost him his speakership. He and the Republicans brutally demolished themselves.


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digby 1/22/2007 12:16:00 PM |

 
Stonewall

by digby

This is outrageous and it's probably an excellent example of how the administration is going to handle oversight. They will just drag things out until they are safely out of office unless the Democrats get very, very nasty:

Back in July, I reported that, in spite of pressure from CIA analysts, intelligence czar John Negroponte was blocking a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. The CIA describes an NIE as “the most authoritative written judgment concerning a national security issue,” and a fresh one was badly needed because the last one on Iraq, which was compiled between 2004 and 2006 and leaked to the New York Times last September, had become outdated. Negroponte was said to fear that given the worsening situation in Iraq a new NIE would, of necessity, be deeply pessimistic, and that such an assessment might get leaked and embarrass the Bush Administration during last fall's elections.

[...]

The situation came to a head last week, during a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This committee expected to be briefed on the long-awaited NIE by an official from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates NIEs by gathering input from all of the nation's various intelligence agencies. But the NIC official turned up empty-handed and told the committee that the intelligence community hadn't been able to complete the NIE because it had been dealing with the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq. He then said that not all of the relevant agencies had contributed to the NIE, which has made it impossible to put together a finished product.

Apparently these “dog ate my homework” alibis were badly received by both the Democrats and the Republicans on the Committee, and those in attendance now believe that senior intelligence officials are stalling because an NIE will be bleak enough to present a significant political liability.

Yah think?



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digby 1/22/2007 09:14:00 AM |

Sunday, January 21, 2007

 
Elevator Pitch

by digby

Chuck Shumer says:

I know what you're thinking. "Hurry up, Schumer! What are the eight words that will save the Democratic Party?"

The truth is, the eight words are far more elusive than you might imagine.

Believe me, I've spent two years trying to find them. Slogans are easy. Empty promises, like "better health care," are easy. But they don't stand for anything; they're typical political b.s. To generate our words, we need concrete ideas that clearly and concisely communicate our values. It's not yet possible for Democrats to boil down our core ideology into eight words. That's not a knock on Democrats. It took Republicans years to develop theirs. The eight words are the end result, not the beginning of the process.

In part of my book, "Positively American," I try to start the process by presenting 11 goals, which I call "The 50 Percent Solution." Taken together, these ideas could help define what Democrats stand for. In the book, I explain each goal, how we can achieve it and why it is important to the Baileys. For example, Democrats should commit to increasing reading and math scores 50 percent by dramatically increasing federal involvement, and funding, in public schools. We should increase the number of college graduates by 50 percent. We should call for reducing illegal immigration by at least 50 percent and increasing legal immigration. We should cut our dependence on foreign oil by 50 percent, and reduce cancer mortality, abortions and childhood obesity each by 50 percent. We should increase our ability to fight terrorism by 50 percent. Sounds like a lot. It is. Together, we can do it—and more. Families, from Appleby to Bailey to Zutter, deserve no less.

What can we predict would be the Republican response?

Only a Democrat thinks in halfway measures. America is worth a 100% effort and that's what you get from the Republican Party. We are 100% committed to national security, family values, low taxes and small government.

I don't know why it's so hard for Dems to understand that political sloganeering and rhetoric are not about 10 point plans and campaign promises. They are appeals to values, hopes, fears, identity and aspiration.

And even when the Democrats do get closer to that concept, (as with their slogan, "together, we can do better") they miss the point. Doing "better" isn't an aspiration. Americans want to be the best. Or at least they want their leaders to aspire to it even if they know that it's not always possible.

Like, for instance, simply proclaiming that Democrats believe in "universal health care" not "better health care" which is, as he says, meaningless. What "universal health care" says is that Democrats believe that all Americans have a right to medical care, regardless of how much money they have. It's a reflection of our values --- that no American should have to face losing their very lives or ability to work and thrive because life has dealt them a bad hand and they are without insurance. There are many good practical arguments as to why we should have it but they're not meaningful on an emotional level. Make the Republicans argue that some people don't have a right to health care. (There are some Americans who are comfortable with that, but they are not a majority. There but for the grace of God and all that...)

Shumer has his talents, I'm sure. Rhetoric isn't one of them. Americans will not identify with a party that only aims for 50%. It's not in the national character.


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digby 1/21/2007 06:00:00 PM |

Saturday, January 20, 2007

 
Saturday Night At The Movies

The Future Looks Bleak (So vat else is new?!)

By Dennis Hartley

The Siege of Seattle continues. New York is in flames. The “world’s youngest living person” has tragically died at 18, to the dismay of millions of “fans”. Authorities in the U.K. continue a relentless, SS-style round up of all illegal immigrants, crowding them into Gitmo-like compounds. Most significantly, scientists remain at a loss to explain why a universal plague of female infertility continues unabated into its eighteenth year. These are some of the cheery news headlines dominating the year 2027 in the not so distant, dystopian future of Alfonso Cuaron’s new film, "Children of Men."

The story is set in (a not so) jolly old England, where we are introduced to glum-faced Theo (Clive Owen), a world-weary bloke working in some kind of vague, low-level bureaucratic job in London. He is not having a good morning. After narrowly escaping death by terrorist bombing on the way to work, he decides to beg off a day at the office, only to be kidnapped by a group of radical human rights activists (that is, as near as I can tell; the political motivations driving many of the characters are a bit fuzzy).

It turns out that the cell is led by Theo’s ex-wife (Julianne Moore), who wants him to use his connections to pull some strings and help out a “very important” colleague, (a female immigrant with a Big Secret). Initially, the reluctant Theo is determined to keep his activist roots safely embedded in the past, but fate and circumstance soon rekindle his old idealism, and he finds himself risking life and limb to help deliver the only known fertile woman in the world to the sanctuary of an organization called the Human Project .

The film ultimately spreads itself a bit too thin as a political potboiler; there are too many confusing factions of insurgents, activists and terrorists running about killing government troops and each other with equal abandon (not unlike Iraq, now that I think about it…). However, the film does become quite gripping as a straight-ahead action-thriller, especially in its final third. Cuaron effectively applies an oppressive, steel-grey visual look to his cold, cruelly bleak future vision. From a thematic standpoint, I thought that the rampant use of Christ metaphor became a bit much (I knew I was headed for trouble when, early on in the film, the Only Fertile Woman In The World “jokingly” answers “I’m a virgin” when asked who the father of her baby is).

There still are enough good reasons to recommend seeing this film, particularly for the uniformly excellent performances. The ubiquitous Michael Caine steals all of his scenes as Theo’s mentor, an aging hippie activist. An honorable mention must be given as well to the always wonderful Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe, Trainspotting), who really chews up some major scenery as an opportunistic immigration control officer.

And remember- 2008 “was” the year of the Pandemic. (Better get that flu shot next year!)

Here are some more futures that are difficult to, erm, “conceive”: 1984, THX-1138, Z.P.G. (VHS only), The Handmaid’s Tale, Logan’s Run, Zardoz, A Boy And His Dog.


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digby 1/20/2007 09:00:00 PM |

 

Me Doth Protest, A Little

by poputonian

Not many commenters picked up on one of the points I was angling for in the prior post, which is no doubt a reflection of my writing skill more than anything else. But aimai and carolyn13, along with a couple of others, did accentuate the impact made on society by the changes in communication technology. It seems no small thing that the medium for protest itself has undergone a massive paradigm shift. The current 100 million streams per day on YouTube and google video far exceed the numbers who view the old style 'teevee', and though much of what is being viewed over the net is entertainment, there is also a growing body of news and protest video. Think of the taser video of the UCLA student that spread organically and virally across the ether. Ditto for the video of Saddam's hanging, which circled the globe before the corporate press could get their fat 401k asses out of bed, or Bush strumming a guitar during the destruction of New Orleans, an image that propagated from person to person and surely had some influence on media coverage and public opinion.

The WaPo article I referenced did cite the lack of a draft as the primary reason today's youth aren't protesting in the streets, a point which commenters most frequently agreed with. But let me throw in some wisdom and insight from George Washington in a letter to Congress where he references the citizen response at Lexington, and also the notion of a compulsory draft:

We are now, as it were, upon the eve of another dissolution of our Army. The remembrance of the difficulties which happened upon that occasion last year, and the consequences which might have followed had advantages been taken by the Enemy, added to the present temper and situation of the troops, reflect but a very gloomy prospect upon the appearance of things now, and satisfy me, beyond the possibility of doubt, that unless some speedy and effectual measures are adopted by Congress, our cause will be lost.

It is in vain to expect that any (or more than a trifling) part of this Army will again engage in the service on the encouragement offered by Congress. When men find that their townsmen and companions are receiving 20, 30, and more dollars, for a few months service it cannot be expected without using compulsion, and to force them into the service would answer no valuable purpose. When men are irritated and the passions inflamed, they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms. But after the first emotions are over, to expect among such people as compose the bulk of an army, that they are influenced by any other principles than those of self-interest, is to look for what never did, and I fear never will happen. The Congress will deceive themselves, therefore, if they expect it.

I don't think human nature has changed much in the last two centuries. Self-interest is the primary driver for most people, whereas "the disinterested," as Washington called them, the people he said were "actuated by principles of honor," are fewer in number, and always will be. People will go to war when they believe it's in their best interest to do so, and they will oppose going when they believe it is not. Why do you suppose the military is unable to raise recruits for the current mission?

Both my teenagers asked a dozen questions about Vietnam and the street protests after watching Going Upriver, a documentary that revealed a true American anti-war hero in John Kerry. Watching Kerry, their eyes welled up with tears, as did mine. They later watched the bumbling press conferences of President Bush and hold him in contempt, and speak out against him. They pledge to vote against him and others like him whenever given the opportunity. My daughter pointed me to When The President Talks To God, the protest song by twenty-something indy-rocker, Bright Eyes. That song, which Bright Eyes made free to anyone who wants it, has now been heard by millions. The video of him performing the song on Leno has been viewed by hundreds of thousands, if not millions. My daughter ended a friendship with someone who became radically opposed to gays because of what that person's fundie parents had taught her. The culture battles are playing out in the schools and I believe the side of reason has the edge. Though it might not hold the visual drama of a street protest, per se, it is the rejection of bad ideas and beliefs.

So, I admit to being optimistic about the younger generation, what with their sensibilities and the new uses of technology. Having information spoon-fed by the monolithic media empire is being replaced by consumer-selected information sources. Print circulation is dropping and the networks are laying off staff as the MSM is out-flanked by the emerging, wired community. It's the wired community where you can find the bee-line to the truth, if you want it. As I see it, protest is still there, but it's perhaps a bit more efficient, subtle, and less obvious to those we're protesting against. Hopefully, this way leads to a greater gathering of numbers, and more sustainability as the precision-memory of digital reporting, coupled with smart governance, leads to a better world. I think the kids will figure it out.

poputonian 1/20/2007 08:11:00 AM |

Friday, January 19, 2007

 

Space Management

by poputonian

In a course called, "From Reform to Revolution: Youth Culture in the 1960s," a Harvard professor and his students study something they call the New Leftists:

Some of my students suggested that they might not even be capable of experiencing the kind of indignation and disillusionment that spurred many baby boomers toward activism. In the Vietnam era, the shameful dissembling of American politicians provoked outrage. But living in the shadow of Vietnam and Watergate, and weaned on "The Simpsons" and "The Daily Show," today's youth greet the Bush administration's spin and ever-evolving rationale for war with ironic world-weariness and bemused laughter. "The Iraq war turned out to be a hoax from the beginning? Figures!"

The students who took my seminar were a particularly serious-minded and delightful bunch. Most of them came to admire the pluck and panache of the New Leftists we studied, and they were quick to recognize how frequently the concerns of Vietnam-era protesters dovetailed with their own complaints against the Iraq war. Some even wistfully remarked that they would like to be part of a generational rebellion.

But they doubt that this is likely to happen. "Just like [in] the 1960s, we have an unjust war, a lying president, and dead American soldiers sent home everyday," one student wrote me in an e-mail. "But rather than fight the administration or demand a forum to express our unhappiness, we accept the status quo and focus on our own problems."

Interesting article, and certainly some valid points. No mention, though, of the changes in communication technology and the radically different outlets for expression, such as the internets. Nor is there any mention of the extended reach one can accomplish with blogs, YouTube, MySpace, text messaging ... whatever. My kids aren't protesters, but they do feel utter contempt for the president, and they talk about it around school and through their own communication venues.

poputonian 1/19/2007 08:21:00 PM |

 

It's All Good

Richardson to Launch Presidential Bid

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson intends to take the initial step toward the Democratic nomination, hoping his extensive resume will fuel a campaign to become the first Hispanic president.

Richardson plans to announce Sunday that he will soon file the papers to create a presidential exploratory committee, several officials with knowledge of his plans said Friday. The governor is scheduled to appear on ABC's "This Week."

His entry would make the Democratic race the most diverse presidential contest in history. Besides Richardson's bid to be the first Hispanic chief executive, Sen. Barack Obama would be the first black president and likely candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the first female president.

poputonian 1/19/2007 03:56:00 PM |

 
Krugman

by tristero

Exactly:

In case you’re wondering, such a wholesale firing of prosecutors midway through an administration isn’t normal. U.S. attorneys, The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, “typically are appointed at the beginning of a new president’s term, and serve throughout that term.” Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out?

The likely answer is that for the first time the administration is really worried about where corruption investigations might lead...

For a long time the administration nonetheless seemed untouchable, protected both by Republican control of Congress and by its ability to justify anything and everything as necessary for the war on terror. Now, however, the investigations are closing in on the Oval Office. The latest news is that J. Steven Griles, the former deputy secretary of the Interior Department and the poster child for the administration’s systematic policy of putting foxes in charge of henhouses, is finally facing possible indictment.

And the purge of U.S. attorneys looks like a pre-emptive strike against the gathering forces of justice...

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn’t led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.

On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he’s more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority — whether it’s the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration’s conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

That's right. the next two years will be two of the most dangerous ones for this country since Bush took office. And that, in the wake of 9/11 and Katrina, is saying a helluva lot.

tristero 1/19/2007 02:16:00 AM |

Thursday, January 18, 2007

 
What A Shock

by digby

Though the U.S. is not immune to the grass-roots extremism that has inspired attacks in Europe, the inclusiveness of American society may help against radical Islam's spread here, intelligence officials said Thursday.

Philip Mudd, a senior official in the FBI's National Security Branch, termed the U.S. domestic threat a "Pepsi jihad" — an outgrowth of extremism he said has spread among young people over the past 15 years and has been popularized by the Internet.

"We see in this country on the East Coast, on the West Coast and the center of this country — kids who have no contact with al-Qaida but who are radicalized by the ideology," Mudd said.

Dipping into subject matter that is unusual for intelligence professionals, Mudd and CIA Director Michael Hayden agreed that the United States needs to preserve its melting-pot heritage to help reduce the threat.

The country's history as an immigrant nation and its "experience with bringing in various groups and giving them, frankly, more opportunity than they might have elsewhere has helped us immeasurably" in dampening extremism, Hayden said.

Don't tell this guy.

And this woman will be very upset to hear this traitorous talk.

I don't know what this man will do.

Damn liberal terrorist symps Negroponte and Hayden don't know how to protect this country...


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digby 1/18/2007 05:11:00 PM |

 
Self Stinger

by digby


Howard Fineman says that presidential elections are just like high school (in 1954, apparently.) Without irony:

Presidential elections are high school writ large, of course, and that is especially true when, as now, much of the early nomination race is based in the U.S. Capitol...

Of course.

As she saw it, she had outmaneuvered all of those big-talking boys who loved to hear the sound of their own voices (think Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John Kerry). There was that handsome John Edwards to contend with, and he was as industrious as she was, but he was too handsome, and she assumed that she was tougher than he was. Besides, she had convinced that cute Evan Bayh to be her junior-prom date and escort her to the assembly in the auditorium.

Then Obama showed up. He was new, he was smooth, he was skinny, he was smart, but not in-your-face about it. The girls flocked to him, of course—that grin!—but so did the guys, because he had Game. His promised to Change Everything, and yet there was something calming about him—but also something that told you he might fade away as quickly as he materialized.

At least he was not like that crazy Al Gore, who had been the ultimate goody-goody but who had grown a beard, made a film and dropped out to attend the School Without Walls.

And then there are the useless and bitchy queen-wanna-bees like Howie whose main mission in life is to make fun of everyone they come in contact with except for the equally useless rich boy assholes who give the queenies the privilege of servicing them with blowjobs in the boys gym after the big game (and call them "pass around packs.")



Are there any people on the planet who have less self-awareness than the Washington press corpse?

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digby 1/18/2007 03:32:00 PM |

 
Mechanical General

by digby

Glenn Greenwald watched the Gonzales hearing today so we don't have to. I'm glad I didn't because it sounds like the kind of testimony that invariably makes me want to put a boot through the televison set. It's a technique that the most closely aligned Bush sycophants have mastered, aping their fearless leader's stonewalling gibberish, eating up time, boring everyone with mindless platitudes until they finally just give up in suicidal despair of ever getting a straight answer. I call it the McClellan Curse, named for the robot puppy they called Scotty.

This is what I have learned so far: All of the Senators are very "concerned" and sometimes even "disturbed" about many things, almost all of them different for each Senator. Gonzales definitely shares their concerns about everything, and assures them he takes it very seriously and he is happy to sit down with them and explore ways to fix/improve/think about it.

For any information the Senators want, Gonzales does not have it, but he will definitely endeavor to get it for them. When pointed out that he has made the same promises many times before and told them nothing, he assures them them he is working diligently to get it, but that it is a very complex matter, and they are entitled to it and will have it (sometimes he politely denies ever having promised it before but then says he will get it anyway).

Has anyone ever checked to see if he has an electrical socket in the back of his neck?

We bloggers should also be happy to know that we are the "some people" they were referring to when members of the administration claimed that "some people didn't think the government should ever eavesdrop on anyone." If by "eavesdropping" they meant spying on American citizens without a warrant or any kind of judicial oversight, then I guess I'm guilty. I've never been able to understand why in the hell it's so hard for them to comply with the ridiculously compliant FISA court unless they were doing something nefarious. And since they are lying,despotic, incompetent sacks of shit I don't trust them to take out the trash without running it past a proper authority.

Now that there is the promise of legislative oversight, they are running around saying that they will comply with FISA. We guess. The agreement is a secret, naturally.

I wonder what would happen if the Senators got angry and abused him the way they abused Anita Hill --- or any number of Clinton's staff members who were dragged before committees and treated like they were war criminals.

Update: Reports in the comments say the Senators did get hot under the collar. Good.

They also reported this:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Depends on what the definition of "rights" in "the bill of" is, I guess.

Does Nino think this was the "original intent" of the framers?


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digby 1/18/2007 11:16:00 AM |

 
Gotta Pay

by digby


As I sit here thinking sbout my pal Jane and what she's facing I can't help but reflect on just how fucked up this is:

It is expected there would be no problems securing funding to explore a drug that could shrink cancerous tumors and has no side-effects in humans, but University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis has hit a stalemate with the private sector who would normally fund such a venture.

Michelakis' drug is none other than dichloroacetate (DCA), a drug which cannot be patented and costs pennies to make.

It's no wonder he can't secure the $400-600 million needed to conduct human trials with the medicine - the drug doesn't have the potential to make enough money.

Michelakis told reporters they will be applying to public agencies for funding, as pharmaceuticals are reluctant to pick up the drug

.

More on this promising new treatment here. They are hoping they will be able to scrape up the money for the clinical trials through charities, universities and governments.

And here I thought the pharmaceutical companies had to charge such high prices because of all the research they were doing. Seems without the possibility of future revenue they can't be bothered. Of course, a cheap cure for cancer would cut into profits in so many ways, wouldn't it?


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digby 1/18/2007 09:57:00 AM |

 

Impeach The Conquistador

by poputonian

Hooray for New Mexico:

Legislator seeks Bush impeachment

SANTA FE -- The 60-session of the state Legislature convenes today with the agenda including ... a call for the impeachment of President Bush and his vice president.
...
Sixty days also allows lawmakers more opportunity to present ... platforms like the resolution asking congress to begin investigation and impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

The author, Sen. Gerald Ortiz Y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said he's been getting calls and e-mails.

“Personal messages from people who said, ‘Wow, I'm glad you're doing it; it's something we should be doing.” Ortiz Y Pino said. “This particularly built up after the president's speech last week when people began feeling like this guy is not listening to anything going on in the country.”

There are constitutional provisions allowing states to make such requests of Congress, he added.

Go for it.

poputonian 1/18/2007 08:17:00 AM |

 

White Man Encroaching

by poputonian

On Monday, the General departed from his normal ironic wit to post from MLK about the American presence in Vietnam. This passage is especially interesting where Dr. King is in turn quoting a Buddhist leader:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

That excerpt reminded me of Ben Franklin's letter to a friend in Old England:

How long will the insanity on your side the water continue? Every day's plundering of our property and burning our habitations, serves but to exasperate and unite us the more. The breach between you and us grows daily wider and more difficult to heal. Britain without us can grow no stronger. Without her we shall become a tenfold greater and mightier people. Do you choose to have so increasing a nation of enemies? Do you think it prudent by your barbarities to fix us in a rooted hatred of your nation, and make all our innumerable posterity detest you? Yet this is the way in which you are now proceeding. Our primers begin to be printed with cuts of the burnings of Charlestown, of Falmouth, of James Town, of Norfolk with the flight of women and children from those defenseless places, some falling by shot in their flight.

And of Tecumseh writing in 1809 to William Henry Harrison, the Governor of the Indiana Territory:

The being within, communing with past ages, tells me that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent; that it then all belonged to red man, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but always encroaching. The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers who want all, and will not do with less.

Or U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey who in an 1830 speech protested the forced removal at bayonet-point of the Cherokee from Georgia:

Our ancestors found these people, far removed from the commotions of Europe, exercising all the rights, and enjoying the privileges, of free and independent sovereigns of this new world. They were not a wild and lawless horde of banditti, but lived under the restraints of government, patriarchal in its character, and energetic in its influence. They had chiefs, head men, and councils. The white men, the author of all their wrongs, approached them as friends -- they extended the olive branch; and being then a feeble colony and at the mercy of the native tenants of the soil, by presents and profession, propitiated their good will. The Indian yielded a slow, but substantial confidence; granted to the colonists an abiding place; and suffered them to grow up to man's estate beside him. He never raised claim of elder title; as white man's wants increased, he opened the hand of his bounty wider and wider. By and by, conditions are changed. His people melt away; his lands are constantly coveted; millions after millions are ceded. The Indian bears it all meekly; he complains, indeed, as well, but suffers on; and now he finds that his neighbor, whom his kindness had nourished, has spread an adverse title over the last remains of his patrimony, barely adequate to his wants, and turns upon him and says, "away we cannot endure you so near us! These forests and rivers, these groves of your fathers, these firesides and hunting grounds, are ours by the right of power, and the force of numbers." Sir, let every treaty be blotted from our records, and in the name of truth and justice, I ask, who is the injured, and who is the aggressor?

15,000 Cherokee died on the forced march to Oklahoma.

Or how about these quotes from an Ohio Valley Indian speaking to an English missionary in 1758:

"We have great reason to believe you intend to drive us away, and settle the country; or else, why do you come to fight in the land that God has given us?"
...
"Why don’t you and the French fight in the old country, and on the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land? This makes everybody believe you want to take the land from us by force, and settle it."

The author who reported the above quotes also described how the invading whites overran the locals, but also identified how it was the boundless personal freedom of the encroachers that transcended any notion of community law:

White settlers and traders aggressively pushed into that region and prevented accommodation between the British and the Ohio Indians. These "Frontier People" sought not accommodation with the Ohio Indians but rather their removal. Compromise did not enter their thoughts, and magnanimity never governed their actions. Respecting personal freedom more than law and advocating their right to take unused land rather than to await negotiated settlements with trans-Appalachian Indians, these frontier people moved relentlessly into the Ohio Valley. By 1774, approximately fifty thousand whites lived on the trans-Appalachian frontier, and the British army could not control them. By that time, the British no longer remained the principal enemy of the Ohio Indians. Instead it was the relentless westward-moving Americans.

And then there were the Blacks in Massachusetts who in 1777 recorded this passage in the legislative journals:

The petition of a great number of blacks detained in a state of slavery in the bowels of a free & Christian country humbly sheweth that your petitioners apprehend we have in common with all other men a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the Great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind, and which they never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever. But they were unjustly dragged by the hand of a cruel power from their dearest friends and some of them even torn from the embraces of their tender parents--from a populous, pleasant, and plentiful country and in violation of laws of nature and nations--and, in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity, brought here to be sold like beasts of burthen & like them condemned to slavery for life among a people professing the mild religion of Jesus--a people not insensible of the secrets of rational beings nor without spirit to resent the unjust endeavors of others to reduce them to a state of bondage and subjection. Your honours need not to be informed that a life of slavery like that of your petitioners, deprived of every social privilege, of every thing requisite to render life tolerable, is far worse than nonexistence.

Even the White Spaniard who led the invasion of New Mexico in 1598 confused the indigenous population with what today we would call an insurgency. When the locals responded violently by killing a handful of the the encroaching white man, the leader of the invaders -- also known as The Last Conquistador -- summarized the mission to his faithful followers:

Men! Heaven knows my heart bleeds at the loss of our valiant comrades. In the deaths of the Maese de campo and his companions we have suffered an irreparable loss. They cannot be replaced, for they had no equals. We have heard how nobly they died in the service of their God and of their King. Their work is done. It is essential now that our labors should continue.

I know of no one present who is not worthy of the name of a true soldier of Christ .... We have heard from eyewitnesses who came to us, grievously wounded in body and soul, the terrible fate our comrades met. They were beaten and torn to pieces. And they died like martyrs ...

But, my soldiers, let us keep true Christian spirit. Whether death, hardships, or sufferings come, we shall meet them as behooves brave men ... so let us lay aside our sorrow and place trust in the Almighty.

Exactly how many data points does it take to make a pattern?

At least it's somewhat refreshing there are non-White, non-male candidates running for president, which perhaps provides an opening to elect someone whose cultural roots don't include so much conquest.

poputonian 1/18/2007 06:38:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

 
FDL SOS

by digby


You all probably know that Jane Hamsher is facing a very tough time right now. FDL has put out the call for some help to keep the Plame coverage and everything going while she's recuperating. Go here for the details.


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digby 1/17/2007 08:45:00 PM |

 
It Was An Unprovoked War, People

by tristero

Without repeating what Digby and others have said recently, I'd like to jot down a few thoughts regarding the current discussion of opposition to the Bush/Iraq war.

Part I - We Were Right, But No One's Gloating, Pal

By falsely accusing Schell, and by implication others, of "gloating," Jonathan Chait demonstrates that he, not those of us who were right about the war, is deeply unserious.

Gloating... my God, I'm sure Schell understands what's at stake as well as I do, but does Chait? No one with an ounce of humanity could possibly gloat about being right about something like Bush/Iraq. Chait fails to realize we understood all too well that this was a pointless invasion that could only lead to the senseless slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocents. Only a madman gloats about foreseeing the rampant butchery of humans, and Chait very well knows it.

Chait's attitude, however, highlights the fact that disagreement over Bush/Iraq was, and is, at least from the point of view of those of us who opposed this disaster from the start, tragically serious. This is not a gentlemanly, academic dispute over something like the dating of Bach manuscripts. This argument is, as I see it, about truly understanding the scope of the monumental, egregious failure by the US government and the American media to recognize the basic principles of international relations, the laws of probability, and the nature of human behavior. It is about preventing a recurrence of a catastrophe that could easily have been avoided.

Gloating? I am sickened that I saw the disaster of Bush/Iraq coming. Worse, despite doing everything I could possibly think of to prevent it, to the point of damaging my career, I - along with the rest of us - failed to prevent it. Gloating? I will live always with the nagging sense that I could have done something more, something unknown that could have made a difference. Gloating is the last thing on my mind when I point out, as I've done numerous times to the hawks I know, that I was right and they should be listening right now to those genuine experts who were.


Part II - Yes, Kevin, We Were Right About The Right Things

Kevin Drum attempts to ask a more pointed and focused question than Chait. Were those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq right about the right things? He focuses on the notion that many of us objected to the concept of "pre-emptive war:"

The fact that Iraq is a clusterfuck doesn't demonstrate that preemptive war is wrong any more than WWII demonstrated that wars using Sherman tanks are right. It's the wrong unit of analysis. After all, Iraq didn't fail because it was preemptive (though that didn't help); it failed either because George Bush is incompetent or because militarized nation building in the 21st century is doomed to failure no matter who does it. Preemption per se had very little to do with it, and the argument against preemptive war, which is as much moral as pragmatic, is pretty much the same today as it was in 2002.

In an update, Kevin clarifies the difference between "preventive" and "pre-emptive" war. While that is an important distinction, it is more or less irrelevant to Kevin's point, as he himself recognizes, because the clarification causes him to make no changes in his position.

That is because Kevin's point itself is irrelevant. Many of us opposed to Bush/Iraq were opposed to it because it was an unprovoked war despite the Bush administration's desire, along with the liberal hawks, to frame the argument in meaningless and hypothetical general terms, ie, whether there are times when a pre-emptive war, or in contrast, a preventive war, is any good. Bush's line of reasoning, which many people including Kevin, found serious was one that I never bought for a second, nor did many war critics . During a speech in the fall of 2002, I mockingly characterized the Bush position as "preemptive unilateralism," aka PU, and urged everyone to ridicule Bush's arguments rather than discuss them.

In Kevin's follow-up post, which Digby discusses below, Kevin continues to insist on discussing 2002/03 solely within the Bush administration's public framing rather than grasping that those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq were opposed because it was an unprovoked war whose reasons were, at best, incoherent.

Kevin is also woefully mistaken when he argues that "the specific quagmire that we find ourselves in now has very little to do with the fact that the Iraq war was preventive," which instead he blames on the Bush administration's incompetence. What he fails to realize is that waging uprovoked war by a United States government in response to 9/11 is itself the height of incompetence. There would be no argument that unprovoked invasion was a competent policy if Bush had proposed invading, say, Madagascar, but Iraq had just as little to do with 9/11 .

In other words, the fact that the Bush administration ever seriously considered invading Iraq should have been enough of a forewarning that they would, inevitably as night follows day, wind up specifically in the precise quagmire we see today in Iraq.


Part III The Chuckle-Headed Flakes Were The Bush/Iraq Hawks. The Rest Of Us Had Both Feet On Planet Earth

Finally, I'd like to draw attention to some other ways the issues of 2002/2003 remain poorly understood.

It is absolutely ludicrous to characterize opposition to the war as a leftwing position. That is, unless people like the great John Brady Kiesling, who voted for Bush in 2000, is a leftist, which he emphatically is not. A corollary to that kind of stereotyping is to falsely characterize those of us who opposed Bush/Iraq as "anti-war," ie, opposed to any war at any time.
Many people who knew Bush/Iraq was a terrible idea from the start supported the Afghan war and the 1991 war against Saddam.

To be blunt, it is the height of intellectual incompetence to describe those of us who knew Bush/Iraq would be a disaster in such simplistic terms. To do so is to make the same kind of category errors that led to the mistake of supporting the war in the first place and to dismissing those of us who were alarmed as the standard issue leftist anti-war crowd. Many people on the left and many peace activists were, naturally, opposed to Bush/Iraq, but the striking thing about the demonstrations of 2002/2003 was that opposition to the war was nearly universal, and far greater in this country than many recall (millions of Americans marched against the possibility of the Bush/Iraq war in February and March of 2003).

Most of us opposed to Bush/Iraq made the same arguments whether or not we were, in Kevin's odd phrase, "prominent" critics. And, contra Kevin's opinion that we didn't foresee the specific quagmire the world faces today, in fact we did. We warned that if Bush invaded Iraq without provocation, without international backing from UN, the gates of Hell would be opened. That is exactly what has happened. And the worst is ahead of us.

That is nothing that any of us opposed to this insane war feel any desire to gloat over.


[Updated for clarity.]

tristero 1/17/2007 05:16:00 PM |

 
Preventive Quagmire

by digby

Kevin explains further his position on the rightness and wrongness of liberal hawks and doves and makes a lot of sense. But on one point, I have to disagree completely:

I also made a specific comment about preventive war: namely that the failure in Iraq doesn't especially vindicate the argument that preventive war is almost always wrong. It is almost always wrong, and the fact that Iraq was a preventive war was a good reason to oppose it. But the specific quagmire that we find ourselves in now has very little to do with the fact that the Iraq war was preventive.

Preventive war is based on the idea that an enemy (presumably) is preparing to do something that will one day threaten you and it is in your best interest to stop them before they achieve that goal. It requires a kind of intelligence that is so amazingly sensitive and prescient that we can see threats before they even emerge.*

This omniscience was what the Bush administration sold going into Iraq ---- that we knew that Saddam was developing weapons that one day would threaten us. That, needless to say, was not true and we can hope that the Bush Doctrine is dead because of it. (I predict that they will look for a more traditional "provocation" from Iran.)

They had to tie in a future threat of terrorists with nukes to make the emotional and logical leap between 9/11 and invading Iraq. They had known for years that such an event could be a catalyzing event and even said it in their seminal PNAC paper in 2000 called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century":

"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

They had to use the nuke argument and the only way they could do this was by evoking a doctrine of preventive war. They had nothing else to go on.

It's true that on the whole the fact that the occupation has turned into a quagmire of epic proportions is not because of the preventive war doctrine. That cock-up was caused by dozens of bad decisions after the fact. But that argument is the very definition of the incompetence dodge.

There would be no Iraq war if it were not for the Bush Doctrine.



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*I wrote in great detail through that period about what a terrible mistake it was for a great nation to risk being so wrong about something so important unless it had absolutely no choice. They have made us much more vulnerable by exposing our intelligence services as paper tigers. But that's another argument...
digby 1/17/2007 11:30:00 AM |

 
Haloscan Problems

Haloscan is apparently working on this:

(1) Any attempt to leave a comment results in an error message; however, the comments are posting anyway.

(2) Comment counts on blog posts are not being updated.

So, if you fell like commenting, go ahead. But be aware that the error message is just gibberish and that your comment is posting anyway. I know nothing more.



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digby 1/17/2007 10:01:00 AM |

 
We're Rooting For You, Jane

by tristero

Dear Jane,

Best of luck with your surgery and recover quickly.

Love,

All your friends at Hullabaloo

tristero 1/17/2007 05:27:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

 
Back To The Future

by digby

Reader Colin reminded me of this little nugget from a year ago, which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up:

Special Forces May Train Assassins, Kidnappers in Iraq
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal...

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

[...]

Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

After doing a little googling, I see that others have been talking about this for some time as the mutilated and headless bodies and mass graves began to appear --- a striking similarity to the campaign of terror waged in El Salvador in the 1980's.

Laura Rozen wrote last November:

So the US is no hapless bystander to the Shiite death squads we are seeing, but they are the product of deliberate Pentagon policy? Is Cambone going to be hauled before Congress or what? Talk about missing the black helicopter crowd. One cannot but long for justice for these guys. Could some forward looking European nation please arrest them next time they stop over, just to give them a scare? A little Pinochet-like unpleasant episode, if not a full fledged trial? Doesn't this country deserve to know what is being done in our name? If these guys believe in what they're doing, if they believe it's in the interest of US national security, why don't they have the courage to admit it openly? Why are they trying to organize Shiite death squads in secret? Because it would be bad for the US to be seen to be behind this policy? Or because they are concerned about their own legal vulnerability?

Did we actually perpetuate sectarian violence to force the Sunni population to "pay a price?" Did we create this civil war?

I would think that was nuts except for the fact that it is completely in keeping with the arrogance and idiocy of this administration to have thought this was a good idea. The idea behind the Salvadoran death squads, you'll recall, was to show the spics/wogs/animals that they were up against something so ruthless and violent that they would just give up and surrender. Now ask yourselves if that would have sounded reasonable to this crew, particularly since they view El Salvador as a rousing success. (In fact, the presence of war criminal Eliot Abrams in the White House may just be the most compelling clue.)

I wish I didn't believe this could be true, but it explains the strange lethargy the administration had over the past year. They had a secret plan to end the war --- training Shia death squads to put the Sunni in their place. Shockingly, it doesn't seem to have worked.


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digby 1/16/2007 09:23:00 PM |

 
Were We Wrong?

by digby

Kevin Drum asks:

If anti-war liberals were right about the war from the start, how come they don't get more respect? Here's the nickel version of the answer from liberal hawks: It's because they don't deserve it. Sure, the war has gone badly, but not for the reasons the doves warned of.

Is this true? I wish my memory were more detailed about what anti-war liberals were saying back in 2002, but it's not. I once thought about browsing through old archives to at least see what the high-traffic liberal blogs were saying back then, but that turned out to be easier said than done. Matt, Josh, and I all supported the war for a while, so we don't count. Kos and Tapped seem to have lost their archives from that far back. C&L, Firedoglake, Aravosis, Greenwald, and the Huffington Post didn't exist back then. Atrios still has his archives, but he didn't post obsessively about the war and didn't write the kind of essays where he explained his position in detail anyway.

I didn't start my own blog until January 2003, (well before the war started and I wrote plenty about it.) But before that I was writing furiously on other blogs, particularly for Atrios, who put this on his front page on September 29, 2002, calling it The Digby Doctrine:

I don't object to going into Iraq because I think Saddam doesn't want nukes. Of course he does. So do a lot of people, including al Qaeda. And a lot of unstable regimes already have them, like the countries of the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. I object because I don't believe there is any new evidence that he's on the verge of getting them or that he had anything to do with 9/11, or that he’s crazy because he gassed his own people (without our objection at the time), or that he’s just plain so evil that we simply must invade without delay, all of which have been presented as reasons over the past few weeks. There are reasons why we are planning to invade Iraq, but they have nothing to do with the reasons stated and are based upon political and ideological not security goals.

I particularly object because I deeply mistrust the people who are insisting that Saddam presents an urgent danger because they have been agitating for invasion and regime change, offering a variety of rationales, for 11 years. Pardon me for being skeptical but there is an entire cottage industry in the GOP devoted to the destruction of Saddam for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with an imminent threat to the US. Until they concocted this bogus 9/11 connection, even they never claimed that the threat was to the US, but rather to Israel, moderate Arabs and the oil reserves.

I very much object because among these obsessives are the authors of the Bush Doctrine, which is nothing more than a warmed over version of the PNAC defense policy document that was based upon Cheney's 1992 defense dept. draft laying out the neocon case for ensuring the continued status of the US as the only superpower after the cold war. They did not take the threat of terrorism into account when they formulated this strategy and have made no adjustments since the threat emerged. Instead they are cynically using the fear created by 9/11 to advance goals that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and in fact will make another attack more likely. We will not be able to protect ourselves against another 9/11 by asserting a doctrine of unilateral preventive war in Iraq or anywhere else. Terrorism is a different animal that requires a completely fresh approach with an emphasis on cooperative intelligence, creative police work and stealthy military strategies. We can't invade every country that contains people who are potential terrorists. And the more we try to solve this problem through military force the more terrorists we will create.

This is my main objection to invasion of Iraq without convincing evidence of collusion in 9/11, without mideast allies and using a dubious doctrine of a right of preventive war. I believe it will make more terrorist attacks on the United States more rather than less likely. We should be trying very hard to avoid that rather than rushing toward it at warp speed without due consideration.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. The Republican establishment itself is divided on this issue. Plenty of very smart, hard headed realists know that this new doctrine of pre-emptive unilateral regime change is a bad idea and their lobbying succeeded in convincing the President that he should go to the UN over the objections of his more unilaterally minded advisors.

The result has been that the administration position has been incoherent ever since. One day we must invade because Saddam is close to getting nukes, another it's that he already has chemical and bio weapons. The next he's a genocidal maniac. Blair and Powell say they want disarmament one day, Rummy and Cheney argue that regime change is the goal the next. According to next week's Time Magazine, an administration source admits that they are throwing everything out there and hoping that something will "stick."

Now the process is getting bogged down again, the inevitable is not looking quite so inevitable. Saddam might acquiesce to inspections. The security council is not cooperating. Public opinion is opaque. The bandwagon effect may not be working. So what do they do? After weeks of insisting that the reason for "regime change" is Saddam's impending acquisition of nukes ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") suddenly the rationale is once again that Iraq is harboring al Qaeda.

How fucking convenient. No more need for the UN, no more need for congressional resolutions or convincing the public, now we can [theoretically]invade on the basis of the post 9/11 resolution giving Bush the power to attack any country associated with the attack on the WTC.

Doesn’t this inconsistency make you just the tiniest bit suspicious of what's really going on?

I have said before that if Bush will take yes for an answer and allow the UN to make another resolution demanding inspections, I will be more than happy to let him take credit for a hugely successful bluff. If Saddam fucks up we will then at least have the support of the international community to go to war on the basis of his intransigence instead of on the basis of a spurious right to "pre-emptive regime change” without convincing evidence of a threat.

More importantly we will not have implemented the delusional Bush Doctrine or engaged in unilateral “pre-emptive” military action in the mideast and thoroughly screwed up the coalition needed for terrorism prevention by striking at the hornets nest of Islamic anti-Americanism for no good reason. At this point, I’ll be thrilled if we can avoid WWIII and keep from burning all of our bridges in the very countries where we need cooperation to prevent more terrorism on US soil.

You'll recall that Saddam did let in the inspectors and Bush would not take yes for an answer so he pulled them out and invaded. (Still, he seems to have a delusion that this never happened.)

It was just a year after 9/11 and I was terribly concerned at the time about two things: creating more hatred (and terrorism) toward America in the Muslim world for completely inexplicable and useless reasons --- and establishing a doctrine of preventive war. (It never occurred to me that we would carry out a torture and gulag regime and specifically screw things up so badly that Iraq would be in civil war, with us in the crossfire, nearly five year later. How naive of me.)

It doesn't all hold up but most of it was proven correct. And while it's not the most sophisticated take on what was happening, it's more on target than all the liberal hawks who jumped on the Alice In Wonderland ride with the neocons.

I was sitting in my little cottage in Santa Monica, reading books and papers, watching television and writing on the internet. It really wasn't that hard to figure out what was going on.


Also, what Atrios said.



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digby 1/16/2007 08:23:00 PM |

 
More Moron

by digby

I just don't think I can take much more of this kind of puerile, ignorant bullshit:

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you a bottom-line question, Mr. President. If it is as important as you've just said - and you've said it many times - as all of this is, particularly the struggle in Iraq, if it's that important to all of us and to the future of our country, if not the world, why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something? The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the volunteer military - the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They're the only people who are actually sacrificing anything at this point.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States, but yet, when you think about the psychology of the country, it is somewhat down because of this war.

Now, here in Washington when I say, "What do you mean by that?," they say, "Well, why don't you raise their taxes; that'll cause there to be a sacrifice." I strongly oppose that. If that's the kind of sacrifice people are talking about, I'm not for it because raising taxes will hurt this growing economy. And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on, that they're able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table. And you know, I am interested and open-minded to the suggestion, but this is going to be -

MR. LEHRER: Well -

PRESIDENT BUSH: -- this is like saying why don't you make sacrifices in the Cold War? I mean, Iraq is only a part of a larger ideological struggle. But it's a totally different kind of war, than ones we're used to.

People are sacrificing their peace of mind. He really said that.

Oh, and our economy is fantastic but people are down about Iraq so they are sacrificing it being even more fantastic whivh means that we can't raise taxes to pay for the war. Better to have your kids and grandkids pay for it rather than these blue millionaires who have to sacrifice their beautiful minds by seeing all that unpleasantness on television.

I will never be able to forgive the fat cat Republicans who had the everlasting gall to foist this mentally deficient meathead on the world. How dare they.


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digby 1/16/2007 07:31:00 PM |

 
Coming or Going?

by digby

Bush gave another incoherent interview to Jim Lehrer today, which I will have to go back and parse later because I'm tied up. For right now, I wonder if someone who knows more about this would care to comment:

MR. LEHRER: What does success mean in these terms now, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, well, success, Jim, means a government that is providing security for its people. A success means for the American people to see Iraqi troops chasing down killers with American help initially. A success means a Baghdad that is, you know, relatively calm compared to last year so that people's lives can go forward and a political process can go forward along with it. Success means the government taking steps to share the oil wealth or to deal with a de-Baathification law, to encourage local elections. Success means reconstruction projects that employ Iraqis. Success also means making sure al-Qaeda doesn't get a foothold in Iraq, which they're trying to do in Anbar province. So success is measurable; it's definable; and last year was a year in which there was a setback to success.

(What a long way we are from the Democracy Domino Theory...)

Later in the interview he said this:

And then the final option is secure the capital and at the same time chase al-Qaida into Anbar.

He also says that four thousand of the new troops are assigned to Anbar.

So what do you suppose this is really all about? He says that al Qaeda is trying to gain a foothold in Anbar and then says that the plan calls for the troops to chase Al Qaeda into Anbar. Assuming there's some way of making sense of that --- is it wise to say it publicly?


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digby 1/16/2007 04:07:00 PM |

 
Justice Delayed

by digby

... but not denied.

Everyone knows that Firedoglake is the go-to blog for live Libby Trial blogging and analysis, right? Think of it as the internet equivalent of all those OJ shows on the cablers, except smart and literate.

They have trial press passes and they will be there every day telling us what's what. If you want to get up to speed on the case to really understand what's going down, you need to buy Marcy Wheeler's Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. She knows everything there is to know about the case --- and she's going to be blogging it for FDL, along with the usual suspects, Christy, Pach and Jane.

(Jeralyn will also be doing expert analysis at Talk Left, so be sure to check in there frequently as well.)

This is the first time since 2000 that anyone has officially taken the Bush administration to task. Patrick Fitzgerald has run the tightest lipped investigation in Department of Justice history and the only things we really know about his case are from official filings and informed speculation. Anything could happen. Dick Cheney is probably going to testify. Maybe Rover.

So keep your bookmarks poised and some popcorn handy. The Bush administration is finally going on trial.

Update: BTC News' white house reporter will also be covering the trial. Go bloggers.


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digby 1/16/2007 01:18:00 PM |

 
Legal Assault

by digby

The rightwing assault on the legal system continues apace. First you have this strange Pentagon lawyer and spokesman Cully Stimson obviously cooking up a rightwing noise machine operation with Monica Crowley and the Wall Street Journal editorial page to run a boycott on law firms that represent prisoners at Guantanamo. The Pentagon eventually "distanced itself" from his remarks but this guy has been out there saying all kinds of crazy stuff for some time. (In fact, all the people involved with Guantanamo often sound like psychos for some reason. Do they look for these creepy types specifically?)

Anyway, Cully Stimson has a history of saying nonsensical things in public. Like this:

O‘DONNELL: Welcome back to HARDBALL. You heard the claims of torture and abuse by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but what really goes on there? Here to tell us is the official in charge of U.S. policy on interrogation and other matters in the prison is Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.[Right. He's going to tell us what "really goes on?" Excellent intro Nora --- ed]

Good evening to you, Cully. Let me begin by asking you about this Ruhel Ahmed. He says that he was held for two years in Guantanamo Boy is he a terrorists?

CULLY STIMSON, DEP. ASST. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Yes, he is a terrorist, he is a dangerous person. We had a right to pick him up. He was waging war against America and we were right to take him there.

O‘DONNELL: So why did we let him go?

STIMSON: We transferred him back to his home country, and I can assure you that the Brits are mitigating the threat that he poses.

O‘DONNELL: But many people may ask, if he‘s a terrorist, why is he still not there at Guantanamo Bay?

STIMSON: The president has said that we don‘t want to be the world‘s jailer. That‘s true. This is a world problem here, Norah. I mean what does the world do with hardened Islamic extremists, who are waging the war against basically western culture? And so we don‘t want to be the world‘s jailer, and we want to take responsibility for those that we have at Guantanamo and we‘re going through that process right now.

O‘DONNELL: And as you know Ruhel Ahmed is suing the defense secretary for $10 million. He claims that he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. He says he was put in stress positions, in temperatures below freezing. Was he tortured?

STIMSON: No, he was not tortured. We have to under the law and for policy investigate every allegation of torture, no matter how ridiculous. We investigated his allegations and they were not found to be true. What is interesting to note, is that the Brits went to Guantanamo and visited him six times, and during each of those six visits, he never mentioned anything to them. And there were no marks, no nothing to support his allegation and lies of being tortured.

O‘DONNELL: Well lets set the record straight here. What is the U.S. policy regarding interrogation methods? In other words are things like isolation and extremely hot confinement areas, stress positions, shackled to the floor for long periods, are all of those legal and commonly used?

STIMSON: The interrogation techniques are open for the world to see. They are found in the army field manual. It‘s number 2452. You can put it in Google and figure it out. No, the techniques authorized by the army field manual are lawful, and they comply with the McCain amendment. They‘re legal and they comply with our obligations, our international obligations.

O‘DONNELL: So stress positions and hot and cold temperatures, those fall under the U.S. army manual?

STIMSON: Yes, I mean you can you read the army field manual and see for yourself. The interrogation techniques that we use at Guantanamo today are laid out for the world to see.

O‘DONNELL: Can you speak, some people, have, of course, accused the United States of torture in Guantanamo Bay. Can you speak to what type of care and feeding are the detainees receiving there at Gitmo?

STIMSON: Be happy to. We‘re proud of the care and treatment we provide detainees at Guantanamo. They get three square meals a day, culturally sensitive meals, blessed by an Imam. They have a menu Norah, that they get to order from every couple weeks. They have freedom of religion. They practice called to prayer five times a day. There are arrows pointing towards Mecca with the distance to Mecca listed everywhere. They get first class medical care, dental care.

O‘DONNELL: Is it true they get McDonald‘s?

STIMSON: During some interrogations, which are no different than you or I sitting across from each other today, some of them ask for McDonald‘s and sure, I‘ve watched some interrogations where they‘re chowing down on a Big Mac.

O‘DONNELL: Because they want to?

STIMSON: Yes, they want to.

O‘DONNELL: Let me ask you specifically about this movie, of course which we just talked about in the last segment, “The Road to Guantanamo,” which is a docudrama. Are you concerned, and are there concerns at the Pentagon, that this could change some public opinion? As you know most Europeans don‘t like the policy. The President of the United States has said that he thinks Guantanamo Bay should be closed down. Are you concerned that this could shift public opinion even further?

STIMSON: Not at all. You can call it a docudrama. I call it a propaganda film. This is pure fantasy. He would have you believe, I have not seen the film, and I am not going to pay my money because I don‘t know where the money is going to go, quite honestly, if I paid to see this movie.

This is essentially the same dark conspiracy-type charge he made against the lawyers who represent the prisoners. He implied they were being funded by terrorists. Here, he claims that the maker of this film is working for terrorists.

He is quite convinced, as are so many of these wingnut freaks, that anyone who doesn't sign on to the program, no questions asked, is in bed with terrorists. This man should be nowhere near the government or the Pentagon. He's paranoid, terrified, stupid or some combination of all three.

O‘DONNELL: You know Ruhel Ahmed, just on this show, called Osama bin Laden a terrorists and then a second later, he called President Bush a terrorist.

STIMSON: I heard that. It sort of shows you the mentality of this guy.

O‘DONNELL: Well except then you have to wonder, what then is he doing out on the lose in England?

STIMSON: Look, here is what he did. It‘s interesting, as I understand the film starts in 2002. They should have gone backwards a little bit and started in 2001, because in 2001, he was visiting Islamic extremist book stores. In September of 2000 he went to Pakistan and trained at terrorist training camps for about 40 days. And then went to the front lines and fought with the Taliban. And then he would have us believe, if I understand the way the movie plays out, he would have us to believe he was going to a wedding.

O‘DONNELL: If these guys are so bad, and terrorists, why not bring them to trial, charge them with murder, terrorism and put them to death?

STIMSON: That‘s a great question. And this is important for the viewers to understand. During a time of war, let‘s say during World War II, that everyone can remember, sort of basic history there. This country is entitled to detain enemies against it. We don‘t have any obligation to give them a quarter so they can call a lawyer. We don‘t have any obligation when we had 400,000 Nazis here in this country at the beginning of World War II, to give them a trial.

When he isn't ginning up a boycott of law firms who have the temerity to defend prisoners, this man speaks incoherent gibberish. He needs to be fired.

But they aren't firing him. They are, instead, firing a bunch of other lawyers --- US Attorneys some of whom have been doing investigations into Republican malfeasance. A whole bunch of them --- seven so far, an unprecedented number. And they are being replaced by GOP dirty tricks operatives. I'm not kidding. From Josh Marshall:

Okay, so we already know that the White House has now taken the unprecedented step of firing at least four and likely seven US Attorneys in the middle of their terms of office -- at least some of whom are in the midst of corruption investigations of Bush administration officials and key Republican lawmakers. We also know that they're taking advantage of a handy provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the White House to replace these fired USAs with appointees who don't need to be approved by the senate.

Read on to see what kind of people they are naming to replace these US Attorney's. You won't believe it.

Dianne Feinstein made a speech about this on the Senate floor this morning. (You can see the Youtube here.)

This is a scandal. The administration is firing federal prosecutors for no reason and putting their cronies in office without senate confirmation to get them through the next two years. They are working with political operatives to intimidate law firms into not representing terrorist suspects. They are, once again, undermining the spirit of our constitution and our legal system as they have been doing since they took office in 2000. The country voted for oversight last November to put the brakes on just this kind of behavior.

The administration is not acting like people who believe they can prevail if they play by the rules set forth in our legal system. Or maybe it's just another outright power grab by the executive branch. Either way, it's the latest in a long line of constitutional outrages and the congress must thoroughly investigate it and expose it to the public. The Republicans are trying to set new precedents with this stuff and it will only work if the Democrats fail to step in and say no.

We need immediate hearings on this issue.



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digby 1/16/2007 11:27:00 AM |

 
Family Values

by digby

For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

How interesting. But what difference does it make?

In a year with high turnout, unmarried women increased their numbers, and were one of the few demographic groups to increase their share of the electorate. As a percentage of the electorate, they moved from 19 percent in 2000 to 22.4 percent in 2004, an increase of roughly 7 million votes. Unmarried women constituted as large a share of the electorate as African Americans, Latinos and Jews combined.

The marriage gap is one of the most important cleavages in electoral politics. Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 25-point margin (62 to 37 percent), while married women voted for President Bush by an 11-point margin (55 percent to 44 percent). Indeed, the 25-point margin Kerry posted among unmarried women represented one of the high water marks for the Senator among all demographic groups.

The marriage gap is a defining dynamic in today's politics, eclipsing the gender gap, with marital status a significant predictor of the vote, independent of the effects of age, race, income, education or gender. Marital status had a significant effect on the way in which these voters performed, whereas a voter's gender did not. This was true of all age groups. Younger unmarried women supported Kerry while younger married women supported President Bush. Unmarried 18-29 year olds gave Kerry a 25 point margin, while younger married women, like their older counterparts, gave President Bush an 11 point margin.

The 2004 election brought many new unmarried women to the polls. Nineteen percent were voting for the first time, versus only 6 percent of married women....

White voters supported President Bush overall, but Kerry performed well among white unmarried women. White voters generally supported President Bush in the election (58 percent to 41 percent), but Kerry performed strongly among white unmarried women (55 percent to 44 percent).

Unmarried women are social and economic progressives advancing a tolerant set of values. They believe government should play a role in providing affordable health care, a secure retirement, equal pay, and education opportunities for themselves and their children. They support a woman's right to choose and gay rights, including marriage.

Unmarried women were strongly opposed to the war in Iraq. They believe that the Bush Administration's pursuit of the war made America less safe, not more secure. This is the opposite conclusion from that drawn by many blue-collar voters.

These women represent the tolerant, liberal base of the Democratic party and there are a huge number of them. I would hope that the Democratic party understands which side it's bread is buttered on and keeps that in mind as they move forward.

Update: Meanwhile, Sadly No! finds that the Republicans can't help lovin' those men of theirs. But we knew that.


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digby 1/16/2007 10:44:00 AM |

Monday, January 15, 2007

 
He Has Not Listened

by digby

I got yer plan for ya right here:

BLITZER: Are you in favor of using the power of the purse that Congress has to try to stop this war?

GOV. BILL RICHARDSON (D), NEW MEXICO: Yes. I believe because the president has not listened to the Congress, he hasn't listened to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and to the American people, that overwhelmingly want a change of course, I believe that's the function of the Congress, to deal with the appropriations process, find ways to at least this surge, to deny the funds to make it happen, because this is going to add to sectarian violence.

I would support a phased withdrawal, tie it to a political solution. There is no military solution. I would also organize a regional conference to get other states to help with the security and civil administration. I would talk to Iran and Syria to try to get the situation to at least a stable level.

I just believe that this is an ultimate decision by the Congress. But since the president doesn't listen, he's off in, I think, his own bubble. Unfortunately, that's the course I believe the Congress needs to take.

Richardson is not given to shrillness. He's probably running for president and he's running as a national security specialist, which he is. This is no joke. If he's saying this then Bush is in for trouble in the congress.

Not that it will do any good, mind you:

In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

"I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff," Cheney said.

Most of Cheney's colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of "disdain for the law."

Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution "does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power."

The Iran-contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power -- nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president's hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast "inherent" powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress.

Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration's hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney's staff has also been behind President Bush's record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.

A close look at key moments in Cheney's career -- from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under the first President Bush -- suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor, predicted that Cheney's long career of consistently pushing against restrictions on presidential power is likely to culminate in a series of uncompromising battles with Congress.

"Cheney has made this a matter of principle," Shane said. "For that reason, you are likely to hear the words 'executive privilege' over and over again during the next two years."

Cheney declined to comment for this article. But he has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back "unwise" limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

"In 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," Cheney said on ABC in January 2002. "I feel an obligation...to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors."

He couldn't make it any clearer. My ongoing crusade to drive a stake through the conservative zombies is based on this very thing. This presidential infallibility doctrine came from the true father of the modern conservative movement, Richard Nixon. (Reagan was a prop.) Cheney's not that smart and he isn't that original. In fact he's a rather simple Nixonian machine.

Despite the historically inept bleatings of journalists like Howard Fineman, who say that support for the war broke down on partisan lines, by 1970 both parties were divided on the war. In June of that year, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But as the NY Times reported at the time:

The legal effect of the vote which was 81 to 10 is probably minimal since the Nixon administration has stated that it is not relying on the resolution, requested by Lyndon B Johnson, as authority for policies in Indochina.

What do you suppose he was relying upon? Inherent powers, anyone?

Nixon said, "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Bush and Cheney obviously agree with that. (Cheney said it outright with respect to the Boland Amendment.) If he persists in being completely impervious to public criticism or congressional pressure, the only thing the congress can do to stop him is withhold funds or impeach him. That's it. It remains to be seen if they have the stomach for it. Bill Richardson coming out for using the power of the purse is a good sign.


Also: One interesting thing to note here is that a "young Turk" Republican (as the NY Times referred to him) named Bob Dole seized control of that vote and pushed it through with another bill for complicated political reasons, royally irking the Democrats who accused them of rank partisanship. There was a lot of legislative jockeying going on during that period, as both parties prepared for the 1972 campaign. I would hope the Democrats would study this period to remind themselves how wily minority Republicans can politically work the war issue from the opposition as a Republican president does exactly what he wants to do under a theory of imperial presidency. This is deja-vu all over again and this time the Democrats have the benefit of hindsight.


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digby 1/15/2007 05:54:00 PM |

 
What The Hell?

by digby

Iraq hanged two aides to Saddam Hussein before dawn on Monday but government efforts to avoid a repeat of uproar over the ousted leader's rowdy execution were thwarted when his half-brother's head was severed by the noose.

Many of the government's Shi'ite Muslim supporters rejoiced at the death of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's once feared intelligence chief who was accused of sending people to death in a meat grinder. But voices in Iraq's Sunni Arab minority saw the decapitation as a deliberate sectarian act of revenge.

Government spokesmen said the severing of Barzan's head was a rare hangman's blunder. Critics said it may have been partly a result of Barzan's illness with cancer.

Officials showed journalists film of Barzan and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander standing side by side in orange jumpsuits on the scaffold, appearing pale and trembling with fear as the hangmen placed black hoods over their heads.

As the two trap doors swung open, the force of the rope jerked Bander's head off. The head fell to the floor next to his body in a pool of blood as Bander's corpse swung above it.

Not that I really need to know the details, but I can't help but wonder how in the hell something like this happens? (And how convenient that he is "accidentally" beheaded, the preferred method of jihadist psychopaths.)

Needless to say, this isn't going over well among the Sunni (and even some Shi'ites):

One official, Bassam al-Husseini, called the decapitation "an act of God."

Barzan's son-in-law hurled a sectarian insult at the government on Al Jazeera television. "As for ripping off his head, this is the grudge of the Safavids," he said -- a historical term referring to Shi'ite ties to non-Arab Iran.

Poor Shi'ites celebrated in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. Moussa Jabor said: "(Barzan) should have been handed over to the people. Execution is a blessing for him."

In Awja, where Barzan and Bander were buried close to Saddam, provincial governor Abdullah al-Juabra said: "People resent the way that Barzan has been executed."

In Cairo, the Arab Organization for Human Rights called for an international medical investigation. The Moroccan Human Rights Association said the hangings were a "criminal political assassination masterminded by American imperialism."

Some Shi'ites were appalled too. Ali Abbas Ridha, a 27-year-old in the northern city of Mosul, said: "What they've done incites people to sectarianism even more. Whether they were executed or not, what's the use?"

Meanwhile:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters the hanging of the two men was "an Iraqi decision, an Iraqi execution."

Right. And who believes that?

What a travesty.


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digby 1/15/2007 01:27:00 PM |

 
Terrified Bean Counters

by digby

One of the things I think liberals find most irritating about the right (and they do it for that purpose as much as anything) is when they appropriate liberal icons and language and then disingenuously hit us over the heads with them. Most offensive is when they say we are racists, considering their revolting history in such matters.

Rick Perlstein wrote a piece for TNR last week that reminds us just how much they loved Martin Luther King in his time and why their current paeans to his greatness ring so hollow:

When Martin Luther King was buried in Atlanta, the live television coverage lasted seven and a half hours. President Johnson announced a national day of mourning: "Together, a nation united and a nation caring and a nation concerned and a nation that thinks more of the nation's interests than we do of any individual self-interest or political interest--that nation can and shall and will overcome." Richard Nixon called King "a great leader--a man determined that the American Negro should win his rightful place alongside all others in our nation." Even one of King's most beastly political enemies, Mississippi Representative William Colmer, chairman of the House rules committee, honored the president's call to unity by terming the murder "a dastardly act."

Others demurred. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond wrote his constituents, "[W]e are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case." Another, even more prominent conservative said it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

That was Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, arguing that King had it coming. King was the man who taught people they could choose which laws they'd break--in his soaring exegesis on St. Thomas Aquinas from that Birmingham jail in 1963: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."

That's not what you hear from conservatives today, of course. What you get now are convoluted and fantastical tributes arguing that, properly understood, Martin Luther King was actually one of them--or would have been, had he lived. But, if we are going to have a holiday to honor history, we might as well honor history. We might as well recover the true story. Conservatives--both Democrats and Republicans--hated King's doctrines. Hating them was one of the litmus tests of conservatism.

The idea was expounded most systematically in a 567-page book that came out shortly after King's assassination, House Divided: The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King, by one of the right's better writers, Lionel Lokos, and from the conservative movement's flagship publisher, Arlington House. "He left his country a legacy of lawlessness," Lokos concluded. "The civil disobedience glorified by Martin Luther King [meant] that each man had the right to put a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on laws that met with his favor." Lokos laid the rise of black power, with its preachments of violence, at King's feet. This logic followed William F. Buckley, who, in a July 20, 1967 column titled "King-Sized Riot In Newark," imagined the dialogue between a rioter and a magistrate:

"You do realize that there are laws against burning down delicatessen stores? Especially when the manager and his wife are still inside the store?"

"Laws Schmaws. Have you never heard of civil disobedience? Have you never heard of Martin Luther King?"

That thinking led inexorably to the Republican southern strategy code words "law and order" (cribbed from George Wallace) which had a powerful effect on frightened conservatives of all stripes. They turned the man who followed Gandhi's precepts of peaceful civil disobedience into an inciter of violence. Neat trick.

The conservative argument, consistent and ubiquitous, was that King, claiming the mantle of moral transcendence, was actually the vector for moral relativism. They made it by reducing the greatest moral epic of the age to a churlish exercise in bean-counting. Shortly after the 1965 Selma voting-rights demonstrations, Klansmen shot dead one of the marchers, a Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzza, for the sin of riding in a car with a black man. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended her funeral. No fair! Buckley cried, noting that a white cop had been shot by a black man in Hattiesburg shortly thereafter; "Humphrey did not appear at his funeral or even offer condolences." He complained, too, of the news coverage: "The television cameras showed police nightsticks descending upon the bodies of the demonstrators, but they did not show the defiance ... of those who provoked them beyond the endurance that we tend to think of as human." (In actual fact, sheriff's officers charged into the crowd on horseback swinging rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire.)

By now you may be asking: What is the point of this unpleasant exercise? Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on ideological sins? Well, not every conservative wrong has been righted. It's true that conservatives today don't sound much like Buckley in the '60s, but they still haven't figured King out: Andrew Busch of the Ashbrook Center for Public Policy, writing about King's exegesis on just and unjust laws, said, "In these few sentences, King demolishes much of the philosophical foundation of contemporary liberalism" (liberals are moral relativists, you see, and King was appealing to transcendent moral authority); Busch (speaking for reams of similar banality you can find by searching National Review Online) also said that "he rallied his followers with an explicitly religious message" and thus "stands as a stinging rebuke to those today who argue that religion and politics should never mix"; and Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation wrote in National Review Online that "[a]n agenda that advocates quotas, counting by race and set-asides takes us away from King's vision" (not true, as historians have demonstrated). Still, why not honor their conversion on its own terms?

The answer is, if you don't mind, a question of moral relativism versus transcendence. When it comes to Martin Luther King, conservatives are still mere bean-counters. We must honor King because there wasn't a day in his life after 1955 when he didn't risk being cut down in cold blood and still stood steadfast. Conservatives break down what should be irreducible in this lesson into discrete terms--King believed in points X, Y, and Z--but now they chalk up the final sum on the positive side of the ledger. But this misses the point: King alone among contemporary heroes is worthy of a national holy day not because he mixed faith and politics, nor because he enunciated a sentimental dream. It was because he represented something truly terrifying.

When King was shuttling back and forth to Memphis in support of striking garbage workers, Tennessee Governor Buford Ellington typified the conservative establishment's understanding of him: He was "training 3,000 people to start riots." What looks today obviously like transcendent justice looked to conservatives then like anarchy. The conservative response to King--to demonize him in the '60s and to domesticate him today--has always been essentially the same: It has been about coping with the fear that seekers of justice may overturn what we see as the natural order and still be lionized. But if we manage to forget that, sometimes, doing things that terrify people is the only recourse to injustice, there is no point in having a Martin Luther King Day at all.

I have come to realize that conservatism's single most identifiable characteristic is its fear (of progress, the other --- everything.) And nothing scared conservatives more than the great progressive Martin Luther King, who faced them down peacefully with grim determination and awesome courage. Why, if African Americans could overcome, then what was to stop anybody from believing that "liberty and justice for all" applied to them too. Thanks, Reverend King for making it so.


And thanks to Perlstein for the elegant reminder.


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digby 1/15/2007 11:14:00 AM |

 
Learning Too Much

by digby

Jonathan Chait misses the point with this article today in TNR:

I don't want to accuse American doves of rooting for the United States to lose in Iraq, because I know they love their country and understand the dire consequences of defeat. But the urge to gloat is powerful, and some of them do seem to be having a grand time in the wake of being vindicated.

Radar magazine recently published an article bemoaning the fact that pro-war liberal pundits have not been drummed out of the profession for their error. In it, lefty foreign policy guru Jonathan Schell sniffs, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."

Being right about something is a fairly novel experience for Schell, and he's obviously enjoying it immensely. But before we genuflect to Schell's wisdom, it's worth recalling that his own record of prognostication is not exactly perfect.

He goes on to discuss how many times he thinks Schell has been wrong, which is supposed to somehow prove his point. But the Radar article shows something else. It's not just that war war hawks have been richly rewarded for being wrong --- war critics have in many cases been punished. Chait himself is a good example of one who benefitted at the expense of someone who was right --- he's taken the op-ed slot at the LA Times that was held for years by Robert Sheer, who was a fierce critic of the administration and the war.

Chait uses the example of the Democrats in 1992 to further make his point:

Or go back to the last war we fought with Iraq. Schell insisted that we could force Iraq to leave Kuwait with sanctions alone, rather than by using military force. But the years that followed that war made it clear just how impotent that tool was. Saddam Hussein endured more than a decade of sanctions rather than give up a weapons of mass destruction program that turned out to be nonexistent. If sanctions weren't enough to make him surrender his imaginary weapons, I think we can safely say they wouldn't have been enough to make him surrender a prized, oil-rich conquest.

Most liberals made the same argument as Schell in 1990, and as subsequent years exposed the silliness of the claim, many of them were humbled. Indeed, most Democrats in the Senate voted against the Persian Gulf War, and that vote disqualified many of them from running for president in 1992. The presidential nomination went to a governor, Bill Clinton, who didn't have to vote on the war, and he selected as his running mate then-Senator Al Gore, one of a handful of Democrats who supported it.

This was why so many of the presidential aspirants (and pundits?) voted for the Iraq war. They were fighting the last one and that most certainly was a mistake. And it will continue to be a mistake if reflexively supporting a war is considered the smart move. Despite Chait's glib description of Saddam's imaginary nucelar arsenal, it's impossible to prove a negative. We will never know if sanctions might have worked in 1991, all we know is that the limited war we opted for instead was successful. (Unfortunately it also resulted in a bunch of Iraq obsessives who finally got their chance to "finish the job" --- and here we are.) Which is where Chait's argument really breaks down. He entitles his piece "Were you right about the last war? Who cares."

Who cares indeed? But we aren't talking about the last war, are we? We are talking about the current war, the one which these war hawks supported and for which they continue to set forth absurd solutions to the mess its become (like reinstalling Saddam Hussein.) As much as these guys want to say that it doesn't matter how we got here --- it does. In his opening sentence, Chait cutely suggests that people who were against the war are rooting for defeat, but doesn't seem to see the corollary --- those who supported the war refuse to admit that it's hopeless.

Certainly nobody expects someone to be right all the time and nobody says that someone who was wrong about the war cannot ever speak in public again. But why they should be rewarded with big book contracts about foreign policy and op-ed columns where they continue, day after day, to kick the ball down the field, give it a surge or one more Friedman Unit is the question. Iraq is the biggest issue of our time. It's happening right this minute. At what point does credibility become an issue in the here and now?

Nobody's perfect, but in the perverse incentive structure that exists in the punditocrisy, it's clear you are always better off being a war hawk and being wrong than being a war critic and being right. That's a problem and it's one of the reasons why we are in this mess today.

Chait ends his piece saying that he hopes we'll learn lessons from Iraq but he's afraid we'll learn too much. That seems unlikely.

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digby 1/15/2007 10:50:00 AM |

Sunday, January 14, 2007

 
The Decider Decides

by digby

President Bush, facing opposition from both parties over his plan to send more troops to Iraq, said he has the authority to act no matter what Congress wants.

"I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward," Bush told CBS'"60 Minutes" in an interview to air Sunday night.

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that lawmakers' criticism will not influence Bush's plans and he dismissed any effort to "run a war by committee."

"The president is the commander in chief. He's the one who has to make these tough decisions," Cheney said.

[...]


"This is an existential conflict," Cheney said. "It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term."

The White House also said Sunday that Iranians are aiding the insurgency in Iraq and the U.S. has the authority to pursue them because they "put our people at risk."

"We are going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.

Added Cheney: "Iran is fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq."

The U.S. military in Baghdad said five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq last week were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.

"We do not want them doing what they can to destabilize the situation inside Iraq," Cheney said.

Bush's revised war strategy seeks to isolate Iran and Syria, which the U.S. has accused of fueling attacks in Iraq. The president also says Iran and Syria have not done enough to block terrorists from entering Iraq over their borders.

"We know there are jihadists moving from Syria into Iraq. ... We know also that Iran is supplying elements in Iraq that are attacking Iraqis and attacking our forces," Hadley said.

"What the president made very clear is these are activities that are going on in Iraq that are unacceptable. They put our people at risk. He said very clearly that we will take action against those. We will interdict their operations, we will disrupt their supply lines, we will disrupt these attacks," Hadley said.

"We are going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq."

Iran's government denied the five detainees were involved in financing and arming insurgents and said they should be released.

Hadley asserted that if Iranians in Iraq "are doing things that are putting are people at risk, of course we have the authority to go after them and protect our people."

So the Iranians are after our troops. Condi said so last week. Cheney and Hadley are saying it today. Sounds like CB (cassus belli) talk to me. We can't wait for the Iranians to shoot the American troops with smoking mushrooms. Or something.

I have long said that the Republicans are undemocratic, but now they're just coming right out and saying it: democracy is all well and good until the people and their representatives object to what the president is doing at which point the people and their representatives become a superfluous "committee." They have interpreted the words "commander in chief" to mean that the constitution gives the president dictatorial powers during "wartime" (which the president defines.)

These are two dangerous and selfish men who aren't running for office and so have no political constraints. Not even a 30% approval rating or 12% support for this decision has made them think twice. They are completely confident that history will vindicate them.

They are what impeachment was designed for, I'm afraid, although I doubt there's time to build a case, what with the endless executive privilege claims and stonewalling. (I don't rule it out, naturally --- let a thousand oversight hearings bloom and follow the evidence where it leads.) But whether they are ultimately impeached or not, it's clear that they are rogue executives who are impervious to the normal limits that inhibit decent men and political animals. This can't just be swept under the rug.

Bush made it clear a long time ago when he said to a citizen on a rope line: "Who cares what you think?" And when he quipped "A dictatorship would be a lot easier, as long as I'm the dictator," he wasn't really joking.


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digby 1/14/2007 07:15:00 PM |

 
No Progress

And now for some even better news:

Intel director John Negroponte gave Congress a sobering assessment last week of the continued threats from groups like Al Qaeda and Hizbullah. But even gloomier comments came from Henry Crumpton, the outgoing State Department terror coordinator. An ex-CIA operative, Crumpton told NEWSWEEK that a worldwide surge in Islamic radicalism has worsened recently, increasing the number of potential terrorists and setting back U.S. efforts in the terror war. "Certainly, we haven't made any progress," said Crumpton. "In fact, we've lost ground." He cites Iraq as a factor; the war has fueled resentment against the United States.

Wow. Who could have seen that one coming?


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digby 1/14/2007 04:05:00 PM |

 
Pick Up A Paper, Bozo

by digby

President Bush on Saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new Iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in Baghdad.

"To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Bush said.

Oh George, shove it. Really.

There's the Murtha plan, the Biden plan, the Baker-Hamilton plan, the Levin-Reed plan --- and that's just off the top of my head.

There are plenty of plans, all of which Bush thinks are "flaming turds" because they don't allow him to pretend he is Winston Churchill now that he's completely screwed everything up --- as he always does.

Bush is only listening to Dick Cheney, nutball radio talk show hosts and neocon fantasists at this point because they continue to tell him that he is a glorious leader who is saving the world from the evil ones. He thinks he's Truman, which is really funny since Truman is known for his saying "the buck stops here" and Junior Codpiece has never taken responsibility for anything in his life.

There are plenty of plans, any of which are better than this completely absurd escalation that nobody in America or Iraq (except John McCain and the Last Honest Man) wants.


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digby 1/14/2007 03:40:00 PM |

 
Mistakenly Aggressive

by digby

In fact, administration officials (anonymous due to diplomatic sensitivities) concede that Bush's Iran language may have been overly aggressive, raising unwarranted fears about military strikes on Tehran. Instead, they say, Bush was trying to warn Iran to keep its operatives out of Iraq, and to reassure Gulf allies—including Saudi Arabia—that the United States would protect them against Iranian aggression. A senior administration official, not authorized to speak on the record, says the policy is part of the new Iraq offensive.

Please. I know these people are dumb, but even they aren't this dumb.

It is obvious that they are trying to provoke Iran into some kind of Gulf of Tonkin incident. After all, Bush is known to think along these lines. You'll recall that after the invasion the memo outlining the details of the January 31, 2003 meeting between Bush and Blair was leaked:

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

And yet everyone is supposed to believe that they didn't mean to "raise unwarranted fears" about this new war, even with their inexplicable mention of patriot missiles and the fact that carrier groups are on their way to the region. Uh huh.

Normally, I would say that I hope the Iranians don't take the bait. But that's foolish. If they don't take the bait, the administration will just make something up and say "you can believe your president or you can believe your eyes." That's what they do.



Update: Commenter Noen points to this article by Robert Parry at Consortium News who reminds us that Bush seemed to freak out Brian Williams and Tim Russert in his pre-speech briefing at the white house:

Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.

“The President’s inference was this: that an entire region would blow up from the inside, the core being Iraq, from the inside out,” Williams said, paraphrasing Bush.

Despite the already high cost of the Iraq War, Bush also defended his decision to invade Iraq and to eliminate Saddam Hussein by arguing that otherwise “he and Iran would be in a race to acquire a nuclear bomb and if we didn’t stop him, Iran would be going to Pakistan or to China and things would be much worse,” Russert said.

If Russert’s account is correct, there could be questions raised about whether Bush has lost touch with reality and may be slipping back into the false pre-invasion intelligence claims about Hussein threatening the United States with “a mushroom cloud.”

[...]

While avoiding any overt criticism of Bush’s comments about an imaginary Iraqi-Iranian arms race, Russert suggested that the news executives found the remarks perplexing.

“That’s the way he sees the world,” Russert explained. “His rationale, he believes, for going into Iraq still was one that was sound.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews then interjected, “And it could be the rationale for going into Iran at some point.”

Russert paused for a few seconds before responding, “It’s going to be very interesting to watch that issue and we have to cover it very, very carefully and very exhaustively.”

Well, that would be a first.


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digby 1/14/2007 10:16:00 AM |

 
Banana Republic

by digby

What's with all the military spying inside the US? Maybe the Pentagon ought to spend more time gathering intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan and leave the spying on US citizens to the FBI, DHS, INS, DEA, ATF and state and local police agencies. I think they can handle the illegal wiretapping, mailreading and bank account tracking all by themselves.

Here's another troubling sign:

Deep into an updated Army manual, the deletion of 10 words has left some national security experts wondering whether government lawyers are again asserting the executive branch’s right to wiretap Americans without a court warrant.

The manual, described by the Army as a “major revision” to intelligence-gathering guidelines, addresses policies and procedures for wiretapping Americans, among other issues.

The original guidelines, from 1984, said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, or by obtaining certification from the attorney general “issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act.”

That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court “or upon attorney general authorization.” It makes no mention of the attorney general doing so under FISA.

Bush administration officials said that the wording change was insignificant, adding that the Army would follow FISA requirements if it sought to wiretap an American.

But the manual’s language worries some national security experts. “The administration does not get to make up its own rules,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

[...]

Like several other national security experts, Mr. Aftergood said the revised guidelines could suggest that Army lawyers had adopted the legal claim that the executive branch had authority outside the courts to conduct wiretaps.

But Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official who helped develop the guidelines, said the new wording did not suggest a policy change. The guidelines were intended to give Army intelligence personnel more explicit and, in some cases, more restrictive guidance than the 1984 regulations, partly to help them respond to new threats like computer hackers.

“This is all about doing right and following the rules and protecting the civil liberties of folks,” Mr. Gandy said. “It seeks to keep people out of trouble.”

And up is down and black is white.

This is bureaucratic buck passing that keeps the military perpetrators out of trouble by leaving the full responsibility with the Attorney General who they consider to be the unitary law enforcement officer of the unitary executive who claims unlimited power to wiretap without any kind of oversight. That would be how "doing right" is defined in our brave new world.


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digby 1/14/2007 09:21:00 AM |

 

No Soul

by poputonian

President Bush has an urge
To go on a psychotic-fed splurge
Like back in his school-boy class
When he exploded a poor frog's ass
He'll fix this urge with a surge

He's the presidential rampager
He'll use the troops as a wager
To bet that he's right
That it's worth it to fight
To save his ass from the Haguer

But the president has dug up a hole
That will end the Bush family role
As the walls cave in
Where words can't spin
To bury the man with no soul

So we're tired of hearin' him preach
About freedom and liberty's reach
To the far distant land
Of oil and sand
Instead, it's time to impeach

poputonian 1/14/2007 08:10:00 AM |

 
From The Department Of Hey! Y'Never Know!

by tristero

From The New Republic:

No one is in a position to say for sure whether or not the new focus on counter-insurgency and its implementation in Bagdad and Anbar province is going to work.

Wrong. I'm in a position to say that it wont work.

How do I know? For an American escalation to have even the slightest chance of a positive outcome in Iraq, everything that history, psychology, and personal experience teaches us about human behavior would have to be wrong. Since that is not the case, the escalation will succeed only in increasing the misery of American and Iraqi mothers while exacerbating an intensifying civil war.

But if there is the slightest glimmer of hope in these grim times, it lies in part in the learning that has been going on in the army.

And the army, from single troops to generals, has learned - although truth be told, they knew this before the invasion - that an escalation will only make things worse.

It may be that the accumulated weight of past mistakes is too great to overcome. But perhaps not.

And it may be that I will lose the $50,000,000 state lottery. But perhaps not. Better buy $20,000 worth of tickets. Hey, y'never know!

Oh, and Jeff? Since you're willing to entertain the notion an escalation is a good idea, why don't you encourage your students at U Maryland to join the growing movement among privileged youth to enlist? They could come back from Iraq in one piece.

But perhaps not.

tristero 1/14/2007 04:00:00 AM |

Saturday, January 13, 2007

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Life During Wartime: A Fantasy Getaway

By Dennis Hartley

In 2001, Mexican writer-director Guillermo del Toro used the Spanish Civil War as a backdrop for his ghost story "The Devil’s Backbone". Six years later, del Toro has returned to the tumultuous Franco era, this time with a twist of dark fantasy in his new Spanish-language film, "Pan’s Labyrinth".

12-year old newcomer Ivana Bacquero delivers an impressive, nuanced performance as the film’s central character Ofelia, an intelligent, introverted girl on the verge of puberty who still clings to her childhood fascination with fairy tales. She and her very pregnant mother have just set up quarters with her new stepfather Captain Vidal (the always brilliant Sergi Lopez), a brutal, sadistic Fascist officer charged with mopping up stubborn rebel forces entrenched in the Spanish countryside.

With nothing resembling love or affection forthcoming from the black-hearted Vidal, and with her mother becoming increasingly bedridden due to a difficult pregnancy, Ofelia finds an escape valve by retreating ever deeper into a personal fantasy world, which she enters through an imaginary gate in a nearby garden. This is not necessarily Alice through the looking glass, as you might think; this is a much darker world of personified demons and monsters borne from Ofelia’s subconscious take on the real-life horrors being perpetrated by her truly monstrous stepfather and his Fascist henchmen.

In certain respects, the film reminded me of 1973’s (much more subtle) "Spirit of the Beehive", also set in Franco’s Spain, and likewise depicting a lonely young girl retreating into a private fantasy world in response to feelings of estrangement from her family.

While there are also some parallels here to the likes of "Alice In Wonderland", "Spirited Away", and "The Secret Garden", be advised that this is not your garden variety feel-good fairy tale with a warm and fuzzy ending that you want to watch with the kids. The fantasy sequences are closer in tone to Grimm morbidity than to Tolkien whimsy; and del Toro pulls no punches depicting the real horror and suffering that takes place during wartime.

In the visual department, the director once again displays an admirable talent for seamlessly blending wildly imaginative production design and prosthetics to create a vivid fantasy world (del Toro’s resume includes Mimic, Blade II and Hellboy.)

I have a caveat: if you find depictions of soldiers being tortured and malevolent violence directed against women and children upsetting, proceed with caution. (I am aware that no decent human being in their right mind finds that kind of thing much fun to watch in the first place, but I see the potential for more sensitive viewers to become quite distressed).

War is unhealthy for children: The Chronicles of Narnia , The Tin Drum, Forbidden Games,Grave of the Fireflies , Hope and Glory, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Empire of the Sun, Two Women, Sophie's Choice, The Diary of Anne Frank.


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digby 1/13/2007 07:17:00 PM |

 
Sharkskin Suits

by digby


While the government is digging around in your bank accounts for god knows what reasons, they have also decided that it's better to let corporations off easy when it's determined that they owe taxes.

The country is going broke and they are doing this:

Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees who say that the policy is costing the government billions of dollars a year.

“It’s catch and release,” said Douglas R. Johnson, an I.R.S. auditor in Colorado for three decades who said he grew so frustrated at how large corporations were allowed to pay far less than what he thought they owed that he transferred to the agency’s small-business division.

This is free market theology in action: corporations should not have to pay taxes because it's "taxing the money twice." For some reason they think there is a law of nature that says you can't do that when, in fact, it happens all the time all over the place and it's factored into the economy quite efficiently. But free market fundamentalists are just like the biblical literalists. It doesn't have to make sense. It's all faith based.

What this shows though is yet another agency that's been infiltrated by wingnut sharks who just mindlessly circle, biting off pieces of their agenda, programmed to just keep killing and eating no matter what. The government may be deeply in debt, the war may be sucking up hundreds of billions, six years of corruption and pork has sucked every bit of fat from the treasury, but by god they will not question whether it might be wise to boost revenues. The agenda says that taxes should not be levied on rich people and corporations and if they are they must not be collected. Keep circling and eating, circling and eating.



Via Norwegianity

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digby 1/13/2007 04:03:00 PM |

 
Open Your Wallet And Show Us What You've Got

by digby

A lot of folks don't seem exercized that the government might be listening in on their phone calls without a warrant or reading their e-mails and letters with no oversight from anyone. But I have noticed for years that people would much rather tell you every detail of their sex lives than reveal their financial status.

So, I wonder how happy they are going to be to know that the Pentagon and the CIA have taken it upon itself to investigate the finances of American citizens with no warrants or oversight and keep the information on file forever:

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

The military, the clandestine spy service and the FBI have all been gathering financial information on American citizens. Nobody knows what they have, who's been targeted or if the information is correct or useful.

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

“We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

Except the records are going into a database:

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions.

[..]

Some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled by the C.I.A. and military taking on domestic intelligence activities, particularly in light of recent disclosures that the Counterintelligence Field Activity office had maintained files on Iraq war protesters in the United States in violation of the military’s own guidelines. Some experts say the Pentagon has adopted an overly expansive view of its domestic role under the guise of “force protection,” or efforts to guard military installations.

[...]

“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. “They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”

Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, “The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they’ve been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don’t cross the line.”

I thought the Intelligence Czar was supposed to coordinate all this; the whole idea was that DNI and DHS was that they were going to streamline things and end the useless duplication and cross wires in the investigative agencies. Instead, it appears that we have the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, local and state police agencies all running amock and using the provisions of the patriot act in the most expansive way possible to spy on US citizens without warrants and then each keep the information they have on file forever.

I have written before that the most dangerous thing we have done to ourselves domestically since 9/11 is to hugely expand our policing powers and throw unlimited funds at the agencies who will find a reason and a way to flex their new, expensive muscle. It is a law of nature. If you build it they will use it.

We have thrown so much money away on the Department of Homeland Security that they can't even account for billions in missing funds. Small towns in the Alaskan Bush are putting camera's on every street corner with their free money from Uncle Ted Stevens. (To catch the terrists, dontcha know.)

We are building a well funded national police state apparatus at the same time that we are giving unlimited money and power to our military and foreign intelligence agencies to operate in the United States. This is incredibly dangerous and I can't help but wonder why there is so little effort on the part of anyone in public life to educate the public on the inherant dangers of such powerful, unaccountable institutions. This is why we had a revolution to begin with. It's why we fought two world wars in the last century. (Where is the Al Gore of civil liberties?)

And the most laughable thing is that all of this is apparently perfectly acceptable to the principled right wingers and "libertarians" who spent decades railing against the jack booted government thugs --- at least until a Republican administration was wielding the power. It seems that unless the target in question is buying weapons or explosives (in which case they come roaring in to protect the only amendment in the Bill of Rights they care about) these people are just fine with all this. After all, only the "right" people are being spied upon --- Muslims, war protestors, liberals, Democrats and other enemies of the state.

But guess what? That could change. The list of enemies will grow longer. It always does. And you never know who might land on it. This is not a partisan issue and it's tragic that there are so few on the right who can't extricate themselves from their pep club and cheerleader team sport world to consider that this is one issue we civil libertarians and at least some conservatives should be able to agree upon. I can say with absolute confidence that if a Democratic administration were institutionalizing spying on Americans and building a new all-powerful unaccountable police state apparatus, I'd be screaming just a loudly.

This exposes the right's total intellectual bankruptcy as nothing else has, in my opinion. They are nothing more than rich authoritarian thugs whose only real mission is to maintain their prerogatives. One of these days somebody is going to find a reason to think they are unamerican too --- and they are probably going to use that very same police state power against them. Then they'll screaming too --- but it will be too late.



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digby 1/13/2007 02:28:00 PM |

 
Urban Legend

by digby

Yesterday on The Situation Room:

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there was a U.S. military strike in northern Iraq against an Iranian facility. And that, perhaps, is causing just as much consternation as the president's new Iraq plan.

It was during his speech, the president gave, perhaps, his most aggressive warnings to date to Iran and Syria to stop meddling in Iraq's affairs. The president saying that he would seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weapons and training to U.S. enemies in Iraq.

Now, there have been many political observers, military observers, who took this to mean that this was, in fact, some sort of signal that perhaps a military operation was ready to go, was poised to strike either Iran or Syria.

What we're hearing from White House officials and Pentagon officials, they are pouring cold water on this, trying to dismiss that notion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I want to address kind of a rumor and urban legend that's going around. And it comes from language in the president's Wednesday night address to the nation that, in talking about Iran and Syria, that he was trying to prepare the way for war with either country and that there were war preparations underway. There are not.

GEN. PETER PACE, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: We can take care of the security for our troops by doing the business we need to do inside of Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So, Wolf, they're trying to make that very clear here, that this is not a war that they think is going to escalate or cross borders. The White House also, of course, engaged in an all out charm offensive. The president trying to win over at least members from his own party to come and support this new Iraq plan.

The president is hosting the Republican Congressional leadership at Camp David over the weekend, along with the wives, to try to help mend fences, if you will. And White House aides are saying, look, the president is under no delusions here that he's going to win support right away. What they are counting on is simply buying time here to see if Iraqis come through.

They do believe that they'll get a sense of that at least within a couple of months, whether or not those Iraqi forces are able to perform -- Wolf.

So, Bush's left field bellicose talk about Syria and Iran in his speech to the nation was meaningless. Pay no attention to the fact that he's suddenly talking about patriot missiles and carrier groups and he's assigning admirals to run the entire mideast military operation

I honestly don't know what purpose Suzanne Malveaux's report served except to have a pretty face deliver the white house spin. Her story was technically correct in that this was the official white house spin, but completely misleading. So was Tony Snow's "urban legend" nonsense. Bush's speech and recent actions cannot be interpreted any other way than they have been. If he didn't mean to signal that he was ratcheting up the war in the mid-east to include Iran and Syria, then he has made another huge blunder by using language and taking actions that clearly indicate he is.

Here's Flynt Leverett:

According to the President, the Iranians are providing "material support” to attacks on U.S. forces. That is a casus belli. It fits in with the administration’s escalating campaign -- encompassing rhetoric and detentions of Iranian officials in Iraq -- to blame Iran for a strategically significant part of the ongoing instability and violence in Iraq.

In the context of describing the deployment of additional U.S. forces to Iraq, the President also noted the importance of securing Iraq’s borders. I suspect that at least some of the additional U.S. soldiers going to Iraq will end up on the border with Iran.

Moreover, the President strongly implied that the U.S. military would start going after targets in countries neighboring Iraq to disrupt supply networks for insurgents and militias.

The deployment of a second carrier strike group to the theater -- confirmed in the speech -- is clearly directed against Iran. Since, in contrast to previous U.S. air campaigns in the Gulf, military planners developing contingencies for striking target sets in Iran must assume that the United States would not be able to use land-based air assets in theater (because of political opposition in the region), they are surely positing a force posture of at least two, and possible three carrier strike groups to provide the necessary numbers and variety of tactical aircraft.

Similarly, the President’s announcement that additional Patriot batteries would go to the Gulf is clearly directed against Iran. We have previously deployed Patriot batteries to the region to deal with the Iraqi SCUD threat. Today, the only missile threat in the region for the Patriot to address is posed, at least theoretically, by Iran’s Shihab-3.

Here's Condi:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused yesterday to rule out cross-border US military action against Iran, a day after President Bush pledged in a major speech to "seek out and destroy" Iranian and Syrian networks providing weapons and training to anti-American forces in Iraq.

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rice said the United States plans to target the networks inside Iraq, but added, "obviously the president isn't going to rule anything out to protect our troops."

Her comments followed questioning from three senators, including a high-profile Republican, on whether Bush believes he has the authority to conduct military missions in Iran without congressional approval. Rice said she wanted more time to study the question and would answer in writing. The three senators expressed fears that Bush's new initiative might escalate into a wider regional conflict.

There are only two feasible interpretations of what the president is doing. He is either trying to provoke the Iranians or he and his Mayberry Machiavellis had no idea what his words were conveying. I could believe either. If it was just the latest in a long series of tactical and strategic blunders then we are in the soup now and it will take a combination of luck and skill to get us out of it --- I don't have much hope. If the president was rattling the sabre at Iran and Syria and preparing the ground for expanding the war, then I have even less. These people are deluded and incompetent on a level not seen since the final days of Rome.

This is very bad.


Update: Dick Cheney has consolidated his power and influence throughout the government and has the strongest underground network among all the various players, even with Rumsfeld gone. This article by Laura Rozen about how few restraints he has, either bureaucratically or politically, is chilling in its implications. Apparently, we must hope that the bureaucracy that still exists after six years of purges and quashing of dissent speaks out. Great.


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digby 1/13/2007 10:58:00 AM |

 

Unfit For Office

by poputonian

This post was actually written a week or so before Bush's detached, out-of-body, all-in, war-escalation speech:

Bush Breakdown Dead Ahead?

Although the thought has crossed my mind many times in the past, I have to admit that my concern for the psychological stability (or lack thereof) of George Dubya has increased tenfold since his joint appearance with Tony Blair a few weeks ago. In the wake of the release of the ISG Report the day before, Bush's statements and mannerisms during that press conference revealed a level of disconnect and desperation that I had to wonder if the men with the big nets and white coats might be lurking in the White House somewhere.

Bush's statements were not anything that we hadn't heard in the past, but when taken in the context of the present situation he and his administration find themselves in, those statements took on a darker connotation. We were watching a man whose main concern was that his world was falling apart while failing to comprehend that the real world was also crumbling due to his ineptitude. But after a few minutes into the question and answer session, a troubling thought occurred to me; what if Bush's infamous bubble is really beginning to break?
...
There are those who would take great pleasure in witnessing a Bush Breakdown. He is the most unsympathetic character to ever hold the office he now occupies and many wish to observe him actually recognizing some sense of reality, of the blood that stains his legacy because of his personal need for vengeance and the destruction resulting of his ignorance of the world around him. The breaking of Bush's bubble, however satisfying, could be a double-edged sword.

Unlike Hitler in his last days, who had no armies or recourse, Bush has more than a few options should he suffer any form of breakdown - should he become aware that he has no escape from those whom he has infuriated – and none of them are in anyone's best interest, including his. But something makes me think that consequences mean little to Bush.

Isn't it clear that it's comeuppance-time for the boy-president, and that the nation is at grave risk while Bush has his meltdown?

I think so.

He gambled his presidency on Iraq, he was wrong. There is no reconciliation between his ideological vision and truth, which makes him ever more dangerous.

Now there is only one thing to do, and, as this letter from a Vermont citizen indicates, the people support it.

Impeachment would be heroic

January 13, 2007

This is copy of a letter sent to Rep. Peter Welch:

Checks and balances demand you act. The Constitution is being made invalid by this executive. You're either for it or him. If you protect him and do not impeach, as he leaves office in '09 you will have gone down before him in '08, so I vow. So be a hero and a leader and break from the leadership by insisting on impeachment hearings. The state of Vermont will hail your adherence to the principle of the rule of law that no man is above justice, and our support will overcome any flack you will get from your party. You will never fear from public disapprobation, the only thing you need fear is if you do not act.

For the sake of the world, we need to get this thing on its way.

Like a snowball rolling.

poputonian 1/13/2007 08:20:00 AM |

Friday, January 12, 2007

 
Positioning

by digby

Matthew Yglesias explains why some of the Republican presidential candidates are inexplicably behaving like Bush cultists and some are not:

The oddity of the emerging GOP presidential field is that it's dominated by candidates -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney -- who are, in one way or another, importantly unorthodox conservatives. Consequently, they need to hew very closely to hawk dogma in national security policy to prove their bona fides even at the moment where political support for the hawkish position is collapsing. Sam Brownback, a distinctly second-tier contender but one who benefits from being a committed social conservative with standard conservative economic views, is taking the chance to be the exception and resist the urge to surge...

The only thing I would add to this analysis is that, as best I can tell, ever since the war began in March 2003 it's been the case that any given dovish position looks better and better as time goes on. When thinking about positioning yourself for primaries that won't be held until a year or more from now, it's worth keeping in mind that things will almost certainly look worse 9-15 months from now than they do today.

For the Republicans being a true blue conservative is so important that a candidate who is not an unreconstructed hawk or a religious nut (preferably both) cannot get past the primaries. That puts the "electable" (appealing to independents) candidates in a very difficult position and they have obviously decided they are better off with Bush and the war than being out there without any wingnut credentials at all. It's very risky.

I remember writing a long comment somewhere on the day of the Iraq war resolution that the Democratic presidential contenders were stupid to vote for the war for purely political reasons because if the war was going ok in 2004, Bush would almost certainly win and if it wasn't their vote would be hung around their necks like a dead albatross. John Kerry certainly paid that price for his vote which made it virtually impossible for him to make a coherent case against the war.

The problem was that most of these people were fighting the last war, Gulf War I, when many of them felt burned by their vote against a war that ended up being a glorious (and painless) victory. The Republicans never let them forget it. It was understandable that they were unsure of themselves and thought it was a good bet to go with the war --- it was just a year after 9/11 and Bush was at 65% in the polls. It wasn't a good bet at all.

I thought long and hard about that since then, wondering how a politican can truly know the smart move in cases of war and I concluded that they probably can't. They simply have to do what they think is right. It's a different case than most legislation where you can horsetrade and think about positioning for the future and otherwise play politics. War is a wildcard --- you can't know in advance how things are going to go or what position taken today might benefit you tomorrow. The risks are so high and the moral questions so profound that you are better off just trying to make a reasoned decision and being open minded about changing your mind if things go differently than you expect.

It's an unsatisfying and frightening way for politicians to deal with big questions like this, but I don't see any way they can avoid it. Many of the Democrats followed their instincts in 1991 and were humiliated --- so they didn't follow their instincts in 2002 and they were trapped. I'm not disagreeing with Yglesias that they should keep in mind that there is an ever reduced risk in being against the war, but I don't think as a general rule it's a good idea to put too much stock in such things. War is not predictable.


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digby 1/12/2007 06:40:00 PM |

 
Pig Slop

by digby

Shakespeare's Sister and Punkass Blog riff on an ignorant little screed by Baby Ben Shapiro in which he says:

Nancy Pelosi, however, could breastfeed on the speaker’s podium and receive the plaudits of the mainstream media.

and

No woman in the history of politics has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi.

Think Progress picked it up, too.


It should be noted that Baby Ben didn't come up with this puerile sexist drivel all by himself. There are millions of people all over the country chuckling about Pelosi "breastfeeding" on the speaker's podium because one very highly paid and influential sack of moronic nonsense said this:

PELOSI [audio clip]: I want to thank Paul and our five children, Nancy Korynn, Christine, Jacquelyn, Paul Jr. and Alexandra, and our magnificent grandchildren for their love, for their support, and the confidence they gave me to go from the kitchen to the Congress.

LIMBAUGH: Yes, you see, ladies and gentlemen, this is a triumph of feminism and estrogen, as Wes Puden says today. And ladies, the long 200-year national nightmare without a woman at the top is now over.

PELOSI [audio clip]: We have waited over 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren't just waiting; women were working.

LIMBAUGH: Yeah.

PELOSI [audio clip]: Never losing faith.

LIMBAUGH: Right.

PELOSI [audio clip]: We worked to redeem the promise of America --

LIMBAUGH: Right.

PELOSI [audio clip]: -- that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling.

LIMBAUGH: No, you have cracked it, but you have not broken it. I wonder when she loses next if she'll go back to the kitchen. If her kids and family allowed her to go from the -- what do you bet she hasn't been in the kitchen in a long time anyway?

[...]

RUSH: One of the latest Democrat -- one of the new freshman, Heath Shuler, not the sharpest knife in the drawer to begin with -- I have a story in which he says his 2-year-old daughter, who he named Island, his 2-year-old daughter is inspired by Nancy Pelosi's ascension to the speakership. Now Heath -- I don't have -- what? What do you mean -- oh, come on, of course it can't be. His 2-year-old can't possibly know who Pelosi is other than as a cartoon figure on television. Maybe Pelosi breastfed him, I don't know, when the kid was pregnant. Who knows? She's capable of doing everything else.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And we're being told by her and the "drive-by media" that this is something brand new and revolutionary, and better than we have ever, ever had. Note -- we've never had old Grandpa Newt [Gingrich] up there with the kids on his lap, because he didn't care about kids. That's the assumption. Men don't just care -- 'cause look, kids are fine just as long as they're at home and the woman is raising them. But don't bring them to the office, I want nothing to do with -- that's the image that is portrayed. But look at Ms. Pelosi. Why, she can multitask. She can breastfeed, she can clip her toenails, she can direct the House, all while the kids are sitting on her lap at the same time. Take care of the children, take care of the country at the same time. Never, ever been done before. It's all about the feminization of culture, and if you think I'm going overboard on this, stay tuned for the next story.

The president of the United States appeared with this gelatinous pile of fetid sewage just days before the election and treated him with the utmost respect.


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digby 1/12/2007 02:15:00 PM |

 
There But For the Grace of God

by digby

So Dan "Scumbag" Burton broke with his party and voted for the Democratic bill calling for the government to be able to negotiate drug prices for people on Medicare. Very compassionate of him.

He did this because his wife died of breast cancer a few years ago after a long illness and he was personally exposed to the way the medical system works for average people when he would sit with his wife at the cancer center and listen to what the cancer patients said. Because his family was going through a medical crisis he understood why it was so stressful for people to be unable to afford prescriptions under such circumstances.

This is a big problem with Republicans. They reflexively object to any government program until they are confronted personally with a situation that requires such intervention. They have no empathy for people in the abstract, always assuming that whomever is saying they are in need is a whining malcontent who could be just as healthy and self-sufficient as they are if they truly tried.

Until something happens to them or someone they love, that is, at which point they are converted.

Burton isn't the only one. There are always a smattering of Republicans who don't follow the party line on a particular issue like stem cell research or mental health coverage. When you look beneath the surface it's always because they personally know someone, usually a family member, who would benefit from the program. (You can often see this in national emergencies where they suddenly clamor for federal help after disdaining the same requests by people in other parts of the country and constantly voting against such measures on a programmatic level.)

I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on "poor character" because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed.

Empathy is not some altruistic concept. In fact, it's quite selfish and designed to make humans better able to survive. It allows a person to walk in another's shoes so that they might have an inkling of what it would be like if that person's experience became their own. It is necessary to understand how to head off problems that you might someday have to confront and it is certainly necessary to fully understand other necessary concepts such as justice, fairness and love.




I'm not drawing any conclusions from this, but it's interesting. It seems that when they test psychopaths, they find that they can't understand abstract concepts. I'm just saying.



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digby 1/12/2007 12:20:00 PM |

 
Scraping The Bottom Of The Wingnut Barrel

by digby

How pathetic is it that the White House is now depending on Michele Malkin to tell their "real story" of Iraq? You would think that they could have found a journalist who writes for a real rightwing rag somewhere to go over to Iraq and tell the story they really want told.

Apparently all the FOX News, NY Post and Washington Times reporters are too chickenshit or have too much integrity (not bloody likely) to go over there to pump up Bush's deflated codpiece. So, they have been reduced to touting the talents of second rate internet wingnut welfare queens to do the job.

I'm beginning to think that their new strategy is to gain support through pity. This is the most pathetic thing they've ever done.


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digby 1/12/2007 11:52:00 AM |

 
TIME Goes Unhinged

by digby

I have to say that I'm kind of enjoying Swampland, TIME's attempt to ape The Corner with Ana Marie Cox, Joe Klein, Jay Carney and Karen Tumulty. But I'm a little bit concerned that Joe Klein is travelling in company that's going to embarrass him with its intemperate and provocative language.

Joe is going to have to have a talk with the fellow blogger who wrote this:

Condi at the Foreign Relations Committee:

"The Iraqis have developed a plan...and we will support that plan."

The most blatant nonsense in the President's speech was that we're just supporting an Iraqi plan to escalate. Now Condi's doing it. Disingenuous and insulting.

Oh my. Hugh Hewitt is going to be fuming over that one.

How about this:

This dual escalation--in Iraq and, especially, against Iran--is the most reckless thing I've ever seen an American President do. God help us.

Using the hysterical, liberal word "reckless" sounds unserious to me. Shouldn't this blogger be using more measured tones?

And Joe is surely going to have to have a talk with the blogger who typed this immoderate blast:

The absolute worst moment of President Bush's dreadful speech last night was when he threatened to take action against Syria and Iran...

Now he appears to have done so, attacking the Iranian consulate in Irbil. This is an outrageous escalation--very similar to Richard Nixon's attack on Cambodia, late in the Vietnam war. Bush has been trying to provoke the Iranians into a shooting war for the past month--detaining Iranian diplomats in Baghdad, sending an additional carrier battle group to the Gulf. The Iranians have ignored the provocations, but one wonders how long they will and how they might respond. More support for the rogue wing of Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army? A Hezbollah terrorist attack against us?

For those who didn't think things could get much worse, well, good morning.

It sounds as though this person is accusing the president of setting up a phony cassus belli for war with Iran. That kind of obnoxious rhetoric is what makes the real Americans in this country mistrust the angry left. It's one thing to have disagreements with the administration, it's quite another to accuse them of lying and acting in bad faith. There can be no serious bipartisan agreements among centrists of good will with this kind of talk coming from the left.

The Washington editor of TIME.com is going to have to have a chat with her bloggers --- this could get out of hand. Joe Klein is not going to put up with offensively imprudent rhetoric on his blog for very long.




Update: Another Swampland blogger broke the primary journalistic unwritten rule by pointing out that St John McCain might just be being a wee bit disingenuous:

"I'd much rather lose a campaign than lose a war."

It's true, Jay, that few people doubt McCain sincerely believes in what he is advocating. But when he first took this position of calling for more troops, it was something of a free shot for him: It didn't look all that risky politically, because Rumsfeld was still running the Pentagon, and nobody thought Bush would actually do it.

Ooopsie. Somebody let the cat out of the bag that St John took a phony position he thought would cover him politically as long as nobody took him seriously. That's not supposed to be noticed or commented upon by respected media people. Only the filthy hippie bloggers on the left even whisper such things. Joe Klein is going to be furious at this lack of civility at TIME.com.


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digby 1/12/2007 10:33:00 AM |

 

Fingers Crossed

by poputonian

January 12, 2007

Land of Enchantment and Impeachment

By David Swanson

There is a decent chance that within the next month or two the New Mexico State Legislature will ask the U.S. House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And there is the definite possibility that a Congress Member from New Mexico will take up the matter when it gets to Washington. The Jefferson Manual, rules used by the U.S. House, allows for impeachment to be begun in this manner. It only takes one state legislature. No governor is needed. One Congress Member, from the same state or any other, is needed to essentially acknowledge receipt of the state's petition. Then impeachment begins.

Last year the state legislatures of California, Minnesota, Illinois, and Vermont introduced but did not pass resolutions to send impeachment to the U.S. House. The State Senator who introduced the bill in Minnesota is now a member of Congress, Keith Ellison. He is one of many Congress Members waiting for the right moment to impeach Bush and Cheney. The state of New Jersey has a strong activist movement working to introduce and pass impeachment this year. There's a race now to see which state can do it first, which state can redeem these United States in the eyes of the world. New Mexico is jumping into the contest in a big way, with a terrific leading sponsor of the bill, strong Democatic majorities in both houses, and a citizens' movement ready to hold its government to account.

Of course, it is cities, not states, that have really taken the lead on impeachment, as on ending the war. Dozens of cities have already passed resolutions for impeachment. Dozens more have introduced them, and they are pending. [Visit one of the best impeachment resources around - afterdowningstreet ] A handful have introduced them and voted them down. On March 6th about 100 towns in Vermont will vote at public meetings for impeachment. But by March 6th, impeachment may already be underway.

There is a conflict brewing between Congress and the White House over the war and over the division of powers created by the U.S. Constitution and eliminated by this administration. If Bush attacks Iran and/or Syria without approval from Congress, or escalates the war in Iraq without approval from Congress, we may finally see Congress fight back. This President has rendered Congress almost meaningless. He reverses laws with "signing statements." He disregards laws at his whim, openly bragging about doing so. And he makes many operations secret, hidden even from Congress, refusing requests for information, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. When this President does communicate with Congress, he often provides false or misleading information, most notably in making the case for the current war.

I don't know anything about the Jefferson Manual, or what happens procedurally or practically if impeachment begins in the way described, but whatever gets the snowball rolling, I am for it.

poputonian 1/12/2007 07:32:00 AM |

Thursday, January 11, 2007

 
Nice Try

by digby

I've heard a lot of questioning around the sphere about whether the president was authorized by the AUMF to invade Iraq Iran.

Absolutely not and the record is very specific and very clear. He's on his own. Dover Bitch reminds us that there were two drafts of the AUMF and the first one was expressly rejected because it included language that would have given the president the right to take his war regional. I assume the Democrats remember this too.



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digby 1/11/2007 11:14:00 PM |

 
Helping Hand

by digby

Fellow blogger and all around smart guy Gary Farber is a living, breathing reason why a decent society should have a decent safety net. He's got some health problems and needs to raise some money in order to keep a roof over his head. If you have any to spare, he could really use it.



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digby 1/11/2007 04:32:00 PM |

 
Getting Rich By Being Wrong

by digby

Jebediah Reed has a very entertaining and informative piece in Radar about the elite punditocrisy in which he outlines how wrong they have been --- and how rich they are getting in spite of it. And he also takes the time to examine what has happened to those pundits who were right --- and have been punished for it. It's not pretty.


Howie Kurtz meditated on this problem just the other day, admonishing those who wonder why in the hell someone like William Kristol is being offered a presumably well-paid perch at TIME when he not only already has his own magazine, but is also one of the architects of the debacle in Iraq. Howie's answer was a thinly veiled swipe at the dirty hippies, naturally:

Should they be held accountable? Should they be pressed on whether they now admit they were wrong, and how their thinking has changed since the invasion? Should they not be able to get away with the dodge that they thought Bush would manage the war much better than he did? Yes, yes, and yes.

But should they be hooted off the public stage? Tarred and feathered? Sent to reeducation camp? I don't think so.

(They always seem to get in the reeducation camp thing, which is funny since it's the conservatives who are always shipping people off to camps, not us.)

Anyway, Kurtz's argument would hold more water if anyone actually held Kristol to account for what he said and did but needless to say, nobody will. In fact, he was hired because TIME wanted to feature a roster of "stars" and Billy Kristol is a big star.

(Evidently, the difference between the Hollywood and DC star systems is that Hollywood stars' salaries go down precipitously when they make a string of flops. In DC you get higher billing and even more money. Nice racket.)

There needs to be some discussion about how to change this incentive structure. It's hurting the country. It's one thing for the rightwing noise machine to do this for the sad little wingnut welfare queens like Jonah Goldberg. Their industry is designed to reward being wrong for ideological reasons. The mainstream media, however, has no such rationale. (Or does it?) A nation that rewards those who are wrong and punishes those who are right is doomed.



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digby 1/11/2007 03:43:00 PM |

 
More 60's Greatest Hits

Steve Clemons sez:

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.

Secret war? I makes you feel all nostalgic for the good old days, doesn't it?

And anyway I thought we already knew that consultation with the congress and the people is unnecessary durin' a timowar. Your commander in chief is doing what he thinks is best, comrades, and it's not your place to second guess him. Carry on.

When's "American Idol" starting up?


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digby 1/11/2007 03:28:00 PM |

 
Mid-Life Mulligan

by digby


For those who are partial to the historical parallel as I am, you will love this one:

This comes with a huge hat tip to a good Friend of Attytood who was born 40 years ago on this date -- Happy Birthday, dude! -- and as a result is more up to speed on what happened on January 10, 1967, than the rest of us.

The big news story that night? President Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union address.

The topic that dominated all others: Vietnam.

I'm going to guide you to some excerpts of that address -- exactly 40 years ago tonight. See how it compares to some of the excerpts from President Bush's speech that were just released minutes ago:

Read it and weep --- for our country and all the people who will die before their time.

It's clear to me that there is something pathologically wrong with the right wing in America in their inability let go of the 60's. (And I'm talking to you Joe Klein.) It isn't us --- it isn't the liberals. We are not obsessed with the past or trying to relive our glory days. The liberal baby boomers are looking to the future, just as we always did, while these boomer wingnuts are mired in the their pathetic, loser youths and punishing the rest of the country because they were anachronisms in their own time.

These people are literally taking a mulligan on American history and trying to make it come out the way they wanted it to 40 years ago. (Led by the original pathological Dad, Henry Kissinger.) They are having a massive mid-life crisis and carrying a bunch of young mouthbreathers right along with them as they make the same mistakes their fathers did a generation ago. It would be a lot less pathetic (and certainly less dangerous to the world) if these people would just buy a new sportscar or get a boob job.

You can't recapture those days and change the course the history, boys and girls, no matter how hard you try. The war was a failure, your president was a criminal and the cultural revolution and fight for civil rights were successful. There's no putting those genies back in their bottles. As you all used to chant like a mantra: "Get over it."



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digby 1/11/2007 02:03:00 PM |

 
Getting Off

by digby

Everybody is wondering just what game Bush is playing. I tend to the "go for it" model, the typical spoiled rich kind, alcoholic style that is born of someone who has never had to deal with the consequences of their actions. I think that Junior sees "history" as having already vindicated him so there is no need for caution, prudence or reason to interfere with anything he emotionally needs to do.

Cheney is trying to secure oil fields and create an imperial America that only superficially answers to the people, whom he disdains. So, for him, everything is going fine. I think they figure that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going after Iran and while they might get their hair mussed, at the end of the day, the oil fields will be securely under American control.

But I could be wrong. James Ridgeway doesn't believe, as I do, that Rove would manipulate the simpleton Bush into purposefully dragging out the war to avoid responsibility for losing or that Bush himself is a psycho. He sees something else going on:

There may well be a much more sinister game at play here. That centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an outside advisor to Bush and other top officials in Washington.

Gareth Porter, the historian who ran the Indochina Resource Center in the early 70s, points out in a January 11 article on Asia Online that "although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi'ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the US position in the war is actually weak and unstable."

Porter continues, "One of Kissinger's accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration' s propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing." Moreover, it was Kissinger who figured out how Ford could claim a Vietnam victory and blame the whole mess on the Democrats.

So, it's quite possible that Bush will plunge into a counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, and then amidst mass civilian carnage, declare victory and announce negotiations. Sooner or later there will have to be negotiations, and this may be his ploy.

I think it's highly unlikely that they could get away with this ploy with a president virtually everyone now acknowledges is an idiot. Neither will it be believable in an age of mass communication and suicide bombers in the middle of a block-by-block urban civil war. But I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that's what Kissinger is advising. It would be so like him.

And then there's this, from Commander Jeff Huber USN (Ret.)at Pen and Sword, who made the obvious observation the other day that the reason to put a navy man in charge of Centcom is because you anticipate a naval battle:

No one seems to seriously think Mr. Bush's escalation strategy will work, including, one gets the distinct impression, Mr. Bush himself.

That depends, of course, on what your definition of "works" is. If you mean something along the lines of "restore order to Iraq, disband the militias, unify the government and rebuild the country," no, that's not going to work.

If you mean: "escalate and expand the war throughout the region," yeah, that will work. It's working already.

Read the whole thing. This is no joke. There are some very weird things going on. As Huber points out, even Ralph Peters gets it:

WORD that Adm. William Fallon will move laterally from our Pacific Command to take charge of Central Command - responsible for the Middle East - while two ground wars rage in the region baffled the media.

Why put a swabbie in charge of grunt operations?

There's a one-word answer: Iran.

ASSIGNING a Navy avia tor and combat veteran to oversee our military operations in the Persian Gulf makes perfect sense when seen as a preparatory step for striking Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities - if that becomes necessary.

While the Air Force would deliver the heaviest tonnage of ordnance in a campaign to frustrate Tehran's quest for nukes, the toughest strategic missions would fall to our Navy. Iran would seek to retaliate asymmetrically by attacking oil platforms and tankers, closing the Strait of Hormuz - and trying to hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.

Only the U.S. Navy - hopefully, with Royal Navy and Aussie vessels underway beside us - could keep the oil flowing to a thirsty world.

In your dreams buddy. Nobody else is signing on to this crazy shit.

Bush's affect was completely flat last night. I think he's now just letting all this unfold around him, secure in the belief that God is on his side and he will be bailed out by history no matter what happens in the short term, just as his Daddy's friends always bailed him out of everything he did before he became president. (With all the blathering about character in the two Bush elections, the media gave this guy such a pass for his obvious, lifelong character flaws and we are paying the price for it now.)

It occurs to me as I read that breathless acount from Peters that we shouldn't underestimate the pull of war addiction as a motivator either. As I pictured the wingnuts and the media getting all hot and bothered over air strikes and naval battles, I could see that they and Bush and Cheney might just need a fix that only a bright shiny new war can provide. This is the problem with wars in which individuals make no sacrifices and suffer no personal consequences. They get off on the rush and don't have to pay the price. That's not good.

I think they are going for it.


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digby 1/11/2007 11:47:00 AM |

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

 
I'm The Escalator

by digby

Sorry, I kind of dozed off during Junior's speech tonight. He must have popped one of Laura's downers before he went on because I've rarely seen him so somnambulent. It was catching. Or maybe it's just that all that escalatin' is hard work. The president, it appears, is very tie-tie.

He did say one interesting thing, or at least one thing that is very interesting to the wingnuts. In fact, they are electrified about it:

Bush Targets Iran in Speech, Implies Military Action

Though President Bush's national address Wednesday night was about Iraq, his most provocative comments focused on her neighbor, Iran.

Early in his speech Bush raised the matter of Iran, suggesting that if U.S. efforts to secure Iraq failed, "Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons."

Bush blamed both Syria and Iran in helping radical insurgents within Iraq.

"These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq," he said.

He then singled out Iran, adding that she "is providing material support for attacks on American troops."

Bush made an implied military threat against both nations: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

The President continued in this vein, suggesting a larger U.S. goal of stopping Iran's nuclear program:

"We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing — and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies.

We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

Now look, boys. I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches. But I got a pretty fair idea that somethin' doggoned important's going on back there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beins if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing - the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down. Tell ya somethin' else - this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions an' personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. Now, let's get this thing on the hump. We got some flyin' to do.




Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it. Read this article by Sidney Blumenthal about how Bush called the Baker Hamilton report a "flaming turd" and how Condoleeza Rice was their last best hope to keep the spoiled little prince from holding his breath until he turns blue. She failed.

Your second assignment is to read these two stories about the Cheney cabal.

Then come back here and we'll start a pool on when the Iran action is going to officially begin, ok?


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digby 1/10/2007 08:21:00 PM |

 
Whispers

by digby


Dana