Hullabaloo

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

 
Rolling In The Pen With Pigs

by digby


George W. Bush is so desperate to get his embarrassed base out to vote that he's appearing with extremist talk show pig Rush Limbaugh tomorrow.

That honor and dignity schtick is now so dead it stinks --- they aren't even pretending anymore. He is sullying the presidency worse than a million adulterous blojobs could ever do. Just days ago that gelatinous blowhard cruelly derided a man with Parkinson's Disease for lowlife political purposes. And now the President of the United States is going to validate his malevolent cultural poison by appearing on his show.

Say your final good-byes to that silly Hughesian alliterative construct, "compassionate conservatism." George W. Bush and his porcine hatchet-man are going to be smothering the last remaining vestige of it tomorrow as they wallow around together in the fetid shit pile known as the Rush Limbaugh Show.

It sure makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?


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digby 10/31/2006 09:40:00 PM |

 
The Plan

by digby

According to the NY Times some Republicans have a whole new approach to Iraq:

President Bush isn’t getting our frustrations — it’s time to be decisive, beat the terrorists,” Mike McGavick, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington, said in an advertisement that began running this week. “Partition the country if we have to and get our troops home in victory.”

Good thinking. We need to beat those damned terrorists, partition the country whether the Iraqis like it or not, win and come on home. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Let's roll!

Update: I'm reminded by commenter Straight Talk express that there is another even more sophisticated GOP plan out there, proposed by presumptive GOP presidential candidate St. John McCain:

"one of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the shiites and the sunnis down and say, 'stop the bullshit.'"

These Republicans are all deep, deep thinkers.


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digby 10/31/2006 08:00:00 PM |

 
Hangin' Wi Da Homeboys

by digby

I just saw John Fund insist to Maxine Waters that he had a lot of friends in her Compton and Inglewood district. I think she almost burst out laughing.

She smacked the smug little bastard down good. If you want to see what a real fighting liberal looks like, she's it.

Here's the transcript:

FUND: John Kerry is the titular head of the Democratic Party. And, clearly, in 2004, his position on Iraq was completely muddled.

And I think the problem is, this distracts from the Democratic message, and it makes people ask: All right, the Republicans are leading an unpopular war. But what is the Democratic plan to get the troops home?

And it is unclear. Nancy Pelosi wants to end the war. The only way to end the war, realistically, if the president doesn't want to, is to cut funding. This leaves this ambiguous.

WATERS: That's -- that's absolutely ridiculous.

As a matter of fact, the Out of Iraq Caucus that I have to organize have been working for over a year to try and get all of the members of Congress to have enough courage to pressure the president into correcting his wrong. He started this war.

FUND: Congresswoman, you...

WATERS: And those of you who -- those of you who protect him are simply...

FUND: No.

WATERS: ... trying to say, yes, he started it.

FUND: Congresswoman...

WATERS: ... but, somehow we must come up with the answer about how to get our troops back out.

FUND: ... I'm not protecting President Bush. But I am from California.

WATERS: Yes, you are.

FUND: And I know lots of people in your district. And you have told people in your district you want to end funding for the war.

WATERS: No, I have not. And you don't know lots of people in my district.

FUND: Yes, I...

WATERS: I'm sure...

FUND: I know lots of people in Compton.

WATERS: ... you would like people to believe that.

FUND: I know lots of people in Inglewood, absolutely.

WATERS: I do not represent anybody in Compton. So, let's get it straight.

You have been protecting the president. You have been trying to make sense out of this war that he got us involved in. We have almost 3,000 soldiers that have been killed, almost $400 billion of taxpayers' money that's been spent, between Iraq and Afghanistan. There's no end in sight.

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digby 10/31/2006 05:58:00 PM |

 
Spit Spin

by digby

So a bunch of George Allen's banjo-boys roughed up blogger Mike Stark today saying "you got personal" when he asked Allen if it was true that he had spit on his first wife. He's lucky. Allen usually spits on people who annoy him.

The facts are that Allen refuses to release his divorce records or his arrest records. I have no idea what's it them, of course. But I don't think anyone would be particularly surprised to find out that the rumors about him spitting on his ex-wife are true. He often spits to make a statement. And he always has:

"One thing that always disgusted me about George was that he chewed tobacco in college and often carried no cup to spit into and he would walk down the halls at Newcomb Hall," Shelton said. "He would spit tobacco juice on the floors and on the wall with total disrespect, in my opinion, for the University, the students and the janitors, and at that time most of them were black."

And just a week or so ago Ryan Lizza, writing in TNR about Mark Warner, said:

One night in New Hampshire, after a few drinks at a pool hall in a college town, the conversation turned to the political troubles of another potential '08 contender. I told a story that had been making the rounds about how this politician once spit on his wife.

Gosh, I wonder who that could be? The '08 contender who is a known spitter? Hmmmm.

Maybe it's personal but that's not Stark's problem. Allen even made it his signature:

Allen's personal style is similarly distinctive. He drinks beer mixed with orange juice and signs personal notes with the salutation, "Spit, George."Washington Post, Dec. 31, 1995

I don't know why it's so wrong for his constituents to ask him about these rumors. He's a spitter and proud of it. If he doesn't want people gossiping about him spitting on his ex-wife, maybe he shouldn't spit at people all the time. It tends to make those rumors awfully believable.


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digby 10/31/2006 04:14:00 PM |

 
The American Theocracy Movement

by tristero

Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias are wrong. The movement to establish an American theocracy is serious, relentless, and very, very dangerous.

Need proof? Start by picking up a copy of With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple by the Reverend [sic] Joe Morecraft III. You will find there a succinct discussion of the rationales and reasoning behind the modern christianist movement. You will also encounter, in stark language, many ideas, such as "America is a Christian nation" that are currently being mainstreamed.

Then learn something about "intelligent design" creationism. I don't mean the doctrine, which is simply worthless both as science or theology. I'm talking about the history, rationale, and culture (I use the term loosely) behind the movement. Read the Wedge strategy. Then, to get a sense of who is funding this, read Creationism's Trojan Horse by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross. If you think alarm bells about the theocracy movement are just hype, you will be shocked to discover that the alarm bells aren't ringing loud enough.

ID creationism may be the wedge that theocrats are using, but it is hardly the only strategy. Go to Colorado Springs or Springfield, MO and attend some megachurch ceremonies. I'm talking about places where christianism is a lifestyle, 24/7, where the churches have elaborate multi-media services and a Starbucks on the premises:

The megachurches thus become part church, part shopping mall and part country club. One in Tacoma, Washington, even has its own Starbucks. Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston has a McDonald's on its 111 acres. The Prestonwood Baptist Church, near Dallas, boasts 15 baseball fields, a Fifties-style diner and a food court. New Birth Baptist Church, also in Texas, offers web links to "antiques", "dining" and "health and fitness".

In addition to the megachurches, there are 31 "gigachurches" in the US, which are defined as those that at least 10,000 people attend every Sunday; 73 per cent of all these are in Bush-Cheney territory in the South or West. Some offer bookstores and health clubs on their premises. The Lakewood Church, yet another in Houston, describes itself as a "non-denominational charismatic church" and has a congregation of 25,000 every Sunday. It says it will soon have more than 30,000 people attending the remodelled, $73m former "Compaq Centre" that was previously home to the Houston Rockets, a basketball team.*

Sam Rosenfeld sets up an utterly false dichotomy between the notion that christianists are rubes who have been suckered and christianists as malevolent force. Merely because there are some high-level Bush officials, like Rove, who think Robertson is nuts, doesn't show that the "religious" right has been suckered. Look at the faith-based programs. Look at the infiltration of science/health programs with christianist propaganda. After all, this is a country which, until Bush, wouldn't have dreamed of selling in a national park bookstore, a history of the Grand Canyon that claimed it was only 6,000 years old.

True, christianists have not gotten from Bush everything they've wanted. So they've been screaming bloody murder at their "betrayal." That hardly means they are in retreat. They have advanced far in the past 6 years. Now, they are simply honing their strategy for the next step.

Christianists, however, have succeeeded in mainstreaming the notion that religion belongs in politics. It doesn't, not in America, so it's quite a step to have the churches in this country so well organized to push a christianist agenda and even endorse (wink, wink, illegal tho it may be) candidates. It's quite a step to have mainstream national politicians trumpet their piety - as if that is some kind of qualification for running a country - with an intensity that I can't recall in the races of the past thirty or forty years.

To pooh-pooh the influence of christianism on American politics, as Rosenfeld does, requires ignoring the plain and simple fact that General Jerry Boykin, a man suffering from paranoid delusions that Satan is hovering over battlefields and who is clearly in need of psychiatric help, still has a job. And not just any job; he is one of the pointsmen in the hunt for al Qaeda and bin Laden.

Sigh. Once again, intelligent liberals are making the dangerous mistake of attributing their own intellectual acumen and worldview to other Americans, who think and live very differently than themselves. I share with Yglesias and Rosenfeld a thorough disgust with both the ideas and the lifestyle of the christianists. I find it hard to believe they take their theology seriously as a religion: as Yglesias points out, it's nuts to believe in an absurd religion that consigns Gandhi to hell. And like them, I find the unique cultural trappings of christianism - the crass materialism and cynical marketing of religious belief - repulsive. How can anyone be suckered into this bullshit?

But the fact that I find christianism utterly repulsive when it's not just silly doesn't take away from the fact that many, many Americans are deeply attracted to it. Many more Americans have trouble distinguishing between the more diluted versions of christianism and their own desire to have a meaningful place for religion and national pride in their lives.

It is a serious mistake to underestimate these people. They have more cash, and more followers than we do. More importantly, they know, as we yet don't, that they are in a culture war. And they know, as incredible as it surely sounds to Rosenfeld and Yglesias, that the culture war is a continuation of the ancient struggle between the priests and the philosophes and ideals of the Enlightenment. Go ahead, Matt and Sam, read what they actually say. Listen to their speeches. That's what this is about.

In 2002/2003, some liberals - but not this one - were bamboozled by the so-called "seriousness" of respected, brilliant minds like those of Wolfowitz and Perle. The notion that they were dangerous extremists who would lead the country into a catastrophe was extremely hard for some intelligent people to accept. It is dismaying to see that happening again with christianism. Yglesias and Rosenfeld fail to understand, as many liberals have over the past 25 years, that these people are serious and their influence over American life has grown exponentially over the past 6 years. Santorum may no longer have a Senate seat come November 7, but don't kid yourself. To christianists, that simply means that Santorum will be moved to a different battlefied.

One final thing. Dobson, et al, have been whining non-stop that they are not being taken seriously by the Bush administration, (a perception that, amusingly, both Yglesias and Rosenfeld seem to agree with, albeit with a different sense of whether that's a good thing). LIke everything else Dobson utters, it is utter crap. It's all of a piece with the kind of wingnut bitching that always casts the right as the beleagured good guys against the evil liberals. It's the "mainstream liberal media" myth all over again.

Don't you believe it. The "religious" right is on a major roll.

The notion that America was founded by christianists is now so widespread that scholars have been working overtime churning out books to remind this country that there is absolutely no truth to the meme. The war against fucking continues unabated, with serious people actually debating the utility of abstinence-only sex education and the "ineffectiveness" of condoms. The assault on embryonic stem-cell research is a national disgrace. And most important of all, the meta-myth of christianism - that a good leader should not listen to reason but to his heart - is so much the norm in America's concept of politics that very few dare question it in public. Indeed, Bush may not be a perfect christianist, but he embodies their ideal of leading from the depths of a soul at one with God.*

Sam and Matt, the religious right has declared war on you and me, a war they are preparing to win. And they can. They are armed and very dangerous. And they will surely succeed if you, and others with more influence, continue to underestimate their power and fail to grasp their alarming growth and their intentions. They cannot be dismissed as mere kooks. They cannot be ignored. They must be confronted and loudly denounced whenever they rear their ugly heads in national discourse. I don't have words strong enough to say how urgent I think it is for you to educate yourself on exactly who these people are and what they want. Don't wait until they are even stronger. We need your voices in strong opposition. Hell, guys, you need your voices, even if you don't know that yet.

*And that is why I think of christianism as a particularly obscene form of blasphemy.

tristero 10/31/2006 03:22:00 AM |

Monday, October 30, 2006

 
Bizarroworld

by digby

From The Democratic Strategist

In the final three weeks of the campaign, longtime leading Democratic strategists such as Stan Greenberg and James Carville urge the party to maximize the once-in-a-generation opportunity the 2006 election offers Democrats by reaching out for every seat that is even conceivably contestable. Netroots newcomers, however, are not so ambitious, preferring to see the Democrats focus their attention on locking in their potential gains rather than reaching too far and "blowing it."

That reflects an ironic turn of events for internal Democratic Party strategic debate. Netroots newcomers, throughout 2000, 2002 and 2004, complained bitterly about the cautiousness of Democratic campaign insiders in Washington. Now the tables are turned. Political guru Charlie Cook calls it a generation gap in perceptions of what is happening in 2006. Old-timers who lived through 1974 and 1994 have felt all year that 2006 could develop into an enormous, earthshaking Democratic sweep -- they'd seen this kind of thing before, and this felt like that. Netroots activists, in contrast, have not seen that kind of sweeping election victory before?their experience has been largely a series of narrow, nail-biting elections with winners and losers determined by a handful of seats in a 50-50 political world.

Because of their different experiences, netrooters have dismissed talk of a sweep as so much old-timer mysticism. Old-timers have been unable to believe the netrooters do not see what is clearly before their eyes. As a result of their different experiences, netrooters are also more focused on carefully bringing home every victory that's clearly in reach and leaving nothing to chance in any race, while the old-timers are wondering whether a bank would loan the DNC $5 million or $10 million against future contributions to expand their reach from 30 targeted seats to 50. Old-timers are also speculating about whether they should count as won the top ten prospective take-overs and shift resources from those seats to the Tier 3 opportunities.

Whichever direction the party takes in the final weeks -- whether a cautious, button-down strategy designed to make no mistakes and lose no birds in the hand, or a more "all-in," go-for-broke strategy that seeks every possible bird in every possible bush -- one outcome is certain: A very different, more mainstream, more suburban and small-town, greatly expanded House Democratic caucus will present a new face of the Democratic Party to the country as the 2008 Presidential election gets underway on November 8.

Huh?

Well, that sure is going to come as a helluva surprise to all those netroots leaders who have been begging the establishment to expand the field for some time now, raised a bunch of money for candidates the house and senate election committees had given up for lost and then initiated a successful campaign to pry last minute money out of some cash hogs who refused to step up. If anybody objected to the party borrowing 10 million dollars it was only because there were a bunch of safe Dems sitting on cash they weren't using. WTF?

I'm not quite sure what to think about this freakishly incorrect scenario. Part of me thinks it's better if it continues, since it portrays we ignorant netroots as being a staid "buttoned down" faction. The last I heard we were the unhinged hippies dragging the party over the leftist cliff and the good boys and girls of the DLC choir were valiently beating us back.

But I don't think the other half of this will fly for a moment. The "old timers" are a bunch of swashbuckling risk takers? It's hilarious. These are the same people who were telling candidates not to talk about Iraq just a couple of months ago.

I have to assume that this is some sort of positioning for credit although it's not even slightly believable. But it does indicate that the establishment is now trying to hook themselves some of that hot and sexy netroots image. And who can blame them?



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digby 10/30/2006 03:21:00 PM |

 
Who You Gonna Call?

by digby

Let's say you have a problem. You have the choice of two people to solve the problem --- the one who caused the problem, refuses to admit it even is a problem and won't change anything even as the problem grows worse --- or the other one. Which do you choose?

That's the simple logic of this election.

There are, of course, many affirmative Democratic messages necessary for the future. But right now, this is it.



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digby 10/30/2006 02:27:00 PM |

 
The Wills Article

by tristero

Below, Digby linked to an article by Garry Wills which details the extent the US government has been undermined by christianists with the help of the Bush administration, its ranks fully penetrated by political activists whose agenda is to establish an American theocracy. The article seems, for the most part, very good. The reason I haven't mentioned it, although I read it several days ago when my paper copy of New York Review of Books came is because there is a very unfortunate error of fact in the discussion of "intelligent design" creationism. In addition there is a minor factual error and a misleading emphasis. I alerted NY Review of these errors, and also notified a scholar of ID creationism, but the errors persist in the online version that they posted.

Wills writes

The Discovery Institute claims that it is a scientific, not a religious, enterprise, but that claim was belied when one of its internal documents was discovered. It promised that the institute would "function as a wedge...[to] split the trunk [of materialism] at its weakest points" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." The institute is mainly funded with evangelical money, and its spokespersons are evangelicals—one, Philip Johnson, says he was inspired by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon to "devote my life to destroying Darwinism."

1. In fact, it was not Johnson but Jonathan Wells who said that. As it happens, Wells is a "senior fellow" at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (which changed its name to the Center for Science and Culture).

2. CRSC is one part of the Discovery Institute but Wills conflates DI with CRSC, as do many authors. This is not a major error. I don't know, however, if DI's money comes entirely or mainly from religious groups (and have to rush out now before I can check). CRSC, however, has, shall we say, interesting funding (see below).

3. Unfortunately, Wills actually minimized the alarming character of the people funding ID by labelling them simply "evangelicals," which encompasses everyone from Tony Campolo to Pat Robertson. In fact, much of the original funding for the marketing of "intelligent design" creationism came from none other than Howard Ahmanson, a disciple of Rousas John Rushdoony. Rushdoony, of course, is a "Christian Reconstructionist," an open advocate of replacing the American Republic with a theocracy. My source is Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross's excellent Creationism's Trojan Horse. Forrest was one of the main witnesses in the Kitzmiller case.

As far as I can tell, the other incidents Wills discussed that I've heard about are accurately portrayed.

Obviously, I'm not happy drawing attention to flaws in an article by an author I admire and the thrust of whose argument I fully agree with. But they are there and readers should know about them.
tristero 10/30/2006 12:23:00 PM |

 
We Are The Realists

by digby


Maybe I'm out of stem with other liberals but this doesn't ring true to me. From a new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner research strategy memo on National Security:

Don't let anti-Bush reflexes undermine Democrats' heritage of internationalism. Over the longer term, Democrats can only retain national leadership and the public's trust if we promote a strong, idealistic, and outward-looking vision of America's purposes in the world. Anti-Bush passion may be enough to drive big gains in 2006. But Democrats cannot afford to let anti-Bushism morph into anti-internationalism. For example, it is troubling that, according to a poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund, a majority of Democrats -- the party that helped bring down apartheid in South Africa and Pinochet in Chile -- now rejects the idea of promoting democracy abroad. Similarly, there are worrisome signs that many Democrats now doubt our ability to improve the world; in the August Democracy Corps survey only a 49-46 percent plurality of Democrats agreed that "America's power is generally a force for good in the world," and fully 60 percent of liberal Democrats chose the alternative statement, that "America's power generally does more harm than good when we act abroad." As The New Republic's Peter Beinart and others have argued, it will be important for Democratic leaders over the coming months and years to push back against such beliefs and to mobilize support within the party's base for a serious international agenda that includes combating jihadist ideology and violence, stemming WMD proliferation, strengthening NATO and our other alliances, supporting the spread of liberal democracy and human rights, and tackling global environmental and humanitarian challenges.

I suspect there is an impulse to pause and take a breath with "democracy promotion" since it's been so bastardized by the neocons these last few years, but I don't get the sense that liberals want to withdraw from the world. What they want is a greater emphasis on international cooperation in dealing with these challenges instead of this militaristic (and yes, imperialistic) view that America must exert its power unilaterally. I don't think there are very many liberals out there who don't see every challenge on that list as something that must be dealt with --- it's the how, not the if.

After watching the Bush administration turn the US into a pariah nation in six short years we liberals recognise that we have some work to do to earn the world's respect and regain our leadership role. We will not have national security or global stability without it. Pretending that we are the same nation that sat atop the rubble of WWII is a foolish naive dream as much as the neocon Pax Americana was.

Liberals are the new realists (in the dictionary, not policy-school sense.)We're not about withdrawing from the world but we recognise that the Bush years have tainted our place in it so badly that the world has withdrawn from us. It's going to take more than evoking the ghost of George Kennan to get our honor back --- and we have to smart enough to be careful about how we do it.

Democrats need to dig deeper than "democracy promotion" and create a better argument if they want to prevail on national security. It shouldn't be too hard. The whole damned world hates us now and if that isn't a Republican failure I don't know what is. Let's start from there.



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digby 10/30/2006 11:41:00 AM |

 
The Wrong Lesson

by digby


Many bloggers have pointed out that Jim Webb's novels are on the professional reading list of the US Marine Corps, which would indicate that the adults in the military aren't too shocked by the sex scenes.*

But there is something disturbing on that reading list, which is that the top recomendation for staff sergeants and first lieutenants --- the leaders who generally have the most face to face contact with the locals --- is that piece of trash "The Arab Mind." I had thought that it was only considered a bible by the senior brass. I didn't know they were having the troops read it too. No wonder things have gone so badly.

This is another in a long line of errors, but it points to one of the biggest motivations for this invasion and occupation --- racism. There were far too many people who were willing to believe that when it came to teaching the world who's boss, any arab would do. This book helped create the sense that arabs are all alike and that they are just a little bit less evolved than we purebred (hah!) Americans.

This is terribly unfair to the iraqis and it's unfair to the troops. They should remove that book from the reading list or at least provide some other books on the subject and some guidance. They should not give it to sergeants and first lieutenants and then just tell them to go forth and deal with the Iraqis. It's akin to giving them bad body armor. (Oh wait ... )




* I'm reminded of Ross Perot, who went to the Naval Academy but left the service prematurely because he couldn't take all the cursing.


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digby 10/30/2006 10:56:00 AM |

 
Stepping On Our Dreams

by digby


Many people seem to be convinced that the key to this election is going to be conservative Christians staying home. I don't think so. James Dobson and his ilk are out there telling them to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils and they will do it -- at least for now. And the southern Kristallnacht Republicans will vote for their tribe no matter what.

This, in my view, is the Republican party's big problem --- the suburban, educated voters:

The M.B.A.’s have had it. The engineers are fuming.

For as long as anyone here can remember, Bellevue has been a stronghold of socially liberal Republicanism. First, it was a prosperous Seattle bedroom community, then a technological boomtown, where employees of Microsoft and Internet start-ups consistently voted for fiscal restraint and hands-off government.

But now, voters here are accusing the party in power of overspending and overreaching — and when they do, they sound like people who write manifestos, not software code.

“I’m a mild-mannered guy,” Michael Mattison, a partner in a software venture development firm, said as he stabbed a piece of halibut in the sunlit dining room of a local bistro. “But we can no longer be subdued.”

Bellevue has been growing more Democratic for several years, thanks to an influx of liberal voters and a professional class that is changing teams. This year, Bellevue may send its first Democrat to Congress. Darcy Burner, who even supporters admit is inexperienced, may unseat Representative Dave Reichert, a well-liked, longtime public servant, simply because constituents want Democratic control of the House of Representatives.

“I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,” Tony Schuler, an operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr. Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private affairs.

“The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay,” he said. “Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to interfere with those things.”

In Bellevue, the professional is political. Rather than religion or culture, what unites the diverse population — a quarter of residents are foreign born — are the values of their workplaces: technological innovation, accuracy, efficiency.

And this year, one issue incenses them above all others: restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

It is a matter of concern across the country, even across parties. But for many engineers and their ilk, restriction of stem cell research is what gay marriage is to conservative Christians, a phenomenon so counter to their basic values that they cannot vote for any candidate who supports it. After all, for Bellevue’s professionals, science is not only a means of creating wealth but also an idealistic pursuit, the most promising way they know of improving the human condition.

I think that is one of the most interesting observations I've read in a while (certainly in the New York Times.) The Republicans and the Christian Right are leading America on a backward march into the Dark Ages --- and that is stepping on our dreams. As a culture, we have always been idealistic about progress and inspired by new discoveries to improve the lot of the human race. We're about invention and reinvention. It's one of our best qualities.

These people are telling us that those days are over. We have to depend upon brute force, superstition and ancient revelation. Science is dangerous. Art is frightening. Education must be strictly circumscribed so that children aren't exposed to ideas that might lead them astray.

It's a pinched, sour, ugly vision of America. For those who believe that their time on earth is all about waiting for The Bridegroom, perhaps that doesn't mean much. But for the rest of us, things like scientific breakthroughs or artistic achievement are inspirational, soaring emotional connections with our country and our fellow man. It makes us proud. The dark-ages conservatives want to take that away from us.

This country has been divided at 50/50 for some time. That probably cannot continue much longer and a real majority will emerge before long. Tax-cuts have held together the GOP coalition up to now, but their dark vision of the future may be the thing that finally drives the suburban, educated voters to our side of the ledger for a long time to come. We're the ones with the progressive dream of the future and that's as American as a Big Mac and fries.



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digby 10/30/2006 09:09:00 AM |

 
They Don't Miss A Trick, Do They?

by tristero

Please understand that I think the Dems, in reality, have no incentive to backpedal or go soft on the egregiously awful, even criminal, behavior of our Republican overlords. They should hold them accountable via robust investigations, oversights, and when called for, indictments. That said, in reality there are many obstacles to doing so. The worst, of course, is that the US has a juvenile delinquent for a president who has been double-daring his opponents to make explicit the constitutional crisis he began during the Florida election debacle of 2000, and which he has renewed over Schiavo and the filibuster "nuclear option." Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats will not act in such a way as to force a serious public showdown over Bush's crackpot notion of the "unitary executive" (ie, the idea that the Constitution makes a Republican president an absolute monarch).

But there is another reason the government will remain seriously dysfunctional for a long time (and for you cynics who think government ipso facto is incompetent, far more dysfunctional than it was under previous presidents, and far more dysfunctional than it has to be). This outrage is a good example of why:

Congressional Democrats say a new government publication being sent to all Medicare beneficiaries inappropriately favors private insurance plans over the traditional government-run program.

The publication, the 2007 Medicare handbook, "presents a misleading and biased view of Medicare coverage and options," the Democrats said last week in a letter to Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services.

Beneficiaries use the handbook as an authoritative guide. It has become more important in the last few years as Medicare has become more complex, with new insurance options and a prescription drug benefit offered by scores of competing private insurers.

"The 2007 handbook strongly favors health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations and other private Medicare Advantage plans over the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program," the Democrats said in the letter.

[boilerplate and vaguely worded denial from the Bush administration.]

Managed care plans often have networks of doctors and hospitals, and beneficiaries may have to pay higher fees, exceeding what they would pay under traditional Medicare, if they go outside the network. In traditional Medicare, patients can choose from a broader range of doctors and hospitals, although a small number of doctors say they do not take Medicare patients because they consider the payments inadequate.

Get it? Not only is this disgraceful in itself, it only one of many such incidents that we know of. There's the advocacy of utterly bogus abstinence-only sex education (pdf) as well as false information being provided by federally funded pregnancy centers (pdf). But it's not only health, of course. Who can forget George Deutsch insisting that NASA scientists take into account "intelligent design" creationism arguments when discussing the Big Bang? And let's also recall that until Bush came into power, FEMA was a well-respected agency.

In short, the rightwing assault on the US government since 2000 has been comprehensive and unrelenting. The Bush administration has not only mis-managed from the top, but has deliberately degraded the efficiency and integrity of government at the midlevel as well. It will take years, many years, to remove the godawful incompetents Bush has brought into bureaucracies.

And for the libertarians out there, let me be clear. I don't mind in the slightest having my tax dollars going to support Medicare. But I very much mind having my tax dollars wasted on ideological propaganda designed to undermine Medicare by misrepresenting its benefits and limitations in order to benefit the rich.



Update: Digby here. Sorry to intrude, but I have to add this link to Gary Wills' phenomenal article this week-end in the NY Review of Book on this very topic: A Country Ruled by Faith. (Let's just say Amy Sullivan won't be pleased.)

carry on.
tristero 10/30/2006 06:01:00 AM |

Sunday, October 29, 2006

 
Pig Slap

by digby

Did he really say this?

Down in Wyoming, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin got into some hot water when, after a debate, she threatened Libertarian candidate Thomas Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair. She reportedly said to him, "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."

She later apologized, saying she may have been influenced by listening to too much Rush Limbaugh. Last week, Limbaugh said he would slap actor and Parkinson's disease sufferer Michael J. Fox, "if you'd just quit bobbing your head."

I knew that he was a degenerate pig, and his comments have all been disgusting on this subject, but I hadn't heard he went that far. Does anyone know if that's true?


*And that woman deserves to lose, both for what she originally said and the idiotic excuse she came up with.


Update: Doh. That's what I get for taking the quote from another blog and not reading the whole article. It's a satire.


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digby 10/29/2006 11:26:00 PM |

 
Using Our Religion

by digby


Readers urged me to write about this today and it is worth some discussion:

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.

The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.

Officials of both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government strongly denied yesterday that President Chávez’s administration, which has been bitterly at odds with Washington, has any role in Smartmatic.

“The government of Venezuela doesn’t have anything to do with the company aside from contracting it for our electoral process,” the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said last night.

(Right. This is worthy of investigation but the president of Diebold saying he was determined to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004 was just a figure of speech.)

The fact that the government is investigating Hugo "sulphur" Chavez's alleged interest in election machines may very well be part of an emerging post-election GOP narrative. I have believed that Republicans might claim vote fraud in this election for some time. I wrote back in June:

The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time thye become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.

In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now, we know that it's the Republicans who have been doing the stealing ---- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is "stolen election" and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It's like an ear worm. You don't know the song its from, necessarily, but you can't get it out of your head.

We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate --- and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it. As I mentioned a month or so ago, Karl Rove was at the Republican Lawyers Association talking about how the Democrats are stealing elections:

QUESTION: The question I have: The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud. And we know that, in some states, some of our folks are pushing for election measures like voter ID.

But have you thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive?

ROVE: Yes, it's an interesting idea. We've got a few more things to do before the political silly season gets going, really hot and heavy. But yes, this is a real problem. What is it -- five wards in the city of Milwaukee have more voters than adults?

With all due respect to the City of Brotherly Love, Norcross Roanblank's (ph) home turf, I do not believe that 100 percent of the living adults in this city of Philadelphia are registered, which is what election statistics would lead you to believe.

I mean, there are parts of Texas where we haven't been able to pull that thing off.

(LAUGHTER)

And we've been after it for a great many years.

So I mean, this is a growing problem.

The spectacle in Washington state; the attempts, in the aftermath of the 2000 election to disqualify military voters in Florida, or to, in one instance, disqualify every absentee voter in Seminole county -- I mean, these are pretty extraordinary measures that should give us all pause.

The efforts in St. Louis to keep the polls opened -- open in selected precincts -- I mean, I would love to have that happen as long, as I could pick the precincts.

This is a real problem. And it is not going away.

I mean, Bernalillo County, New Mexico will have a problem after the next election, just like it has had after the last two elections.

I mean, I remember election night, 2000, when they said, oops, we just made a little mistake; we failed to count 55,000 ballots in Bernalillo; we'll be back to you tomorrow.

(LAUGHTER)

That is a problem. And I don't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, a vegetarian or a beef-eater, this is an issue that ought to concern you because, at the heart of it, our democracy depends upon the integrity of the ballot place. And if you cannot...

(APPLAUSE)

I have to admit, too -- look, I'm not a lawyer. So all I've got to rely on is common sense. But what is the matter? I go to the grocery store and I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I've got to show a little bit of ID.

Why should it not be reasonable and responsible to say that when people show up at the voting place, they ought to be able to prove who they are by showing some form of ID?

We can make arrangements for those who don't have driver's licenses. We can have provisional ballots, so that if there is a question that arises, we have a way to check that ballot. But it is fundamentally fair and appropriate to say, if you're going to show up and claim to be somebody, you better be able to prove it, when it comes to the most sacred thing we have been a democracy, which is our right of expression at the ballot.

And if not, let's just not kid ourselves, that elections will not be about the true expression of the people in electing their government, it will be a question of who can stuff it the best and most. And that is not healthy.

QUESTION: I've been reading some articles about different states, notably in the west, going to mail-in ballots and maybe even toying with the idea of online ballots. Are you concerned about this, in the sense of a mass potential, obviously, for voter fraud that this might have in the West?

ROVE: Yes. And I'm really worried about online voting, because we do not know all the ways that one can jimmy the system. All we know is that there are many ways to jimmy the system.

I'm also concerned about the increasing problems with mail-in ballots. Having last night cast my mail-in ballot for the April 11 run-off in Texas, in which there was one race left in Kerr County to settle -- but I am worried about it because the mail-in ballots, particularly in the Northwest, strike me as problematic.

I remember in 2000, that we had reports of people -- you know, the practice in Oregon is everybody gets their ballot mailed to them and then you fill it out.

And one of the practices is that people will go to political rallies and turn in their ballots. And we received reports in the 2000 election -- which, remember we lost Oregon by 5000 votes -- we got reports of people showing up at Republican rallies and passing around the holder to get your ballot, and then people not being able to recognize who those people were and not certain that all those ballots got turned in.

On Election Day, I remember, in the city of Portland, Multnomah County -- I'm going to mispronounce the name -- but there were four of voting places in the city, for those of you who don't get the ballots, well, we had to put out 100 lawyers that day in Portland, because we had people showing up with library cards, voting at multiple places.

I mean, why was it that those young people showed up at all four places, showing their library card from one library in the Portland area? I mean, there's a problem with this.

And I know we need to make arrangements for those people who don't live in the community in which they are registered to vote or for people who are going to be away for Election Day or who are ill or for whom it's a real difficulty to get to the polls. But we need to have procedures in place that allow us to monitor it.

And in the city of Portland, we could not monitor. If somebody showed up at one of those four voting locations, we couldn't monitor whether they had already cast their mail-in ballot or not. And we lost the state by 5,000 votes.

I mean, come on. What kind of confidence can you have in that system? So yes, we've got to do more about it.

Nobody can ever accuse these Republicans of not having balls. It's really breathtaking sometimes. This is not an isolated remark. Here's an excerpt from yesterday's Chris Matthews show:

MATTHEWS: ... What did you make—we just showed the tape, David Shuster just showed that tape of a woman candidate in the United States openly advising people in this country illegally to vote illegally.

MEHLMAN: It sounds like she may have been an adviser to that Washington state candidate for governor or some other places around the country where this has happened in other cases with Democrats.

But the fact is, one thing we know, the American people believe that legal voters should vote and they believe that their right to vote ought to be protected from people that don‘t have the right to vote.

Rove was talking to the Republican lawyers association, many members of which specialize in "voter fraud," and may very well be preparing to challenge every close race and file spurious complaints to Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department.

And even if they didn't, be prepared to hear all of our complaints about election stealing yelled back at us if they lose. They are not afraid to take somebody elses talking point and use it to their advantage. It's one of the things they do best and because a lot of people don't pay close attention it will sound perfectly reasonable to them that the Democrats stole the election.

Just something to think about as we look to the morning after election day.


One other thing Rove said during that talk before the GOP lawyers:

Well, I learned all I needed to know about election integrity from the college Republicans.

I don't doubt it for a moment.


*note: the excerpt of my original post has been altered a little bit to include more of Karl Rove's comments.


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digby 10/29/2006 05:13:00 PM |

 
Bloggers In The Stretch

by digby

Bloggers from FDL, Kos, Crooks and Liars, MYDD, Down With Tyranny and others are working hard to pay for a last minute TV ad push for Tony Truppiano in Michigan with a week-end fundraiser. It's a great ad (created in the blogosphere, btw) and the race is close. If you still have some money in your pocket, this could be where we make a difference. You can donate here to the Blue America PAC.

Here's the ad:




And, of course, you can also give of your time if money is short.

Here are some good resources:

Do More Than Vote

Move-On Call For Change

The Democratic Party



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digby 10/29/2006 12:52:00 PM |

 
Concerned Women For Pornography

by digby


Think Progress has Wolf Blitzer's response to Lynn Cheney's ridiculous claim that she was invited on CNN's the Situation Room 10 days before an election to talk about her dipshit children's book:

Blitzer:...In this most recent interview, she, of course, knew we would would be speaking about politics. That was reaffirmed to her staff only hours before the interview. As a former co-host of Crossfire during the 1990s, she knows her way around the media. She was never shy about sparring with Democratic strategist and co-host.

Lynn Cheney has a schtick and it's the "offended Republican mom responds with righteous indignation." You'll recall her excellent use of it in campaign 2004 with her "this is not a gooood man" line. In this case she aped Bill Clinton's earlier complaint when he was sandbagged on FoxNews by Chris Wallace, but it doesn't hold water --- Blitzer says the wide ranging topics were reaffirmed by her staff before the interview.

Cheney likes to pretend that she is just an indignant political wife and mother, but in fact she's a Republican political operative well-known in her own right --- far more than Hillary Clinton ever was before she became first lady. Lynn and Dick Cheney are the Borgias of American politics.

The minute I heard she was coming on CNN yesterday I posted that everyone should watch because I knew that she was coming out in full Republican harpy mode. That's what she does. It's her thing. I knew she would get especially outraged because her hubby was being heavily criticized for saying that "dunking" terrorists in water was a no-brainer and her own lesbian romance novel was back in the news since George Allen had gotten Drudge to post the sexy scenes from Jim Webb's Vietnam fictions.

In the final days of an election, when the Republicans are confronted with an uncomfortable truth concerning the Borgia clan, they send out Lynn, Queen of the Harpies with her rabid incoherent schtick to shut down that line questioning. It's all about attitude and Lynn has it in spades:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no- brainer if it can save lives?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, it's a no-brainer to me, but I -- for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: It made it sound -- and there's been interpretation to this effect -- that he was, in effect, confirming that the United States used this waterboarding, this technique that has been rejected by the international community that simulates a prisoner being drowned, if you will, and he was, in effect, supposedly, confirming that the United States has been using that.

L. CHENEY: No, Wolf -- that is a mighty house you're building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion; he didn't say anything of the kind.

BLITZER: Because of the dunking of -- you know, using the water and the dunking.

L. CHENEY: Well, you know, I understand your point. It's kind of the point of a lot of people right now, to try to distort the administration's position, and if you really want to talk about that, I watched the program on CNN last night, which I thought -- it's your 2006 voter program, which I thought was a terrible distortion of both the president and the vice president's position on many issues.

It seemed almost straight out of Democratic talking points using phrasing like "domestic surveillance" when it's not domestic surveillance that anyone has talked about or ever done. It's surveillance of terrorists. It's people who have al Qaeda connections calling into the United States. So I think we're in the season of distortion, and this is just one more.

Nobody does it better. She's as good as anybody in the GOP.

Here she goes right in Blitzer's face:

L. CHENEY: Well, all right, Wolf. I'm here to talk about my book, but if you want to talk about distortion ...

BLITZER: We'll talk about your book.

L. CHENEY: Well, right, but what is CNN doing running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans? I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter ask you a very good question and you didn't answer it. Do you want us to win?

The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There's no doubt about that. Do you think we want terrorists to win?

L. CHENEY: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?

It doesn't get any more aggressive than that. And then she went into an angry spin that would make a dervish dizzy:

BLITZER:Let's talk about another issue in the news, then we'll get to the book. This -- the Democrats are now complaining bitterly in this Virginia race, George Allen using novels -- novels -- that Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger, has written in which there are sexual references, and they're making a big deal out of this. I want you to listen to what Jim Webb said today in responding to this very sharp attack from George Allen.

L. CHENEY: Now, do you promise, Wolf, that we're going to talk about my book?

BLITZER: I do promise.

L. CHENEY: Because this seems to me a mighty long trip around the merry-go-round.

BLITZER: I want you to -- this was in the news today and your name has come up, so that's why we're talking about it, but listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES WEBB (D), VIRGINIA SENATE CANDIDATE: There's nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminated the surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot. I'm a serious writer. I mean, we can go and read Lynne Cheney's lesbian love scenes, you know, if you want to get graphic on stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

L. CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexual, explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references -- well, you know, I just don't want my grandchildren to turn on the television set. This morning, Imus was reading from the novels, and it's triple-X rated.

BLITZER: Here's what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional -- Senatorial Campaign Committee: "Lynne Cheney's book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, wrote a book called "Sisters," which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes."

L. CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: "In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress." Is that true?

L. CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies. It's not -- it's just -- it's absolutely not a...

BLITZER: But you did write a book entitled "Sisters"?

L. CHENEY: I did write a book entitled "Sisters."

BLITZER: And it did have lesbian characters.

L. CHENEY: This description -- no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I'll stand on that.

BLITZER: There's nothing in there about rapes and brothels?

L. CHENEY: Well, Wolf, could we talk about a children's book for a minute?

BLITZER: We can talk about the children's book. I just wanted to...

L. CHENEY: I think my segment is, like, 15 minutes long and we've had about 10 minutes of...

BLITZER: I just wanted to -- I just wanted to clarify what's in the news today, given -- this is...

L. CHENEY: Sex, lies and distortion. That's what it is.

BLITZER: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.

L. CHENEY: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to explain.

BLITZER: Well, he says he's only -- as a serious writer, novelist, a fiction writer, he was doing basically what you were doing.

L. CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney.

I'm not sure who she persuaded with that argument, but I have no doubt that she impressed all the phony GOP women who profess to be traditionalists but who are actually thoroughly modern power brokers --- and the allegedly traditionalist housewives who voraciously devour those pornographic sexually explicit romance novels while decrying the Democrats' libertine values. Lynn Cheney's incoherent defense soothes their cognitive dissonence and makes them feel better about supporting torture and getting off to women's pornography racy fiction. That was her job, she's a professional and she did it well.


Update: To be clear regarding romance novels. First, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with (adult) pornography, but I'll accede to the fact that romance novels may not be pornographic in the way that many people think of pornography. But they are indisputably very sexually explicit, which I guess many women find to be different from men's pornography because the sex is in the context of committed relationships. Different strokes (and I mean that in the nicest way.)

In any case, they are no less X-Rated than Jim Webb's books, even if they depict a more romantic form of highly detailed descriptions of sex from a female point of view. I'm all for whatever people enjoy and I'm not passing judgment. My objection was to the hypocrisy of women who read these books and then vote Republican, complaining that the Democrats are libertines. And there are bunches of them. Romance fiction is the highest selling paperback genre in the country.



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digby 10/29/2006 10:35:00 AM |

 
They Haven't Even Lost Yet

by digby

.... and they are already behaving as the rabid opposition we all know and love. This is from a former Bush speechwriter and published in a Virginia newspaper.

Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts


WHEN I WAS speechwriting at the White House, one rule was enforced without exception. The president would not be given drafts that lowered him or The Office by responding to the articulations of hatred that drove so many of his critics.

This rule was especially relevant to remarks that concerned the central topic of our times, Iraq. Having left the White House more than a year ago, I conclude that the immunizing effect of that rule must have expired, because I now find that I am infected with a hatred for the very quarter that inspired the rule--the deranged, lying left.

I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now.

And though these figures might be dismissed as inconsequential, their views seem mild compared with those of some of our university professors charged with the "higher" education of our youth.

Thus have I come to hate Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the Sept. 11 victims of the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns"; Nicholas De Genova, the Columbia professor who loudly wished "a million Mogadishus" on American troops in Iraq; and Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin professor who teaches his students that President Bush was the actual mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I used to laugh these people off. Now I detest them as among the most loathsome people America has ever vomited up.

I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on; I hate the executives at CNN, Turner's intellectual progeny, who recently carried water for our enemies by broadcasting their propaganda film portraying their attempts to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won't win in Iraq, bets his party's future on our nation's defeat.

I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie: that the president knew in advance there were no WMD in Iraq; that he lied to Congress to gain its support for military action; that he pushed for the democratization of Iraq only after the failure to find WMD; that he was a unilateralist and that the coalition was a fraud; that he shunned diplomacy in favor of war.

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.'s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq. Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called "duty," and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation--the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

These are the people I now hate--these people who seek to control our national security. The best of them are misinformed. The rest of them are liars.

So I intend to vote on Nov. 7. If I have to, I'll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I'm voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I've had it. I'm fed up with the deranged, lying left. They've infected me. I'm now a hater, too.

PAUL BURGESS of Spotsylvania County was director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House from October 2003 to July 2005.

I heard this "broken glass" phrase earlier on Chris Matthews week-end show. Kathleen Parker explained that they are calling them "broken glass Republicans who will crawl over broken glass to vote against the Democrats." (This was compared to "Yellow Dog Democrat," but I would point out the yellow dog, at least, was an affirmative vote --- "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he was a Democrat.")

We'll be seeing more of this. Losing liberates them from having to even pretend to be civilized.

Update: One thing to keep in mind about this: he's not getting his hate on about politicians. It's about his fellow citizens. They complain mightily about "Bush hatred," and there's been plenty of it. But there's a difference between hating the leader of a political party and hating your fellow Americans. Take a look at the Amazon listings of political books and you'll see the difference is stark.

Update II: In case anyone's wondering:

William Safire's New Political Dictionary explains the origin of yellow-dog Democrat. When Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support Democrat Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election, Al Smith's supporters popularized the phrase "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket." These Southern Democrats were loyal to their party--they wouldn't vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.

H/T to NickM
digby 10/29/2006 08:43:00 AM |

Saturday, October 28, 2006

 
Popping Corker

by digby


James Wolcott understands Bob Corker better than he understands himself. (It's a masterpiece. Read it.)

I've always felt that the macho Republican closet was probably a spacious walk-in. After all, this isn't exactly subtle:

LIDDY: Well, I—in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know—and I’ve worn those because I parachute—and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count—they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

Oooh la la.


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digby 10/28/2006 07:20:00 PM |

 
Back To Their Natural State

by digby


Glenn Greenwald did a thorough deconstruction of Peggy Noonan's noxious latest, but I do want to emphasize the most important point about it. She is signaling (along with a lot of others) that it's time to purge the Bushmen and, as Glenn says, we shouldn't let them do it:

There remains a broad, reflexive, and very Republican kind of loyalty to George Bush. He is a war president with troops in the field. You can see his heart. He led us in a very human way through 9/11, from the early missteps to the later surefootedness. He was literally surefooted on the rubble that day he threw his arm around the retired fireman and said the people who did this will hear from all of us soon.

Images like that fix themselves in the heart. They're why Mr. Bush's popularity is at 38%. Without them it wouldn't be so high.

But there's unease in the base too, again for many reasons. One is that it's clear now to everyone in the Republican Party that Mr. Bush has changed the modern governing definition of "conservative."

He did this without asking. He did it even without explaining. He didn't go to the people whose loyalty and support raised him high and say, "This is what I'm doing, this is why I'm changing things, here's my thinking, here are the implications." The cynics around him likely thought this a good thing. To explain is to make things clearer, or at least to try, and they probably didn't want it clear. They had the best of both worlds, a conservative reputation and a liberal reality.

And Republicans, most of whom are conservative in at least general ways, and who endure the disadvantages of being conservative because they actually believe in ideas, in philosophy, in an understanding of the relation of man and the state, are still somewhat concussed. The conservative tradition on foreign affairs is prudent realism; the conservative position on borders is that they must be governed; the conservative position on high spending is that it is obnoxious and generationally irresponsible. Etc.

This is not how Mr. Bush has governed. And so in the base today personal loyalty, and affection, bumps up against intellectual unease.

"He did it without asking." Poor Peggy, she was given a political Roofie and taken against her will. I've said it before but I'm going to say it again. Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

The Republicans have fielded five presidents since 1968 and only one of them can be considered politically successful. One out of five. The rest have crashed and burned each time on incompetence, corruption or some combination of the two. I think it's fair to say that neither the modern Republican party or the conservative movement is capable of governance. And there's a reason for that.

I wrote this a while back:

The movement conservatives are not really very comfortable on the inside. Witness their absurd appeal above. It's all about the "permanent revolution" for them, even to the extent that they could ridiculously defend Tom DeLay as innocent, upright and under seige from powerful liberal factions less than a year ago. They seem to have realized that it won't work any longer and it's time to begin the conservative purification rituals if they want to keep the revolution alive.

This is why I don't want any of us to think for a moment that winning and losing elections means the same thing to us as it means to them. Democrats believe in government and they want to make it work. Republicans see government purely as a means to exert power. Unfortunately, they are not very good at that because in the modern world sheer, dumb might is no longer possible. The best they can do is loot the treasury and leave the rest of their mess to be cleaned up by the Democrats.

What they really excel at is politics. Governance just hangs them up. And don't think for a moment that they will be chagrined or ashamed and crawl off into a hole to lick their wounds. Being defeated liberates them to do what they are really good at --- destroying the opposition and pushing their agenda with sophisticated, scorched earth political rhetoric. It's not natural for them to be on the defense and they don't like it. They are going back to their natural state --- victimhood and the aggressive attack.

Get ready. The Democrats will not only have to govern, but they will have to fix all the problems they've created while fighting them every step of the way. They're not going away. And they will pull out every stop to win every election, not because they necessarily want to govern but because that's how you keep score. For a long, long time they've been able to get their way whether they win or lose and they see no reason to doubt that will continue. And unless we put a stop to this they might be right.

That's why this is important:

LET THE HEARINGS BEGIN!
Subpoena Envy
by Michael Crowley

As the Lord High Executioner said in The Mikado, 'I have a little list.'" So says John Dingell, the 26-term Michigan House Democrat who spent 14 years as a mighty committee baron before the 1995 Republican Revolution booted him into the powerless minority. At last poised to reclaim his House Energy and Commerce Committee gavel, the 80-year-old Dingell now sounds like a man who can't wait for 2007. Though he knows a House Democratic majority won't pass much legislation, especially given George W. Bush's veto pen, his chairmanship means he can subject the Bush administration to high-profile committee hearings--lots and lots of them.

"Privacy," he begins. "Social Security-number protection. Outsourcing protection. Unfair trade practices. Currency manipulation. Air quality. We'll look at the implementation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. We'll take a look at climate change. We'll take a look at [the Department of Energy's] nuclear waste program, where literally billions of dollars are being dissipated. We'll look at port security and nuclear smuggling, where there's literally nothing being done. We'll look at the Superfund program. We'll take a look at EPA enforcement." He pauses for a breath--but he's just getting started: "On health, we'll take a look at Medicaid and waivers. The Food and Drug Administration. Generic drug approval. Medical safety. We'll also take a look at food supplements, where people are being killed. We will look at Medicare Part D [prescription drugs]." Is that all? "Telecom. We'll look at FCC actions. ... Media ownership. Adequate spectrum for police, fire, public safety, and addressing the problems of terrorism. ... We will look also at the overall question of Katrina recovery efforts."

As Democrats have gained in the polls, Republicans are predicting that a Democratic majority will mean a frenzy of political witch hunts directed at them by newly installed chairmen like Dingell. "You can expect two years of all-out investigations and attacks and anything they can bring to bear," Newt Gingrich warned on Fox News last March. Clearly aiming to calm the hysteria, George H.W. Bush recently warned it would be a "ghastly thing" for the United States if "wild Democrats" were put in charge of congressional committees. A Washington Times article fretted that "key administration officials will be so busy preparing for testimony that they will not be able to do their jobs."

But the curious thing about Dingell's little list is that it targets policies--not people. While some Democrats may dream of hauling Karl Rove to the Hill to discuss Plamegate or forcing Dan Bartlett to testify about Dick Cheney's hunting accident, Dingell is one of a number of future Democratic chairs who plan to focus on substance, not sideshows. And, as strange as it sounds, this may not come as a relief to Republicans. The GOP would love nothing more than for Democrats to go off on half-cocked, mean-spirited inquisitions that generate sympathy for the hapless Bushies. Alas, the GOP's conduct during the Clinton years has provided Democrats with a near-perfect what-not-to-do manual.

If they have the guts to do this, and do it right, if they win the Democrats will have it in their power to end this cycle and shut the door on this era of conservative politics. Otherwise we will remain their cats-paws no matter which party is in the majority.


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digby 10/28/2006 06:46:00 PM |

 
Good General

by digby

Jane's feeling Clarkie today and for good reason. Wes Clark has made a helluva good commercial for Ned Lamont. Jane sez:

Nice to see someone with guts who isn't intimidated by No Show Joe's petulant threats against the Democratic party.

As some of you may remember, I was a Clarkie in the last round of primaries and I still like the guy. He's spent the last two years working tirelessly for candidates all over the country and he is, as Jane points out, not intimidated by ossified GOP enablers or the Democratic establishment.

He also respects actual Democratic voters. I think that one of the reasons the netroots backed Dean and Clark in great numbers during the primaries was that simple fact. They both respected the base of the Democratic party -- the people who devote their energy and their money to the party and believe in Democratic principles. That's a rarity in Democratic establishment politics, as Joe Lieberman has demonstrated for us once again.

Clark's campaign fizzled and Dean's went out with a bang, but they were the first glimmer that the base of the Democratic party --- the netroots, in particular --- had had it with Washington's game. It's a lesson that still hasn't completely sunk in. But it's beginning to. And we're not going anywhere.

Good for Clark for being smart enough to see the future and gutsy enough to act on it.


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digby 10/28/2006 01:50:00 PM |

 
Confederate Prick

by digby

You've got to give George Allen credit for gall. He's making his pitch that Webb's a pervert by trying to tie it to Webb's 1978 (admittedly misogynistic) article about women in the military academies. Allen is using a feminist argument to accuse Webb of being a sex fiend. (His novels are “servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.”) It's an interesting tactic coming from a man who is well documented as having a proclivity to literally spit on women:

I stepped near the governor and smiled, told him my name and that I wrote for the local newspaper. Then I asked him a softball question, what some reporters call a "set-up."

"Does Southwest Virginia need these jobs?" I asked.

He stopped and looked straight at me. He had to look down at me, because he stood so tall in those cowboy boots. I thought I spotted a twinkle in his eye, and for a moment, I suspected he might give a humorous, light-hearted answer. Then he leaned forward and looked all the way down at the pavement. I figured he was planning a perfectly crafted answer to my question. I put pen to paper, ready to take it down. His lips puckered as if he might speak.

Then, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia gathered up a glob of tobacco-laced saliva. He used his lips to squirt it out, as if he had practiced. The spit landed just at the tip of my shoe. He grinned, but didn't say a word. Then he walked into the building.

From the sound of the other stories related at the above link, it isn't only african americans who piss Allen off, it's women too.

Allen has refused to release his divorce records and his arrest records. It's not a stretch to assume that when his best behavior as a potential candidate for president includes bullying and intimidating dark skinned folks and women, his past is filled with some really disgusting episodes.

Like these:

Jennifer Allen, documents many cases of her brother's bullying in her book Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter. Read the excerpts below.

Explaining why she is scared of heights, Ms. Allen writes that "Ever since my brother George held me over the railing at Niagara Falls, I've had a fear of heights." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 43]


Referring to George's relationship with one of her boyfriends: "My brother George welcomed him by slamming a pool cue against his head." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 178]


Referring to George's early leadership skills, Jennifer wrote: "We all obeyed George. If we didn't, we knew he would kill us. Once, when Bruce refused to go to bed, George hurled him through a sliding glass door. Another time, when Gregory refused to go to bed, George tackled him and broke his collarbone. Another time, when I refused to go to bed, George dragged me up the stairs by my hair." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 22]


Referring to George's early career aspirations, Jennifer wrote "George hoped someday to become a dentist. George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession - getting paid to make people suffer." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 22]


Referring to George's habit of terrorizing a Green Bay Packer fan in their neighborhood, Jennifer wrote that the fan's mailbox often "lay smashed in the street, a casualty of my brothers' drive-by to school in the morning. George would swerve his Mach II Mustang while Gregory held a baseball bat out the window to clear the mailbox off its post. . . . Lately, the Packers fan had resorted to stapling a Kleenex box to the mailbox post to receive his mail. George's red Mustang screeched up beside us, the Packers fan's Kleenex mailbox speared on the antenna." [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter, page 16]

Humans have a very complex, highly evolved way of interpreting a speaker's intent, which includes an instinctive understanding of paralinguistics and body language. I think that one of the things that struck most of us on a gut level about the macaca video was the expression on Allen's face and the tone in his voice. There was look in the eye that most of us can recognise right away as nasty, derisive bullying, no matter how bland his actual words. You can feel it. You know it when you see it. And the documentary evidence bears out what we saw. He's a nasty prick.


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digby 10/28/2006 10:41:00 AM |

Friday, October 27, 2006

 
Attack Of The Killer Morons

by digby

Here is how the kewl kidz look at politics. I was just watching Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and they did a segment on the attack ads we are seeing this cycle. They led off with the Harold Ford Playboy ad and the Michael J. Fox ad in Missouri.

Did you see the Fox ad as an attack ad? Did he disparage Talent's character or imply that he was a bad person? Was he appealing to peoples baser nature by playing to their prejudices? Or, as the nation's premiere advocate for Parkinson's disease, did he just ask people to vote for Claire McCaskill because she supported stem cell research and Talent didn't --- a straighforward, endorsement based upon a single issue. I don't see any attack in it at all.

I suspect the sad truth is that the kewl kids think it's hitting below the belt for a disabled person to appear in an advertisement --- just as Rush does. They obviously think it's manipulative and wrong to show the actual results of an illness for which you are advocating. After all, somebody might be having dinner and they don't want to have to look at that icky sick stuff that makes them feel all guilty and uncomfortable. Therefore, tt's an attack if someone endorses a particular candidate and he isn't "normal."

These DC elites really need to get out more. Sick, disabled, elderly imperfect people are very common out here in the real world. I would imagine it could even happen to some of them too --- and when it does I don't want to hear about their conversions to the cause. If you have to personally experience something before you have compassion for it or understand it you are an immature, shallow person. Which is what they are.



Update: Hah. Here's an audio remix of real attack ads.
digby 10/27/2006 08:33:00 PM |

 
He Said/She Said Woodshed

by digby


A number of commenters have objected to my characterization of Katie Couric's interview with Michael J. Fox. yesterday. Obviously I need to explain why I think it was wrong.

First of all, this is not actually a "controversy" in any legitimate sense. It was ginned up by Rush and the right wing noise machine to try to discredit a powerful spokesman for this issue, which is a very dangerous one for the Republican party. Now, it may be that the backlash against Rush will prove to have been worse than the fake one he and the press tried to create, but that's a testament to the basic decency of most people and the class act that is Michael J. Fox.

From the moment that Rush began his tirade (for which he has not apologized, despite the press's insistence that he has) the issue became whether Fox was faking his symptoms or failing to control them, whether it was right for him to show them at all, whether people should be "playing the gimp card" etc. All this is part and parcel of the right's ongoing program of character assassination. (Coulter recently took on the 9/11 widows, you'll recall.) Rush made this explicit earlier this week:

This is a script that they have written for years. Senate Democrats used to parade victims of various diseases or social concerns or poverty up before congressional committees and let them testify, and they were infallible. You couldn't criticize them. Same thing with the Jersey Girls after the 9-11 -- and in the period of time when the 9-11 Commission was meeting publicly. Victims -- infallible, whatever they say cannot be challenged. I don't follow the script anymore.

That's absurd, of course. The right holds up all kinds of people as being unassailable, particularly (Republican) veterans and religious figures. But that's not even the point. Nobody says you can't criticize a "victim's" point of view or disagree with their take on the issue. Rush could have made a straightforward argument that stem cell research is wrong. But the right wing almost never does this on any issue anymore. Virtually every time, they attack the person's character.

They do this for a number of reasons. The first is to give their followers some reason to reject a compelling argument like that set forth by Fox. They send this idea into the ether that Fox is faking it and create a controversy that suddenly makes what seems to be self-evident --- Michael J. Fox is suffering horribly from a dread disease that might be cured with stem cell research --- into a matter of interpretation. It furthers their meme that Democrats are phonies and flip-floppers who don't stand for anything. It helps their base come to terms with their own internal contradictions. They have turned spin into a worldview.

But they also want to advance the idea that the message always depends upon who is delivering it and you can accept or reject it purely on the basis of tribal identification. ("Don't think, meat.") And to do that they've introduced a form of congitive relativism in which there is no such thing as reality. The press's lazy "he said/she said" form of journalism reinforces it.

We've seen quite a bit of this in the campaign. In this case they are trying to make people feel ok about selling sick people down the river with the religious right's irrational devotion to saving embryos and the braindead at the expense of everyone else. In another, just a couple of weeks ago we saw James Dobson of Focus On The Family and many Republican politicians make a case that the Mark Foley scandal was a political dirty trick or that the pages had set him up.

Katie Couric becomes part of the problem when she validates these ginned up controversies or gives credence to accusations for which there is no evidence. She knows very well that nobody can really doubt Fox's sincerity. He's raised tens of millions of dollars for the cause and it's evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that he's got this horrible disease. He should not have to prove that he's not faking his symptoms and it's unconscionable that the media is allowing the issue to be framed that way.

If it was necessary to refute Limbaugh's ridiculous claims, she should have had a leading expert in Parkinson's come on to discuss the symptoms and then interview Fox about the issue itself. Instead she presented it like a "he said/she said" by interrogating Michael J. Fox about whether it was proper for him to go ahead with the shoot when it appeared that he was going to look like a Parkinson's sufferer on camera. In doing so she validated the accusation that he might have been faking it when the only "evidence" was Limbaugh's noxious ravings.

Yes, Fox was articulate and well able to defend himself because he has been in the public eye nearly his entire life, he's a professional and he has guts. And every time he appears he probably helps the cause of stem cell research because of that. But that doesn't change the fact that this method of dealing with phony right wing noise machine controversies leads to all those who oppose Rush Limbaugh's version of reality being constantly on the defensive over nothing. The press knows it, just as they know without doubt that Michael J. Fox is a sincere and legitimate spokesman for stem cell research who isn't faking a bloody thing. They persist because it's an easy way to pretend they are not biased. But it is biased in itself and it's a major reason why the rightwing has been so successful.

Even after that interview, the CBS web-site is running a poll today that asks:

Was Michael J. Fox exaggerating his Parkinson's disease symptoms for political effect?

Here's an email from a reader on this subject:

I cannot explain to you how seething mad I am over the remarks made by
Limbaugh and his friends in the conservative shithole universe. I
thought I reached the boiling point when I was able to view the
Limbaugh video of that fatass druggie mocking, MOCKING Fox's symptoms.
Then, I thought I would lose it when Lauer said "Didn't Limbaugh just
say what everyone was really thinking?". All wrong, the final nail
was the Couric interview and the portion you wrote about. What the
hell is the matter with people in this country when they're
questioning the authenticity of a person with a horrible, progressive
disease?

As a 23yo male who's been battling against a progressive
disease(Cystic Fibrosis) all his life and will continue to do so until
a cure is found, the original Michael J. Fox ad was both moving and
forceful. I've been singing the hopeful benefits of stem cells for
years now and have even managed to sway a few decent republicans my
way; indeed, my political transformation was mostly spearheaded by the
stem cell issue in 2001 and subsequent utter failures by
the.worst.president.ever.

People with progressive diseases already wear different masks for
different occasions, but when it comes to treatments for our diseases,
we're supposed to put on a happy face and say, "hey, maybe one day if
congress comes around something fruitful will happen!!"? Not in my
lifetime. It's bad enough I feel as if I have to compose myself as a
somewhat healthy person during school, social events or else face
stares and neverending questions, but when people like Fox are
attacked in a very public way for "coming out of the closet" so to
speak, then I seriously start to question and worry for this country.
Like you said, should we just stay in our rooms and hope one day those
without disease will champion our causes?

It's like war; who do you want leading the fight? Some general with
battlefield experience or the ivy educated whizkid? I think the
current events answer that one.

I'm mad. I'm pissed. I literally want to throw something at the TV
every time I see some offthewall commentator proffer up his/her
worthless opinion on what Fox should and shouldn't be doing and how
it's so "political." You're left with one option against a
progressive disease -- to stay alive using every option, treatment
possible. And in this current "war," the patients with diseases such
as Fox's and mine are stepping onto the field not only without any
armor, but without a gun too.

How sad America has become when science is simply a tool to bludgeon
the head of those who advocate its welcome benefits.

-Stephen

That's what Rush and the cynical political creeps he represents don't want people to hear. They know they are on the wrong side of this issue.



If you want to see the full depth of Limbaugh's depravity and media complicity on this, Media Matters has documented the whole thing.


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digby 10/27/2006 03:56:00 PM |

 
Fork It Over

by digby


I don't do candidate fundraising here because I assume that you all read the big blogs that do it and get involved through their Act Blue pages. But for the rarest among you who only read this blog today, I urge you to go to some of the major blogs like Eschaton, Kos, FDL, MYDD, C&L and others who are all asking for donations today for the final push to election day. If you haven't done it yet, now's the time.

For those who've already done so or are looking for other ways to contribute there are many needs. The little button from the DNC over there in the left column gives you something to do every day until the election. You can volunteer for your local congressional campaign and do phone banking or canvassing. Here's a very handy web-site called "Do More Than Vote" that makes it easy to figure out where and how.

This is it, kids, for all the marbles. It's time to change the world.


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digby 10/27/2006 03:10:00 PM |

 
Queen O The Harpies

by digby


They're so desperate they've dragged Lynn Cheney out of her hive to go on CNN and screech "you are not a good man" to Wolf Blitzer, or something to that effect. She'll be swooping in in a few minutes. Tune in, if you have the stomach.

The promo I just saw had Wolf pointing out that innocent people have been captured and imprisoned and "aggressively interrogated" and then set free. Her reply? "How do you know they're innocent?" Wolf rather confusedly said, "well --- they're walking around free..." and she went on to say that one of then alleged innocents had had a bookstore in London that sold radical Islamic texts. So apparently, selling certain books now can get you kidnapped, waterboarded and imprisoned without trial until they're done with you. Good to know.

Wolf just asked Jack Cafferty what he thinks of her criticisms of the CNN show he's been involved with "Broken Government" (which she describes as Democratic talking points) and Cafferty said "Who cares?"

She'll be on in full harpy costume (you won't believe the bizarre outfit she's wearing --- it looks like one of those "tapestries" you see in Parade magazine every Sunday) in a few minutes.

Update: She's spitting mad. She doesn't like Blitzer reading from a DNC press release that says her novel "Sisters" was racy just like Jim Webb's (which she describes as "triple X".)

I sure wish he'd have brought up her husbands right hand man, Scooter Libby's, book:

He said that boys from the village took the merchant's daughter places, and word spread that she had many lovers. There were odd tales of her sexual prowess, and they said she had coupled with dogs and men and several of the boys at once. Then to their village came a young samurai, who spotted the girl as all did, and she folded him into her. She took other lovers in the village, which enraged him, but he would not be done with her . . .

The young samurai's mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white . . .

"They taught her how to draw pubic hair on her mound," Ueda laughed, "because she was still too young to have any of her own." A fat woman on the far side of the fire laughed out until tears streamed down her face and her sides rocked. She reached into her clothes while she was laughing and pulled sharply and made a little cry and her mouth opened and then, laughing harder, she pulled her hand out with pubic hairs stuck between her swollen fingers and flung them at the men around the fire. "No ink here," she gasped, laughing, "No ink, no ink" and the laughing men beside her made grasping motions above the fire as if to catch the pubic hair she had thrown. Some clung unnoticed in her moist palm.

Lynn herself wrote this nauseating passage:

The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.

I don't say it's nauseating because of the content --- it's nauseating because of the writing. Dear God.

This whole argument is absurd, of course. George Allen is passing around explicit passages from Webb's book like a 12 year old boy at summer camp. This is not a real issue. It's completely stupid. John McCain, for god's sake, gave the books glowing reviews as did a whole bunch of others. This is a meaningless controversy that is only getting oxygen because the dipshit kewl kidz are all reading them and it makes them feel funny down there.

(Donna Brazile just gave a typically lame response by saying that she hasn't read the books and has no plans to. Bullshit. She should have said, "I'm going out to get them right now. John McCain and Tom Clancy both recommend them as gripping depictions of the wartime experience.")

Jim Webb is an adult and he writes for adults. Most of us have had sex and aren't shocked by literary depictions of it in fiction. Scooter's book may be terrific, I don't know, it's not my thing. My problem with him isn't that he wrote those passages, it's that he works for a party filled with racist morons like George Allen who pretend that they have a problem with it. All this santimonious sexual hypocrisy is too much to take from the party that couldn't care less about their own representatives trying to seduce teen-aged boys three at a time.

Update II: You really have to see this interview. She's a piece of work. She's acting all indignant about answering these questions as if she was really invited on "The Situation Room" today to talk about her children's book and Wolf is sandbagging her. The Queen of the Harpies is something else.

Update III: Amato has the whole thing up at Crooks and Liars w/ transcript.


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digby 10/27/2006 01:16:00 PM |

 
Let's Remember

by tristero

On the extremely remote chance that Diebold's voting machines will fail to overcount Republican votes in some future election and a non-Republican gets sworn in as president, someone should be archiving all the times the network has refused to run ads for documentaries, features, and other media critical of Republicans, like this one.

Call me cynical, but I suspect that if the Republicans are out of office, they still won't have any problem getting their propaganda publicized like mad on all the major networds, no matter how vicious, how false, or how un-American.

What to do in the here and now? Well, I'd boycott NBC except for one thing. I can't remember the last time I watched anything on NBC. The closest was a few Olbermann web clips that didn't have any commercials, so I guess I've just been given one more very good reason to ignore NBC's programming.

Oh, and now I know what my Holiday* presents will be. Chicks albums as well as Michael Berube's great book.

*That's right O'Reilly. Holiday presents.
tristero 10/27/2006 01:08:00 PM |

 
The Man Who Sold The World

by digby


So Bush met yet again with some friendly rightwing journalists and impressed them mightily with his intensity and manliness. As usual.

According to Greg Mitchell at E&P he told his sycophants that:

Gen. John Abizaid ("one of the really great thinkers") was the one who "came up with" the recent construct about the enemy in Iraq, "If we leave, they will follow us here." Bush then explains that this is what makes the Iraq struggle "really different from other wars we've been in."

More "the oceans don't protect us anymore" and "this is the biggest threat the world has ever known" crapola. I don't know what in the hell he thinks he knows but it bears no relationship to reality. The US was seriously concerned with an invasion during WWII and had reason to be:

In Autumn of 1940, the attack on the US was fixed for the long-term future. This appears in Luftwaffe documents, one of which dated October 29, 1940 mentions the "extraordinary interest of Mein Führer in the occupation of the Atlantic Islands. In line with this interest...with the cooperation of Spain is the seizure of Gibraltar and Spanish and Portuguese islands, along other operations in the North Atlantic."

In July 1941, the Führer ordered that planning an attack against the United States be continued. Five months later, on December 11, 1941 Germany declared war on the United States.

[...]

(Fall Felix) and Operation Sealion, planned the occupation of Ireland and Operation Ikarus, would have provided some support bases for installing the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine infantry seaborne or Luftwaffe Airborne forces for the invasion.

These units, with proper support from the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, were to capture coastal areas in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

On the other hand, the invasion could have come from airborne landings on the Atlantic coast of Canada in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, with the army then continuing into U.S territory. The Saint Lawrence River was also considered to be a major possible entry point into North America. Another option involved launching seaborne rockets, long range missiles or aerial bombardments, against U.S. territory. The Germans were also considering the development and use of an atomic bomb against the United States.

Air strikes with heavy long range bombers would have not only put the coastal targets of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York within range, but also targets in Ohio and even Indiana.

[...]

For Japanese Naval strategists, an invasion of American, Mexican, and Central American Pacific coasts would have required naval bases in the Aleutian and Hawaiian islands, as well as the Mexican Revillagigedo and French Clipperton islands.

From the Aleutians, Japanese forces would have landed in Alaska and Canada, from Hawaii naval or airborne landings in Washington state, Oregon, and California were considered. From these bases, long-range heavy land-based bombers or flying boat attacks on U.S. territory could be launched. The High Command staff considered bombing San Francisco, Panama, Los Angeles, the Texas oilfields, in coordination with German naval strikes against Boston, Washington D.C. or New York. The use of biological and chemical weapons was also considered.

Or how about this little threat. Bush once said:

"The first lesson is, is that oceans can no longer protect us. You know, when I was coming up in the '50s in Midland, Texas, it seemed like we were pretty safe. In the '60s it seemed like we were safe."

Apparently the moron never heard of this:



(Duck and Cover)

The Soviet Union had thousands of ICBM's pointed at us and we had many more pointed at them. We lived under a doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. I honestly don't know where this bozo got the idea that our oceans protected us or that fighting someone "over there" keeps them from getting "over here," but we haven't been "safe" in those terms since --- well, ever. It's utter pablum and I can't believe that even Rush and his mouthbreathers believe it. (That General Abazaid coined the silly phrase explains a lot about why everything is so screwed up in Iraq.)

We desperately need some leadership that at least knows the world they grew up in and live in today. But at the very least we need leadership who didn't watch a bunch of bad cowboy and war movies on TV when they were kids and think they learned history. This is the second Republican president in the last 25 years who has routinely confused Hollywood product with reality and it's got to stop.



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digby 10/27/2006 11:02:00 AM |

Thursday, October 26, 2006

 
Melting Snowflakes

by digby

If Rush Limbaugh and his pals in the media still think that Michael J. Fox is acting, they should check out this video clip from ABC News from last July. The guy is so clearly trying to do something good here. It just kills me that these heartless bastards are attacking him and saying that it's exploitive for him to be an activist for a disease that's killing him.

Actors are vain people. It cannot be easy for him to expose himself in public knowing that when the public sees him in this condition they are uncomfortable and pitying. He is rich enough to live out his days in in comfortable privacy, getting the best of care and giving money for the cause. But he's put together a very serious and productive foundation that has funded 70 million dollars in Parkinson's research and he works constantly on the issue.

This transcends politics and it's beyond petty partisanship. (After all, Fox did a very similar commercial for Arlen Specter in 2004.) Stem cell research has the support of the vast majority of this country of all political persuasions but it's being held hostage by the same minority group of religious extremists who staged that sideshow over terry Schiavo. There you had a woman with no brain and no hope who the extremists were willing to go to the ends of the earth to "save." Here we have a 45 year old man who is fully funtional intellectually but whose body is beginning to fail him because of a terrible disease and they are rudely dismissing him as a fake and saying that his life is no more important than a smear in a petrie dish.

And you will recall that their favorite president Bush used his veto pen for the first and only time just this past July to veto stem cell research:

President Bush issued the first veto of his five-year-old administration yesterday, rejecting Congress's bid to lift funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and underscoring his party's split on an emotional issue in this fall's elections.

At a White House ceremony where he was joined by children produced from what he called "adopted" frozen embryos, Bush said taxpayers should not support research on surplus embryos at fertility clinics, even if they offer possible medical breakthroughs and are slated for disposal.

The vetoed bill "would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," the president said, as babies cooed and cried behind him. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect." Each child on the stage, he said, "began his or her life as a frozen embryo that was created for in vitro fertilization but remained unused after the fertility treatments were complete. . . . These boys and girls are not spare parts."

That's so true. Here's an example of how this works in practice for these good Christian believers in the absolute sanctity of life:

The Vests were unable to conceive, and Cara's husband Gregg was diagnosed with a sperm disorder. Then Cara was told she had the "ovaries of a 40-year-old." They considered using a donated egg or adopting a child, until she heard about an embryo-adoption agency while listening to "Focus on the Family," a Christian radio show. She called the agency, Snowflakes, and two years later she and Gregg had adopted 23 embryos.

The Vests believe that life begins at conception, so adopting 23 embryos meant becoming the parents of 23 children. Never mind only two-thirds would survive the thawing, and even fewer would develop into babies. The Vests thought at least these embryos would all have a chance at life instead of being disposed of or used in stem-cell research.

By the logic of George Bush and the religious extremists, that couple who chose to "adopt" 23 embryos in the hopes of becoming pregnant are guilty of pre-meditated murder because they know that they are not going to give birth to 23 children. It is nonsensical moral reasoning and we simply cannot let people like this stand in the way of potentially curing these diseases. It's time to draw the line.


Fox was on CBS tonight and said:

The irony is that I was too medicated. I was dyskinesic," Fox told Couric. "Because the thing about … being symptomatic is that it's not comfortable. No one wants to be symptomatic; it's like being hit with a hammer."

His body visibly wracked by tremors, Fox appears in a political ad touting Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill's stance in favor of embryonic stem cell research. That prompted Limbaugh to speculate that Fox was "either off his medication or acting."

Fox told Couric, "At this point now, if I didn't take medication I wouldn't be able to speak."

He said he appeared in the ad only to advance his cause, and that "disease is a non-partisan problem that requires a bipartisan solution."

"I don't really care about politics," Fox added. "We want to appeal to voters to elect the people that are going to give us a margin, so we can't be vetoed again."

The portion of the interview they broadcast was quite decent. But you can see the whole interview here --- and listen to Katie Couric push him over and over again on the burning question of whether he manipulated his medication and ask him whether he should have re-scheduled the shoot when his symptoms were manifested as they were. And she does it while she's sitting directly across from him watching him shake like crazy. Her questions imply that it was in poor taste or manipulative as if he can magically conjure a film crew to catch him in on of the fleeting moments where he doesn't appear too symptomatic. The press seems to truly believe that it is reasonable to be suspicious of him showing symptoms of a disease that has him so severely in its clutches that if he doesn't take his medication his face becomes a frozen mask and he cannot even talk.

I know I'm harping on this subject, but it isn't just because I'm emotionally engaged and angry, although I am. I think it's one of those important "real-life" issues that might wake a few more people up and get them to the polls.

-A new national study revealed that American voters' support for stem cell research increased after they viewed an ad featuring Michael J. Fox in which he expresses his support for candidates who are in favor of stem cell research.

The study was conducted among 955 Americans by HCD Research and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion (MCIPO) during October 24-25, to obtain Americans' views on the stem cell research before and after they watched the ad.

The participants included self-reported Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They were asked to view the ad and respond to pre-and post-viewing questions regarding their opinions and emotions concerning the ad.

Among the study findings:

* Among all respondents, support for stem cell research increased from 78% prior to viewing the ad, to 83% after viewing the ad. Support among Democrats increased from 89% to 93%, support among Republicans increased from 66% to 68% and support among Independents increased from 80% to 87% after viewing the ad.
* The level of concern regarding a candidate's view on stem cell research increased among all respondents from 57% prior to viewing the ad to 70% after viewing the ad. Among Democrats, the level of concern increased from 66% to 83% and Republicans' level of concern increased from 50% to 60%. Independents' level of concern increased from 58% to 69%.
* The perception that the November election is relevant to the U.S. policy on stem cell research increased across all voter segments, with an increase of 9% among all respondents pre- and post-viewing from 62% to 71%. The Democrats' perception increased from 75% to 83%, Republicans' perception increased from 55% to 62% and Independents' perception increased from 60% to 68% pre- and post-viewing.
* The advertisement elicited similar emotional responses from all responders with all voter segments indicating that they were "not bored and attentive" followed by "sorrowful, thankful, afraid and regretful."
* The vast majority of responders indicated that the advertisement was believable with 76% of all responders reporting that it was "extremely believable" or "believable." Among party affiliation, 93% of Democrats 57% of Republicans and 78% of Independents indicated it "extremely believable" or "believable."

Respondents were asked to indicate what candidate they would vote for in the U.S. House of Representatives election if it was held today before and after viewing the ad.

# Republicans who indicated that they were voting for a Republican candidate decreased by 10% after viewing the ad (77% to 67%). Independents planning to vote for Democrats increased by 10%, from 39% to 49%.

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digby 10/26/2006 05:49:00 PM |

 
Good Morning, Creep

by digby

This Michael J. Fox controversy is making me more angry than I can remember being in a long time. There is something wrong with people who think like this:

LAUER: And you brought up Michael J. Fox. Let me just ask you: You know, Rush Limbaugh started a lot of controversy when he said perhaps Michael J. Fox was exaggerating or faking these effects of Parkinson's disease in that ad promoting stem cell research. Didn't Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking?

[...]

LAUER: But also, Susan, last word. If Michael Fox goes out there politically and puts himself in the fray, he has to expect to be, you know, taken to account, correct?

ESTRICH: Correct. And he is being taken to account.

If Michael J. Fox could still act he would be making millions of dollars acting in paying TV commercials, films or sitcoms. He's only 45 years old for God's sake and he still has young kids. He is suffering from a horrifying disease and he deserves for people to respect his sincerity if nothing else. He does actually have Parkinson's, after all, and I'm sure he really does believe that stem cell research provides a hope for a cure --- unless they think he's lying about that too.

I was never an avid fan of The Today Show but I never knew that Matt Lauer shared the same privileged, cynical sophomoric worldview as the talk show pig, Rush Limbaugh. Now I know. I won't be bothering with him anymore.

* And Susan Estrich is typically obtuse for agreeing that Fox should be "called to account." What exactly does he have to account for? Being struck by a debilitating disease and campaigning for a cure?

Jesus this political establishment is a bunch of heartless, useless creeps. No wonder most poeple in this country are turned off to politics.


Update: In an amazing exchange of posts between Jonah Goldberg and Kathryn Lopez (ayeee, my head)on the Corner Jonah approvingly posted this e-mail from a reader commenting on the opposing Missouri stem-cell ads:

So let me get this straight: It's an outrage when Michael J. Fox, an actual Parkinson's sufferer, films a political ad supporting a measure allowing stem cell research, but the fact that stem cell research opponents used a fake Jesus speaking in Jesus' language, gets no comment? Which side is being basely manipulative?

Good question. That Cavaziel ad is just weird. But you have to see this from K-Lo to really appreciate the tenor of the discussion:

The Absolute Last Word on Jesus vs. Alex P. Keaton [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A reader points out the real genius in Jim Caveziel appearing in that ad: "the point is Jim Caviezel is HOT! is that blasphemous?"

(Though truth be told, MJ Fox isn't bad himself. So the two commercials are apples vs. apples, at least on one front. How you like them apples?)

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digby 10/26/2006 02:08:00 PM |

 
The Crucible

by digby

The stakes in the Connecticut race seem to be getting higher among the chattering classes than among the grassroots. For the second time this week, I'm seeing one of the courtiers -- in this case the Dean --- saying that the race is the referendum on the Iraq war:

The outcome of their fight is important nationally for the meaning that will be attached. While other states such as Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and Virginia will decide whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate, this Connecticut race constitutes perhaps the nation's clearest test on the Iraq war.

Lieberman insists he is not wholly in the Bush camp but still argues that a victory in Iraq is possible and essential for American security -- whatever that may mean. "I'm not ready to give up on the Muslim world," he said, adding that a democratic Iraq could serve as a model for the Middle East. His winning and returning to the Senate and its Democratic caucus would slow, if not reverse, growing pressure from the Democrats for an early pullout of U.S. forces.

On the other hand, should Lamont repeat his primary win over Lieberman and capture the seat, it would add immeasurably to the momentum of the antiwar forces. He says that he is running in order to end the nightmare of "140,000 of our brave troops stuck in the middle of a bloody civil war."

Wow. now that's putting it in stark terms, isn't it?

Here was court jester Chris Matthews on Tuesday talking about the Connecticut race:

I just don't want to hear from those people later about how terrible the war is because the one thing about these elections is that in every national poll the number one issue is Iraq and the issue is going to turn on that election because we are already seeing develop a new policy refinement based upon these new political circumstances right now.

Washington has apparently decided that the Iraq war debate hangs on the Lamont-Lieberman race.

Perhaps this last week is a good time to tell all those Washington and Connecticut Democrats who care about this issue that this is how this race is shaping up. All eyes are upon them. The lives of thousands of people may depend on it.

Joe Lieberman is an unreconstructed hawk who, even in the presence of fellow willing bipartisan lap dancer Bob Kerrey, cannot admit that the war has made the threat of terrorism worse:

As Senator Joseph I. Lieberman stood beside Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator, to accept his endorsement on Wednesday, the two seemed to differ about whether the war in Iraq had made the United States safer.

Like Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Kerrey supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein early on and said that the region was safer without him in power. But he added: “Do I think invading Iraq helped the war on terror? No, I do not. I think it reduced the threat in the region, which was serious.”

His comments put Mr. Lieberman in an awkward position. Mr. Lieberman declined to say whether he believed that the war in Iraq had helped the war on terror.

Initially, Mr. Lieberman cited Mr. Kerrey’s comments about Saddam Hussein, saying that overthrowing him had helped make the Middle East safer, but he conceded that terrorists had “poured into Iraq now.”

Then, pressed by reporters, Mr. Lieberman answered, “It’s a more complicated question than that, and it doesn’t have a yes-or-no answer.”

If the cognoscenti believe that the Connecticut race is a crucible on Iraq, then we'd damn well better work our asses off to make sure that Lamont pulls this thing off. We may win the election but lose the Iraq war debate --- at least in the short term --- and that would be a terrible thing. The courtiers are looking for a way to discredit the anti-war sentiment in this country and this looks to be the vehicle they are going to use to prove that when the chips are down "America" really doesn't care that much about the war in Iraq. (Look for them to find out that something like "gas prices" or "moral values" were the top issues in the campaign.)

This race is about more than Holy Joe Lieberman. The Kewl Kidz and the courtiers want to make it the national referendum on the Iraq war.


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digby 10/26/2006 11:44:00 AM |

 
Limbaugh

by tristero

When he arrived in the White House for a sleepover many years ago, George Bush the Elder carried Limbaugh's bags to his room. This man, who uses Republican presidents as porters, is the very same malicious yet pathetic creature we see here, shaking in what he thinks is a parody of a Parkinson's sufferer off his medication, but isn't. Unbeknownst to Limbaugh, involuntary shakes are a side-effect of taking the medication.

Limbaugh, you recall, once coined the odious term "feminazis." To most of us, Limbaugh's outrageous attack on Fox is all of a piece. But at least to some of those who thought "feminazis" was a clever, funny, and precise piece of sadistic mockery, Limbaugh's latest inadvertently off-base display of his total ignorance may come as something of a shock, revealing how seriously his drug addiction has affected his enormous capacity to spew invective.

If you watch the segment, be sure to check out Sam Seder's comments, that Limbaugh's real job is to insulate his listeners from reality. He's absolutely right. The only real issue is funding for stem cell research, which the Republican party - consistent with its mistrust of all things scientific, be they biological, physical, ecological, or statistical - opposes. But suddenly the airwaves are all atwitter with chirpy parrots concerned with whether Michael J. Fox was acting. As if that matters one whit.

What matters is that the United States under Republican rule is deliberately undermining its commitment to world-class scientific inquiry. But gee, science is hard.* Let's speculate on whether Fox hyped his symptoms or not.

My god, what a waste of time given the seriousness of the real issue. But unfortunately, it's important. As long as malignant fat like Limbaugh clogs the arteries of discourse (sorry, after two cups of strong java, I couldn't resist), we have to confront it and resist. Meanwhile, the real subject - the real issues in stem cell research, its potential and limitations - are not being addressed by a public that needs to be, and deserves to be, informed. Ditto evolution, global warming, racism, poverty, war, nuclear proliferation - you name it. Perhaps, in living memory, there never were halcyon years for cultural discourse in the US, even when Murrow strode the earth. But I do seem to recall that once upon a time there was at least some concerted effort by the media to focus on real news instead of obsessing on the worthless, grotesque bloviations of lying, unscrupulous, ignorant pricks like Limbaugh.*

Jane Hamsher has some excellent comments on this weird story.

*Actually, science isn't that hard, even the fuzzy math. Because as difficult as it may be, say, to wrap one's mind around the details of stem cell biology, it can be comprehended, if you're willing to spend the time to do so. What's really hard is trying to grasp creationism or astrology, because there literally is nothing there that is capable of actual meaning. Nor are there legitimate ways of finding meaning in pseudo-science. To understand that crap - now, I've always found it well-nigh impossible.

* Special note to any lying, unscrupulous, ignorant pricks who may have chanced upon this blog post: I apologize in advance for lumping you in with Rush Limbaugh.

tristero 10/26/2006 07:00:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

 
We're All For It!

by digby


The Republicans are taking a new tack on stem cells. In response to the Michael J. Fox "backlash" Ken Mehlman just said on CNN that Jim Talent supports stem cell research but he just doesn't think the government should pay for it. He pointed out that nobody says that the private sector shouldn't pursue stem cell research. What's the problem? (It's a lie, of course. Talent's position is actually much more complicated than that and just as ridiculous.)

This argument worked back in the day with the Hyde Amendment banning public money for abortion because some people object to the expenditure on moral grounds. Maybe it will work again. But I don't think stem cell research has ever had the kind of visceral punch that abortion has and the benefits to everyone are far more obvious. (After all, it's only dizzy women of child-bearing years who might tempt some man into getting her pregnant. Men can get Parkinson's disease.)

Mostly, though, it undercuts the moral argument the Republicans have been making about their (phony) "culture of life." Back in the 70's, when the Hyde Amendment was passed, Republicans could get away with making practical arguments like "people shouldn't have to pay for things that morally offend them." But this isn't the "me decade" anymore. The Republicans are no longer supposed to be just the defenders of traditional values --- they are supposed to be true believers. I don't see how the religious right could support such a "split-the-difference" strategy.

On the other hand, the religious right has recently been remarkably supportive of the party covering up for closeted GOP congressmen seducing teen agers, so it's hard to see where they might draw the line.


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digby 10/25/2006 01:42:00 PM |

 
Do I Have To Draw You A Picture?

by tristero

Any Democratic candidate that doesn't mention the unending disaster of Iraq within five seconds of beginning any interview or speech should be forced to listen to the collected speeches of Newt Gingrich for the week after s/he loses in November. Here's why.

And the second issue? The unbelievably widespread moral corruption of the Republican Party. Start by denouncing the degenerates who would sneer at a Parkinson's patient in order to evade the vitally important issue of funding stem cell research. Then mention the crass appeals to racism in the ads, the refusal to take responsibility. Then Foley, Abramoff, Reed, Cunningham, Libby, Armstrong Williams, Betting Bill Bennett, Michael Brown - my God, the list of creeps and hypocrites is long and getting longer by the moment.

And the last name on that list? Donald Rumsfeld. Which brings you right back to issue #1.

Iraq.

[Updated to add the story about the gay aide to the homophobic Harris who may have slept with the Republican candidate for governor of Florida. The GOP truly has set new standards for hypocrisy.]

tristero 10/25/2006 01:12:00 PM |

 
I Don't Think We Should Deny People Rights To A Civil Union

by digby

The New Jersey Supreme Court has just held that gay Americans should be accorded the same legal rights as other Americans in a ruling that George W. Bush will support.

"I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so," Bush said in an interview aired Tuesday on ABC. Bush acknowledged that his position put him at odds with the Republican platform, which opposes civil unions.

"I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights," said Bush, who has pressed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (search). "States ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."

The ruling is also in line with the presumed GOP nominee for president in 2008:

MATTHEWS: But in so many cases in the last president election—the gay marriage issue was used effectively to rally the Christian conservatives to the polls, and it helped bring about the majorities in states like Ohio. You‘re saying that your party has never taken a position adversarial to gay marriage and issues like that?

MCCAIN: On the issue of gay marriage, I do believe, and I think it‘s a correct policy that the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, a marriage between man and woman, should have a unique status. But I‘m not for depriving any other group of Americans from having rights. But I do believe that there is something that is unique between marriage between a man and a woman, and I believe it should be protected.

MATTHEWS: Should there be—should gay marriage be allowed?

MCCAIN: I think that gay marriage should be allowed, if there‘s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don‘t have any problem with that, but I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.

He later added:

Could I just mention one other thing? On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that people want to have private ceremonies, that‘s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.

The court found no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, but found that unequal dispensation of rights and benefits were contrary to the constitution. That sounds like something old St. McCain, who has flipped flop more than a dying carp on this issue, agrees with.

The NJ legislature will have to find some way to profer equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples. Unless it decides to, the state will not be obligated to perform any marriage ceremonies. They could decide that it's a simple form that must be filled out and notarized. Churches will have to decide if they want to perform ceremonies or not, just as they do today, and the state has nothing to say about it --- just as it doesn't today. All this amounts to is equality under the law.

Religious people can fight among themselves all they want about what this means, but the state should not be in the "sanctity" business.

sanc·ti·ty

1. Holiness of life or disposition; saintliness.
2. The quality or condition of being considered sacred; inviolability.
3. Something considered sacred.

The state's job is to insure equality under the law and this ruling properly achieves that.



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digby 10/25/2006 12:39:00 PM |

 
Backlash

by digby

This is really starting to piss me off. The press continues to insinuate that Michael J. Fox is "raising eyebrows" and causing a "backlash" with his ads supporting stem cell research and there is no evidence that there is any backlash except in right wing talk show pig circles.

From Media Matters, here's ABC:

ROBERTS: You bring up Missouri and a big debate about Michael J. Fox, of course, who is suffering from Parkinson's, and he has really gotten into the race there, and raising a lot of eyebrows.

Really? Whose? The extremists who value a smear in a petrie dish over living breathing humans beings? Well, no kidding. They are on the losing side of a very important argument that could affect every single one of our lives. But is there any eyebrow raising among anyone else? I haven't heard it.

I don't remember anyone raising eyebrows at that smarmy Ashley ad in the 2004 election. In fact, I recall the press having a total love fest over it even though it was the crass exploitation of a young girl's pain to make George W. Bush look caring and fatherly:

“The largest single ad buy of the campaign comes from conservative Progress for America,” Time Magazine reported. “It shows Bush comforting 16-year-old Ashley Faulkner, whose mother died on 9/11. As it happens, the spot was made by Larry McCarthy, who produced the infamous Willie Horton ad that helped the first President Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime. If that is the iconic attack ad, this is the ultimate embrace—to remind voters of the protectiveness they cherished in the President after Sept. 11. The ad has been ready since July, but sponsors waited until the end to unveil it.”

"He's the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe."

And from Josh Marshall I see this headline is up on CNN right now:

Michael J. Fox ads for Democrats spark backlash

The Republicans have no shame, but you can kind of understand it. They have to discredit the sick, the dying and the widowed and they have to hide the dead. They can't let Americans see the effects of their policies. The press, however, has no obligation to help them do their dirty work.


*As Marshall points out, the article that accompanies the CNN headline explains why Rush Limbaugh is completely full of shit even as it says that he represents some sort of "backlash." Why they chose to run that headline is anyone's guess. Reflex, probably.



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digby 10/25/2006 09:34:00 AM |

 
Press Conference

by digby

Did you know that the GWOT is harder and more challenging than any war in human history because the enemy are lethal cold-blooded killers? It is. Nobody has ever faced such a terrifying foe as George W. Bush and we should be grateful that he has courageously faced them down with nothing more than a prayer and a codpiece.

Oh, and people of both parties have to take responsibility for the decisions they make in life.


digby 10/25/2006 08:31:00 AM |

 
Letting Go Of God

by tristero

I could write a million words about how great Julia Sweeney's Letting Go Of God is, how wonderfully funny, moving, and genuinely thought-provoking, but I couldn't possibly convey how much of a blast it is to see and hear live. I saw it last night on a whim. One of the best whims I've had in years.

If you haven't seen it and you live in New York, then for God's sake - or for the FSM's sake - call up some friends and get tickets. It's only playing through this Sunday, the 29th, and the theater seats around 100/150 tops. She'll be performing the piece elsewhere as well, so you might want to check her site for the where and when.

Trust me, you want to see this one live (unless your name is Deepak Chopra, for reasons that become obvious). If you've heard Sweeney on the radio, you ain't seen nothin' yet. What are you waiting for? Go get your tickets before it sells out, you goddamn, God-forsaken fools!

tristero 10/25/2006 04:32:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

 
JoeNixon

by digby

























courtesy Billmon



The NY Times blog "The Empire Zone" doesn't seem to think it's even possible that Joe Lieberman could have done anything unethical with his 387,000 slush fund. They have relegated the story to its blog that nobody reads.

The truth is that $387,000 in petty cash expenses in a primary race is an enormous sum and it should set off all kinds of bells in the minds of journalists and, as Matt Stoller discusses here, the good government campaign finance groups:

If a Senator put $387,000 in cash out on the streets in the final two weeks before the election - we're talking cash here - and then failed to disclose where it went to reporters or anyone else by using the petty cash account, wouldn't you think that good government groups who care about campaign finance laws and disclosure would be slightly interested? I would. Yet since Lieberman revealed this on his FEC forms late last week, only the Lamont campaign has been willing to file an FEC complaint.

If Lieberman gets away with this, FEC laws are effectively meaningless, and so are state election laws. I'm frankly surprised that a scandal of this magnitude is going largely ignored by Democrats, Republicans supporting Alan Schlesinger, and good government groups across the spectrum. Can you imagine if Bob Menendez did this in New Jersey? The good government groups would be all over it. Or Tom Kean Jr? You'd see a press conference with Reid and Schumer the next day. And yet, because it's Joe Lieberman, he's handing out hundreds of thousands in cold hard cash before the primary to undisclosed individuals, there's no outside groups calling foul. Still, we're all in this together, which means that if Lieberman is allowed to shovel hundreds of thousands of dollars without consequence through his petty cash account, then next cycle you're going to see every Senate, House, and Presidential campaign use it to avoid disclosure requirements. Their claim can simply be 'Lieberman did it', and they will be absolutely right.

Where are the good government groups? Common Cause? CREW? Democracy 21? Public Campaign? Public Citizen? Any one of them could file a complaint with the FEC. Any one of them could file a complaint with the state board of elections. Here's information on how to do it. This is a really really bad precedent to allow to be set.

Yes it is. There is nothing to stop campaigns from hiding huge, unusual expenses in a petty cash account and then avoid scrutiny of it until long after the election unless somebody draws attention to it.


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digby 10/24/2006 07:39:00 PM |

 
And The Deaths Pile Up

by tristero

Horrible, horrible:

...October marked the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq this year...

On Tuesday, the military announced the deaths of four more U.S. troops, raising the month's toll to 91. At least 2,801 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

And who knows how many Iraqis were killed?
tristero 10/24/2006 02:55:00 PM |

 
CW ON CT

by digby


In case anybody's wondering what the conventional wisdom on the Lamont-Lieberman race is, check out this TV report from Chris Matthews on MSNBC:

Chris Matthews: The Connecticut senate race was called a political weathervane suggesting that Ned Lamont's anti-war win would blow away suporters of the president's tactics in Iraq. So why is Lieberman running ahead in the polls right now? NBC's Chris Jansing is following the race up in West Hartford.

Chris, so what's wrong? Can't Lamont get the Democratic vote?

CJ: He can't get any votes right now. And this is a surprise, most people thought that he was going to be the golden boy, but there's a couple of reasons this whole Iraq referendum isn't working. It was the number one issue for voters in the primary, now only 35%. For those for whom the war is the number one issue, they go Lamont. Every other area, voters are going for Lieberman.

He also made some missteps and you really hit on one of them when you had Lamont on Hardball Chris. You said, "Look when you had him down after the primary in August, why didn't you step on his neck" and he said, "well, we needed a break after the primary." Mistake. Another mistake a lot of people think Lamont made is he used these kind of off-beat political ads using the same guy who got Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura elected. But Connecticut isn't Minnesota and so he squandered a lot of money there. He's only started running more conventional ads in the last couple of weeks.

This is a very expensive race for a small state like Connecticut. Take a look at these numbers Chris. Almost 13 million dollars spent by Ned Lamont against --- some people say, not well used. Almost every penny of it, by the way, out of his own pocket. And Joe Lieberman loses the primary but raises more money than any candidate in the history of Connecticut --- 15 million dollars. And if you're wondering what happened to Alan Schlessinger just take a look at that, he's raised less than 195,000 dollars not that Republicans have ever run strong here but that is obviously a very poor showing. So, since August, this has been great political theatre but it sure hasn't followed the script that Ned Lamont thought it would.

CM: Has the national party basically declared neutrality in this race? With all that money going to Joe you've got to believe that nobody told them not to --- because they're all Democratic givers probably --- nobody told them don't give to Joe, he's not the Democratic candidate. It looks to me like somebody waved a white flag up at the headquarters.


CJ: It seems like everybody likes him. I mean, not only are they giving him the money but you've got people who are saying "hey, if he gets elected we're gonna let him caucus with the Democrats." He says he will caucus with the Democrats. You've got Republicans who are liking him. I mean, what what was it Dick Cheney said, "he is one of the most loyal and distinguished Democrats of his generation." You've got basically everybody praising Joe Lieberman and so Ned Lamont is left out there saying "hey what happened, where is everybody who's supposed to be supporting me?" He does have, I grant you that one ad with Chris Dodd...

CM: You mentioned some ads, some numbers there, but it seems to me, as a state --- I just looked at here --- 46th on how much they like President Bush, 46th in approval --- the president's down to 31% approval in that state, that means the Iraq war is way down. People who are against this Iraq war in the worst way are going to re-elect the strongest hawk on the Democratic side.

CJ: Well they might not re-elect him, but you have to look again at that number. 35% of people say that Iraq is the number one issue. For the rest a very strong percentage are those care about the economy. And remember Chris, when the Groton sub base was going to be closed, Joe Lieberman went in and got it to stay open. That's 31,000 jobs right there. He is somebody who they think can go back to Washington, he may be in the Democratic majority and they're saying "Look, I don't think any single Senator can necessarily change the course of where we're going in Iraq but they can make a difference about the things that matter to me like the economy, like jobs, like gas prices. That may be the ace in the hole for Joe Lieberman.

CM: I just don't want to hear from those people later about how terrible the war is because the one thing about these elections is that in every national poll the number one issue is Iraq and the issue is going to turn on that elect because we are already seeing develop a new policy refinement based upon these new political circumstances right now.

A couple of things about this are just glaringly wrong, of course. Joe is not getting money only from Democratic givers. Republicans have been giving big money to his slush fund as well. And, Lamont most certainly is getting some votes from the grassroots Democrats who put him on the ballot, who I guess are considered useless pieces of nothing to these people. And it's always funny to hear people sound as if there's something wrong with Lamont spending his own money --- as if it shows he's some sort of phony when, in fact, he's relieving the party and the party donors of the obligation to fund their nominee. (Sadly, many of them then felt "free" to give to his opponent, the Lieberman for Lieberman nominee.)

But I do find Matthews' comments interesting. He seems to be scolding the voters of Connecticut, who hate the war and loathe George W. Bush, for failing to notice that they are voting for a warmongering Bush enabler and are out of step with the rest of the country by doing it. I feel like scolding them too. (And I especially feel like scolding "headquarters" who do seem to have waved the white flag. More on that later.)

And anyway, for all that stroking and smooching George W. Bush, what did Joe Lieberman get for it? Not much.

Well, they did get this:

WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) today hailed President Bush's signing of a bipartisan resolution giving the President the authority to use military force to eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Lieberman, who was one of the chief sponsors of the resolution in the Senate, attended the bill signing ceremony at the White House today.

"Saddam Hussein is the most significant threat to our national security, and we must take strong action to pry the poisons, toxins, and the plans for nuclear weapons out of his hands," Lieberman said today. "This resolution not only expresses our resolute support for President Bush as he seeks international backing to finally force Saddam to disarm, but also strengthens his hand as commander-in-chief to take decisive action if Saddam does not comply or if the United Nations fails to act."

Lieberman said this is the proper time for action, saying, "The question isn't 'why now?' but 'why not earlier?' Over the last decade Saddam has built up weapons of mass destruction, developed the means to deliver them on targets near and far, and consistently ignored and violated U.N. resolutions. We've waited too long to address this threat."

He wasn't just a typical Democratic war supporter. He was one of the most enthusiastic war supporters in the congress. He can say now that he wants "peace with honor" or whatever Nixonian formulation he's come up with today, but he's the most hawkish Democrat in the Senate --- so hawkish, Dick Cheney is counting on him to help him stay the course. He is not just another conservative Democrat. He's the conservative Democrat most responsible for the Iraq bloodbath and he deserves to pay for that great error in judgment with his seat.

Connecticut Dems who are voting for Joe and yet are against the war need to wake up.



Update: D-Day has a transcript from Tweety's show yesterday:

MATTHEWS: If you're against the war, vote against it. You only get one vote. Shouldn't you vote against it, if you care about it? If you care about other issues more, fine.


(crosstalk)


DICKERSON: That's where they're coming down, is they're saying they like, you know, the war is complicated, a lot of positions, they like Joe.


MATTHEWS: There's nothing complicated. Use your intelligence and vote your brains.

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digby 10/24/2006 12:18:00 PM |

 
Bombing The Google

by digby

Back in 2004, the rightwing bloggers came up with the idea of google bombing the name John Kerry so that negative articles came up first on the search page when people googled his name. it worked.

Chris Bowers decided we should do the same thing with our wonderful GOP opponents this time and has come up with a handy list of links to make this easy.

So, while you are on hold on the phone today or sitting in a boring meeting or simply looking to kill a couple of minutes, click on the links below and help us bring the truth about these Republicans to the top of the Google search pages.

Update: Never mind. You don't have to click on the links (although you might learn more about why you hate these candidates.) Just post the links on whatever site on which you have posting privileges or on your own blog. Mr. Google will do the rest.

Here's the link to the code you can post on your blog.

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert


digby 10/24/2006 12:00:00 PM |

 
Gutter Politics

by digby

I knew the Republicans would react like animals if they ever found themselves on the losing end of an election. I knew they would engage in rampant lying, race baiting and sexist stereotyping. I was a tiny bit surprised that they would support 52-year-old-man on teenager sex, but it didn't shock me.

But I honestly didn't think they'd go after the physically disabled. First Tammy Duckworth's opponent accuses the multi amputee Iraq veteran of "cutting and running." Then Rush takes a shot at Michael J. Fox. Now the GOP congresswoman who holds Dick Cheney's old seat says to her opponent, a wheelchair bound MS sufferer, "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."

I shouldn't be shocked, now that I think about it. They had no problem questioning severely wounded war hero Max Cleland's courage back in 2002. (In 2004, the ever so lovely Ann Coulter even claimed he had wounded himself in combat.)

These guys engage in gutter politics even when they don't have to so it's not surprising that they would turn into barbaric political terrorists in the face of serious losses. We'll see if they can stroke the nation's id and eke out a victory in these close races one more time.


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digby 10/24/2006 11:10:00 AM |

 
How Insane, Exactly, Is The Bush Administration?

by tristero

This insane:

Senior Bush administration officials wanted North Korea to test a nuclear weapon because it would prove their point that the regime must be overthrown.

This astonishing revelation was buried in the middle of a Washington Post story published yesterday...

One of these officials may have been Rice herself, Kessler hints. Rice, he reports, “has come close to saying the test was a net plus for the United States.” Rice has been trying to counter the prevailing view that the test was a failure of the Bush administration’s policy..

821 days left, people.

The least we can do is elect Democrats on November 7 who have pledged to investigate and apply the brakes.

821 days.

tristero 10/24/2006 10:09:00 AM |

 
It's Just A Shot Away

by digby

According to the General, during last nights debate, Sen. Lieberman, noting Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, declared, "We're in another time like that."

That's delusional BS. We're in another time like this:




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digby 10/24/2006 09:40:00 AM |

 
Ask Tony

by digby


Weldon at BTC News is asking for reader submitted questions to the White House press Office:

If you’ve ever watched a White House press briefing, you’ve probably felt the sensation of drowning in tepid gruel. It can be an extremely frustrating experience and it led me to try, in the wake of the Guckert/Gannon scandal, to place my own unfettered correspondent in the briefing room. In early 2005, I managed to pester the White House press office into providing BTC News contributor — now BTC News White House correspondent — Eric Brewer with semi-regular access to the White House press briefings held by then-press secretary Scott McClellan.

Eric has done a great job under difficult circumstances (you can read his dispatches from the press room here) with both McClellan and Tony Snow, but he’s only one guy, he has a real job and he can’t be there every day. So I asked our press office contact, who is now an official spokesman, if he would field questions submitted by our readers. He agreed to do that on the record, and I’m here to ask you to ask the White House the questions institutional reporters should ask but don’t.

Drop over and leave a question in the comment section.


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digby 10/24/2006 09:29:00 AM |

 
Keller Spanks Bush

by tristero

Nice to read, but it's at least two, if not four, Friedman Units too late. Most interesting quote:

Americans, Iraqis and the rest of the world need clear, public signs of progress.

Mr. Bush can make the first one by firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There is no chance of switching strategy as long as he is in control of the Pentagon.

Sigh. Everyone still colludes with the Junior Prophet From Crawford in passing the buck to someone else. Not that Rumsfeld is competent and shouldn't be fired. Of course he should, and then tarred and feathered. But Rumsfeld or no, the strategy Rumsfeld is pursuing is the strategy of George W. Bush. And "there is no chance of switching strategy as long as he is in control of the" White House.

For even if the strategy was somehow changed, there is no chance in hell it will change for the better. For as incompetent as Donald Rumsfeld surely is, his boss is far worse. Therefore, until January, 2009, no matter what happens, the Iraqis and the American military in Iraq will suffer horribly, needlessly, and monumentally. And the security of the US will be further eroded. It is awful, sickening, and infuriating, but it is also a fact.

A different country, with a more involved population, would demand Bush and his cabinet immediately resign. Ain't gonna happen. A different country, one which held its leaders accountable for its safety, would have impeached Bush by September 19, 2001. But the United States in 2006 is not that kind of country. Barring anything unforeseen, like Bush getting a brain transplant or converting to Islam - both far more probable than he will change direction and that he will do so in such a way that things will get better in Iraq - there's at least 821 days filled with unspeakable tragedy ahead for Iraq, and the US.

Contrary to what the lunatic, man-on-dog right says, I don't like saying so, I don't want it to happen, and I certainly hope I'm wrong. But some six years of nearly total disaster and mismanagement by the Bush administration says I'm right.

And yes, dear friends, the "nearly" in the previous paragraph was pro forma only.

Eight hundred and twenty-one more days of George W. Bush. God help us.

tristero 10/24/2006 07:15:00 AM |

 
Swine

by digby

From John Amato I see that Rush Limbaugh, with his usual lack of any form of human decency, questioned Michael J. Fox's sincerity in his ad for Claire McCaskill. Accoring to Rush, Fox was being dishonest by not taking his meds and allowing the full ravages of his disease to show --- or he was acting. Limbaugh felt it was "exploitive."

As it turns out, Fox's affect was caused by his medication, not his lack of it. From an interview with an expert on Parkinson's by Jonathan Cohn at the Plank:

What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. ... He's not over-dramatizing. ... [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson's disease, because people with Parkinson's don't look like that at all when they're not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don't move at all. ... People with Parkinson's, when they've had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don't take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad.

I took a lot of grief for a snarky post I did about Rush's little trip to the Dominican in which I implied he might have been there seeking the company of underage locals. I have absolutely no regret about it. The man is a cretinous bag of rotting pig meat and he deserves anything that's dished out at him.

Meanwhile Fox is doing more ads.


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digby 10/24/2006 12:03:00 AM |

Monday, October 23, 2006

 
Nixon's Bastard Son

by digby


So old Tricky Joe got hot under the collar at tonight's debate:

Evidently after the debate Lieberman walked up to Ned and said "You goddamn sonovabitch," and something to the effect of "how dare you run those direct mail pieces accusing me of voting for the energy bill in 2005 because of campaign contributions from the oil companies." Joe's losing it.

I wonder what it would be like if he ever turned some of that on a Republican? Even when they stole the presidency right out from under him he couldn't have been more gracious. When he debated Dick Cheney you would have thought they were a couple of old friends spending the afternoon shootin' the shit at the old fishin' hole. A Democrat criticizes his record and he turns into a rabid dog.

He's sounding more and more like his crooked mentor every day, isn't he? But then Nixon hated Democrats too.

Here's a neat analysis of the Nixon tapes that might be useful as we examine the very religious, moral and upright public Lieberman vs his slush funded, phony anti-war posture and private conversation:

A search of the Internet produced a number of transcripts of Nixon tapes. Naturally these focus on the evidence of crimes or intent to commit crimes, the cover-up of the Watergate burglary, and the specific events that led to the Watergate hearings, impeachment motions and the resignation of President Nixon. These tapes evidence Nixon’s crimes. The public image Nixon presented to the American people and his denials of illegal activities are well known. Therefore such are not presented herein. Several of the conversations evidencing illegal conduct are. There are more available, but only several are sufficient to demonstrate that Nixon’s private persona is vastly different than his public image. This is not a statistical question.

[...]

Analysis of the conversations in the Appendix also evidence another disparity between Nixon’s public and private images. One of every sixty words Nixon uttered was a profanity. Nixon’s profanities included damn, Goddam or Goddamit, son of a bitch, son of a bitching, hell, asshole, crap and several deleted expletives, all words inappropriate in public political speeches.

Now I am not one to criticize anyone who uses profanity. But I do criticize religious moralizers who pretend that they are above this sort of thing and lecture bloggers and grassroots activists for their incivility. Nixon had a similar smarmy, bathetic public voice --- lecturing, hectoring and eye-rollingly "moral" on the outside while being crude and ruthless in private.

Ever since I saw the Nixon angle on Lieberman, I realized why it is I've always had such a visceral mistrust of the man. That phony-baloney piety always made me sick when I saw Tricky Dick and it makes me similarly sick when I see Joe Lieberman.

But I have to give Nixon credit in one way. When he lost elections he didn't cozy up the ones who stole it and pretend to be their best friends. He had enough pride to come back and win his party's nomination fair and square and take on the political opposition that had bested him. Tricky Joe is just trying to save his seat so he can join the enemy. That's lower than Nixon would have ever gone.


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digby 10/23/2006 07:22:00 PM |

 
What's The Matter With Bagdad?

by digby

I think it's clear that the nation should want to keep the party in power that is responsible for this:

I keep seeing his face. He appears to be in his mid-20s, bespectacled, slightly bearded, and somehow his smile conveys a sense of prosperity to come. Perhaps he is set to marry, or enroll in graduate school, or launch a business — all of these flights of ambition seem possible.

In the next few images he is encased in plastic: His face is frozen in a ghoulish grimace. Blackened lesions blemish his neck.

"Drill holes," says Col. Khaled Rasheed, an Iraqi commander who is showing me the set of photographs.

He preserves the snapshots in a drawer, the image of the young man brimming with expectations always on top. There is no name, no identification, just a series of photos that documents the transformation of some mother's son into a slab of meat on a bloody table in a morgue.

"Please, please, I must show these photographs to President Bush," Rasheed pleads in desperation, as we sit in a bombed-out palace along the Tigris, once the elegant domain of Saddam Hussein's wife, now the command center for an Iraqi army battalion. "President Bush must know what is happening in Baghdad!"

He doesn't care what is happening in Bagdad and neither does the Dark Lord Cheney. They think people getting literally drilled in the head is an Iraqi tactic to deny them a Republican majority.

On Oct. 17, Cheney told Limbaugh: 'I was reading something today that a writer -- I don`t remember who -- was speculating on increased terrorist attacks in Iraq attempting to demoralize the American people as we get up to the election. And when I read that, it made sense to me. And I interpreted this as that the terrorists are actually involved and want to involve themselves in our electoral process, which must mean they want a change.

[...]

[The]show was not the first time Cheney has suggested terrorists have picked favorites in the upcoming election.

In August, Cheney told wire service reporters that 'al-Qaida types' were looking to break the will of the American people to stay and fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He linked that al-Qaida effort to the Connecticut Democratic primary rejection of Iraq war supporter Sen. Joe Lieberman.

It's all about them, you see.

That article linked above, called "Into The Abyss Of Baghdad," shows just how much the Iraqis care about maintaining that majority in congress:

Every day the corpses pile up in the capital like discarded furniture — at curbside, in lots, in waterways and sewer lines; every day the executioners return. A city in which it was long taboo to ask, "Are you Sunni or Shiite?" has abruptly become defined by these very characteristics.

Once-harmonious neighborhoods with mixed populations have become communal killing grounds. Residents of one sect or the other must clear out or face the whim of fanatics with power drills.

[...]

People are here one day, gone the next. Those who do go out often venture no farther than familiar streets. In the sinister evenings, when death squads roam, people block off their lanes with barbed wire, logs, bricks to ward off the killers.

Many residents remain in their homes — paralyzed, going slowly crazy.

"My children are imprisoned at home," says a cook, Daniel, a Christian whom I knew from better times, now planning to join the exodus from Iraq. "They are nervous and sad all the time. Baghdad is a big prison, and their home is a small one. I forced my son to leave school. It's more important that he be alive than educated."

But homes offer only an illusion of safety. Recently, insurgents rented apartments in mostly Shiite east Baghdad, filled the flats with explosives and blew them up after Friday prayers. Dozens perished.

Even gathering the bodies of loved ones is an exercise fraught with hazards. A Shiite Muslim religious party controls the main morgue near downtown; its militiamen guard the entrance, keen to snatch kin of the dead, many of them Sunni Muslim Arabs. Unclaimed Sunni corpses pile up.

[...]

On a recent patrol in Adamiya, one of the capital's oldest sections, U.S. soldiers went door to door speaking with merchants and residents, trying to earn their confidence. Everyone seemed cordial as people spoke of their terror of Shiite militiamen. Then a shot rang out and a soldier fell 10 yards from where I stood with the platoon captain; a sniper, probably Sunni, had taken aim at this 21-year-old private from Florida ostensibly there to protect Sunnis against Shiite depredations. The GI survived.

Coursing through the deserted cityscape in an Army Humvee after curfew empties the streets is an experience laced with foreboding. U.S. vehicles, among the few on the road, offer an inviting target for an unseen enemy. Piles of long-uncollected trash may conceal laser-guided explosives. Russian roulette is the oft-repeated analogy.

"Everyone's thinking the same thing," a tense sergeant tells me. "IEDs," he adds, using the shorthand for roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices.

ONE evening, I accompanied a three-Humvee convoy of MPs through largely Shiite east Baghdad. Before leaving the base, the commander performed an unsettling ritual: He anointed the Humvees with clear oil, performing something akin to last rites.

[...]


At this point, anything seems possible here, a descent of any depth into the abyss. Militiamen and residents are already sealing off neighborhoods by sect. Some have suggested district-to-district ID cards. Word broke recently of a plan to build barriers around this metropolis of 6 million and block the city's entrances with checkpoints. The "terror trench," as some immediately dubbed it, seemed to have a fundamental flaw: The killers already are in Baghdad.

Sure, it's a little "untidy" and all, but they should be a lot more grateful to the liberators who freed them and created this wonderful democratic paradise. Interfering with the Republicans' ability to do more of this good work in their country is drilling through their faces to spite their noses.



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digby 10/23/2006 02:17:00 PM |

 
Tricky Joe

by digby

So Joe Lieberman is now an anti-war candidate. Isn't that something? Just like the rest of the Republican pack he's been running away from his previous support for the war in order to get elected. Sadly, because he used to be a Democrat, he's getting the benefit of Democratic credibility on that issue when he really isn't entitled to it.

It's a lot like the 60's when Nixon created a faux anti-war message. In fact, Joe sounds remarkably like Tricky Dick on the subject these days:

"I want peace as much as you do." – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

"No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do." – Joe Lieberman,
10/18/06

"Many others -- I among them -- have been strongly critical of the way
the war has been conducted." – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

"I have been very critical of a lot of the mistakes the Bush
administration has made in Iraq." – Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06

"Many believe that President Johnson's decision to send American
combat forces to South Vietnam was wrong. But the question facing us
today is: Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?"
– Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

"The question is what do we do now. We are there, no matter what you
think of how we got there." – Joe Lieberman, 10/8/06

"I want to end the war." – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

"I want to help end the war in Iraq." – Joe Lieberman, 8/11/06

"A fixed timetable for our withdrawal would completely remove any
incentive for the enemy to negotiate an agreement. They would simply
wait until our forces had withdrawn and then move in." – Richard Nixon,
11/3/69

"If you tell your enemy when you're going to leave, they'll wait and
create disaster." – Joe Lieberman, 7/6/06

"I understand why they are concerned, about this war. I respect your
idealism. I share your concern for peace." – Richard Nixon, 1969

"I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position
on Iraq. I respect your views." – Joe Lieberman, 8/7/06

You know, now that I think of it there is a lot about Joe's smarmy, self-righteousness that reminds me of Dick Nixon.

But what really reminds of Dick Nixon is the fact that Joe Lieberman apparently keeps a slush fund in his campaign:

After President Richard Nixon abused campaign finance law through his Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), laws were passed to force candidates to disclose how they spend campaign funds. But over the weekend, it became clear Senator Joe Lieberman may be ignoring those laws, as the Senator’s FEC reports uncovered $387,000 “petty cash” slush fund that could be called the Committee to Reelect Lieberman (CREEL).

During the 14 days around the August 8th primary, Lieberman’s campaign spent over $387,000 on un-itemized, un-identified, and un-disclosed disbursements. By contrast, Ned Lamont’s campaign spent just $500 on petty cash in the entire reporting period. This slush fund requires answers to questions like: what was this spent on? Who was it spent on? And why weren’t the expenses itemized, as the FEC requires?

Today, the Lamont campaign will be filing a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, demanding an investigation into possible wrongdoing.

LIEBERMAN REPORT SHOWS UNPRECEDENTED $387,000 SLUSH FUND: Lieberman’s most recent FEC report shows $387,561 spent on “petty cash” – unaccounted for cash that was not itemized at all. To understand what an abuse this is, consider that FEC rules dictate that all expenditures over $100 must be itemized.

LIEBERMAN SLUSH FUND COMPRISED ONE OUT OF EVERY 12 DOLLARS SPENT: Lieberman’s massive slush fund comprised almost 8 percent of all of his expenditures in the reporting period. That’s almost one out of every $12 that Lieberman is effectively hiding.

LIEBERMAN FUNNELED OUT $32,000 A DAY IN UNACCOUNTED CASH: Lieberman’s campaign disbursed $387,000 in unmarked “petty cash” in just 12 days. That’s $32,000 every single day, with no accounting at all for how it was spent.

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS WERE ACCOUNTED FOR: Most mundane expenditures from Lieberman’s campaign such as salaries, printing, food, and other “petty” expenditures were already itemized on Lieberman’s FEC report, begging the question: What did Lieberman do with almost $400,000 in unaccounted for cash in 12 days?

THESE EXPENDITURES APPEAR TO VIOLATE FEC STATUTE: Title 11 C.F.R. §102.11 (2 U.S.C. 432(h)(2)) (Petty Cash Fund) provides: A political committee may maintain a petty cash fund out of which it may make expenditures not in excess of $100 to any person per purchase or transaction. If a petty cash fund is maintained, it shall be the duty of the treasurer of the political committee to keep and maintain a written journal of all disbursements. This written journal shall include the name and address of every person to whom any disbursement is made, as well as the date, amount, and purpose of such disbursement. In addition, if any disbursement is made for a candidate, the journal shall include the name of that candidate and the office (including State and Congressional district) sought by such candidate.

Tricky Joe's campaign is saying he legitimately spent $387,000 on petty cash in less than two weeks? Come on.

I can hear Joe's speech now:

Not one cent of the $387,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses.

It was not a secret fund. As a matter of fact, when I was on "Meet the Press," some of you may have seen it last Sunday—Tim Russert came up to me after the program and he said, "Joe, what about this fund we hear about?" And I said, "Well, there's no secret about it. Go out and see Dana Smith, who was the administrator of the fund."

And I gave him his address, and I said that you will find that the purpose of the fund simply was to defray political expenses.

One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Hadassah on the radio mention the fact that our kids would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Fed-ex saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was.

It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl, the 26-year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.

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digby 10/23/2006 12:18:00 PM |

 
Do The Right Thing

by digby


I'm glad to see someone with Paul Krugman's profile also making the case against going soft if the Democrats take over the congress. (I agree completely.)

I just heard poor little John Cornyn whining about the horrible mean partisanship of Nancy Pelosi, so they are already working themselves into a tantrum.

Krugman says:

Now that the Democrats are strongly favored to capture at least one house of Congress, they’re getting a lot of unsolicited advice, with many people urging them to walk and talk softly if they win.

I hope the Democrats don’t follow this advice — because it’s bad for their party and, more important, bad for the country. In the long run, it’s even bad for the cause of bipartisanship.

There are those who say that a confrontational stance will backfire politically on the Democrats. These are by and large the same people who told Democrats that attacking the Bush administration over Iraq would backfire in the midterm elections. Enough said.

Political considerations aside, American voters deserve to have their views represented in Congress. And according to opinion polls, most Americans are actually to the left of Congressional Democrats on issues such as health care.

In particular, the public wants politicians to stand up to corporate interests. This is clear from the latest Newsweek poll, which shows overwhelming public support for the agenda Nancy Pelosi has laid out for her first 100 hours if she becomes House speaker. The strongest support is for her plan to have Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, which is supported by 74 percent of Americans — and by 70 percent of Republicans!

What the make-nice crowd wants most of all is for the Democrats to forswear any investigations into the origins of the Iraq war and the cronyism and corruption that undermined it. But it’s very much in the national interest to find out what led to the greatest strategic blunder in American history, so that it won’t happen again.

What’s more, the public wants to know. A large majority of Americans believe both that invading Iraq was a mistake, and that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war. And according to the Newsweek poll, 58 percent of Americans believe that investigating contracting in Iraq isn’t just a good idea, but a high priority; 52 percent believe the same about investigating the origins of the war.

I was struck by this too. There is an appetite for putting things right in Washington and that means that an accounting is due. Most adults understand that people must be responsible for their actions. Indeed, Republicans were the ones who used to make a fetish of it. Now that they have made a mess of things, not so much.

Why, then, should the Democrats hold back? Because, we’re told, the country needs less divisiveness. And I, too, would like to see a return to kinder, gentler politics. But that’s not something Democrats can achieve with a group hug and a chorus of “Kumbaya.”

The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that’s the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. People like Grover Norquist, who once declared that “bipartisanship is another name for date rape,” push for a hard-right economic agenda; people like Karl Rove make that agenda politically feasible, even though it’s against the interests of most voters, by fostering polarization, using religion and national security as wedge issues.

As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.’s strategy, Democrats can’t do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.

Even if they try to act in a bipartisan fashion, their opponents will find a way to divide the nation — which is what happened to the great surge of national unity after 9/11. One thing we might learn from investigations is the extent to which the Iraq war itself was motivated by the desire to have another wedge issue.

There are those who believe that the partisan gap can be bridged if the Democrats nominate an attractive presidential candidate who speaks in uplifting generalities. But they must have been living under a rock these past 15 or so years. Whoever the Democrats nominate will feel the full force of the Republican slime machine. And it doesn’t matter if conservatives have nice things to say about a Democrat now. Once the campaign gets serious, they’ll suddenly question his or her patriotism and discover previously unmentioned but grievous character flaws.

This is exactly correct. The chattering classes are all abuzz with the notion that now is the time to bind up the nation's wounds and work across the aisle. (I can't help but wonder why they didn't see the need for such rapproachment during the last decade of slash and burn GOP partisanship.) This pattern is well documented. They will continue to drain the treasury and play our their "movement" experiments and then have the democrats step up and clean up the messes they make until this is stopped. The conservative movment is a failure and it must not be allowed to govern this country anymore with its lies, debts and dangerous foreign policy.

We are confronting some very serious problems right now, only one of which is terrorism. The Republicans have destroyed our international reputation at the very time when we need global cooperation. And they have driven the nation itself into the ditch dividing the country with their polarizing wedge politics and blaming everyone but themselves for their failures.

The Democrats have to be the "grown-ups" yes. And one of the unpleasant tasks will be figuring out what went wrong, putting safeguards in place so the same things don't happen again and making people take responsibility for their actions. That is what adults do. Letting bygones be bygones and simply blathering on about how we all need to put the unpleasantness behind us and get along will not win the respect of the American people nor will it fix the problems this nation faces. (That, after all, is the indulgent mommy model that the Republicans have been using as a club to beat us over the head with for the last 30 years. No more.)

Now, politicians can make speeches about bipartisanship and sing kumbaaya all they want. I'm sure it is a very soothing tune. But the Democratic party had best not forget that the actions a Democratic majority takes in the next two years will determine if the American people can trust them to defend the nation and fix the mess going forward. It's very hard to see how that will happen if they capitualte to John Cornyn's whimpering about how mean and nasty they are.

The polls show that the American people are behind them and the world is behind them. For the good of the party, the good of the country and the good of the planet, they just have to tough out the criticism they will receive from the mincing GOP courtiers in the press and the blubbering, wailing Republicans, and Do. The. Right. Thing.



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digby 10/23/2006 09:48:00 AM |

 
Robinson On Sullivan And Religious Tolerance

by tristero

Sara Robinson on Orcinus has weighed in on Amy Sullivan's New Republic piece. I wrote about it here and don't want to repeat what I said there. But I do want to respond to this passage that Sara wrote, as well as some others:

"...studying fundamentalist theology is almost entirely beside the point. On the other hand, studying their psychology and sociology -- which a great many people have already done -- and using that information to understand what they value and how they communicate will get us much, much farther."

I strongly disagree that "studying fundamentalist theology is almost entirely beside the point." One of the most important ways available to understand what makes christianists tick is to read and listen to what they have to say. You simply cannot understand their psychology or sociology -which certainly are extremely important - without also understanding their belief system.

Another reason to study fundamentalist theology is in order to counter it. Not to convert true believers, of course, which Sara also recognizes. No, the real audience we must persuade are the mainstream media outlets who have provided the christianists with a free pass mostly because they have been virtually unopposed theologically. They have declared themselves not fundamentalists but simply "Christians," which they most certainly are not, and until recently, no one knowledgeable enough and articulate enough has called them on it.

In short, the mainstream media are the audience for persuasive tactics based on reason. But to persuade them is difficult, especially if you don't know your opponent's position in detail.

A prime example of this was the coverage of "intelligent design" creationism in the New York Times. For years, both under Raines and Keller, the Times gave these unscrupulous extremists a free pass. Kent Hovind had an admiring profile of his now defunct creationist theme park splattered all over the Times's front page, with hardly a word of objection permitted in the article's text by scientists, and with no indication that, among other things, Hovind had been videotaped extolling the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as a serious work. Another frontpager was when a Times reporter took some rafting trips in the Grand Canyon, one run by a creationist and another by scientists, and typed up a he said/she said, giving both views equal weight.

I'm sure I'm not the only reader who wrote in strongly objecting to this coverage. More importantly, scientifically knowledgeable opponents of creationism got their act together and studied the creationists' "science," amassing hoards of evidence to address the specific issues raised by the IDiots. It was made clear, not to the proponents of "intelligent design" creationism but to the reporters and editors at the Times, that there was no there there. A turning point was the verdict in the Kitzmiller trial. Since then, it is all but impossible to find in the Times any remarks by creationists that aren't immediately caveated.

My point is this: without specifically addressing the issues raised in a knowledgeable way, which requires studying your opponent's position and beliefs with great care, there is no way to persuade others that your opponent is worthless.

Now there are very good reasons why many good people should not bother to address creationism in a serious fashion. But someone has to. And someone must study and address the incoherent and repellent theology of christianism in a direct way. You not only provide the media with compellling reasons to marginalize these genuinely marginal beliefs, but you also publicize alternative theologies that do not hold as their goal the establishment of an American theocracy. Furthermore, you shift the locus of dispute from a defensive fight on the worthiness of enlightenment values. Instead, by knowledgeably disputing christianist theology, you place christianists on the defensive, forcing them to defend their radical theocratic beliefs. Again, the audience we're trying to persuade is not christianists, but those who give them enough stature to advance their cause in the mass media.

Another example of why it helps to know what your opponent believes if you want to discredit them is that it can provide more fodder for important rebuttals. Here's one case in point.

With all due respect, in her post, Sara doesn't seem to grasp the fact that "tolerance" is a technical word within the worldview of christianist theology and they often pun between the technical and commonsense meaning. As a result, we get much eloquent prose defending the importance of speaking out in dissent of christianism (some of which is discussed below), which is certainly stirring but besides the point.

"Tolerance" to a christianist means several things, most of which they oppose. One example: When a state "tolerates" a religion, it means (to them) that the state has usurped the power to be the sole arbiter of whether a religion should be permitted (ie, tolerated) to practice without restrictions. In short, the problem with the notion of tolerance for christianists is that it is a codeword for the licensing of religious belief. The state may tolerate a religion today, but tomorrow may decide to revoke the state's license. Christianists argue that the state has no business tolerating (ie licensing) religion, because the state derives its power from God, from whence comes all authority both spiritual (through the church) and secular (via civil government).

In short, christianism is a direct challenge to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. It is as anti-American as Stalinism or the divine right of kings.

Now, this is an extremely powerful argument to make if your goal is not to convert the hardcore but rather make christianism a more marginal influence on American mainstream politics. In order to do so, you must convince mainstream reporters and news outlets not to be gulled into thinking these people are anything but radical extremists. And in order to do that, you simply must study works like Reverend [sic] Joseph Morecraft's With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple or the writings of Rushdoony.

In her eloquent advocacy of speaking up to christianist nonsense, Sara writes:

Well, damn it -- sometimes, people who are in error should be made to squirm a little. They should be called to account for their views, and queried thoroughly on what their agenda is for the rest of us. There comes a time when politeness has to take a back seat to the larger interests of the country...

Well, yes, of course. But then again, no christianist would disagree with what she's written here, either. The only difference is that they think you and I are the ones who should be held to account. And they are prepared to argue that. Here is part of they waythey do that:

Christianists, like other rightwing extremists, have studied non-christianist American society very carefully. Proof? Their utilization of liberal phrases, like "free expression" or "equal rights" is one example. They then upend the conventions, throw in some obscure facts, sprinkle it with lies, and poof, they've given the impression that they know what they're talking about and that their position has been thoughtfully considered. The result: they confuse the news media into permitting them to spew their propaganda unimpeded, as the media has a bias towards presenting all points of view that appear to have stature.

Finally, I genuinely have no idea what utility Sara find in Lakoff's parent frames, which are a misleading oversimplification of what is going on. Discussed in relationship to her reactions to the sentimental scenes of Gore down on the farm in "An Inconvenient Truth" Sara fails to take into account that perhaps she found the farm life scenes ineffective in the Gore film not because they were emotional but because they were genuinely ineffective. And likewise, perhaps the reason the charts were effective was because they simply were compelling data compellingly displayed.

In other words, I'm suggesting that her reaction had nothing to do with the privileging of one Lakoffian frame over another, but simply with the limited artistic talent of the filmmaker. Sara claims that the charts meant something to her because of their intellectual appeal and the farm scenes meant little because they were an appeal to emotion. Nonsense.

I guarantee that if she saw Ingmar Bergman's Shame, with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman, she'd walk out as shattered as everyone else who has seen it, far more emotionally moved about the horrors of war than she ever could become from a mere graphic of rising casualty rates in Iraq.

Don't get me wrong. That is not to say that such a graphic is cold, it most certainly isn't, but the invoking of emotional response is a complex skill, one that the filmmakers in the case of Gore simply don't have in much abundance. Sara was unmoved not because of an unwillingness to ascribe value to an emotional frame, but because the artistry in those scenes was sub-standard. (Much of the Gore film, of course, was brilliant and deeply moving, however.) As for the Gore film being in any serious way an influence on far right evangelical environmentalism, well...I'll believe it when I see some evidence that makes that plausible.

Lakoff is, however, correct that liberal rhetoric must be improved and drastically so. Unfortunately, vacuous notions like "nurturing parent" are part of that problem, not the solution.

I've criticized Sara a great deal, but I also must acknowledge that I agree with her on these points. It is vitally important that christianists never get a free pass in the media. Since their politics are central, they don't deserve respect when they try to fend off criticism by claiming liberals, of all people, are intolerant (in our sense of the word). Christianism must be disputed. Always. We also both agree that there is no point in debating christianists although we disagree on why. Sara believes it is hopeless as you will never convince them. I believe it is not only hopeless, but it is talking to the wrong audience. I further believe an effective opposition to christianism requires a deep knowledge not only of their psychology, their sociology, and their history, but also of their beliefs, because, among other reasons, it gives opponents the opportunity to take the fight into the churches and provide congregants with a wider assortment of theologies to embrace, including ones that aren't as ominously anti-American as christianist ones.

I'd like to reiterate what I've said in numerous other posts. Religion is the macguffin here. This is not a dispute about religion but politics. It is vitally important that whenever political operatives manipulate religious belief in order to deflect criticism, they be opposed. With strength and knowledge.

[A few quick updates after the original post.]

tristero 10/23/2006 07:13:00 AM |

 
Jerk

by digby


One of the most unpleasant facets of Junior Codpiece's personality is the way he publicly disses his own father. Contrary to this article in the NY Times it isn't rare at all. This is typical:

Mr. Bush has been saying for months that he believes Republicans will keep control of the House and the Senate, and he is not changing his tune now, even if it means taking the rare step of rebuking his own father.

In an interview shown Sunday on ABC News, Mr. Bush was asked about a comment by the first President Bush, who said this month that he hated to think about life for his son if Democrats took control of Congress. “He shouldn’t be speculating like that, because he should have called me ahead of time,” the president said, “and I’d tell him they’re not going to.”

The whole damned country is speculating about that and he's talking about his dad like he's a 12 year old who needs to be given a pep talk --- the same father who was president and vice-president himself for 12 years. But then Junior has some issues:

“I can’t remember a moment where I said to myself, maybe he can help me make the decision,” Bush told Woodward.

He's just a doddering old fool:

WILLIAMS: Is there a palpable tension when you get together with the former president, who happens to be your father? A lot of the guys who worked for him are not happy with the direction of things.

BUSH: Oh no. My relationship is adoring son.

WILLIAMS: You talk shop?

BUSH: Sometimes, yeah, of course we do. But it's a really interesting question, it's kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant. My dad means the world to me, as a loving dad. He gave me the greatest gift a father can give a child, which is unconditional love. And yeah, we go out and can float around there trying to catch some fish, and chat and talk, but he understands what it means to be president. He understands that often times I have information that he doesn't have. And he understands how difficult the world is today. And I explain my strategy to him, I explain exactly what I just explained to you back there how I view the current tensions, and he takes it on board, and leaves me with this thought, “I love you son.”

Can you imagine being lectured about strategy by the idiot son who has put the Bush name in the pantheon of historical leadership failure ? I assume the only way he can get through the day is by living in total denial. But still, he must have to fight back the urge to backhand the little prick when he acts like that. How dare he...

Junior's daddy complex has had catastrophic implications on this world. It should remind us all why hereditary leadership is such a bad idea.


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digby 10/23/2006 12:21:00 AM |

Sunday, October 22, 2006

 
Chick Heroes

by digby


You've all probably seen the ads on the important blogs about this new Dixie Chicks movie "Shut Up and Sing." I haven't seen it but I'll be going as soon as the movie opens because I'm very anxious to see their story (told by a master documentary filmmaker like Barbara Kopple, too.) I wrote last summer about my experience when I first heard their song "I'm Not Ready To Make Nice" and I still get a little chill whenever I hear it.

The Chicks have more money than God and they can afford to completely drop out of music if they wanted to, but that doesn't diminish the courage it took for them to defy their fans and their audience and stand on their principles. They are country artists, from deep in Red Country and what they did --- and continue to do -- is the essence of patriotism. At cost to themselves they are standing up for the right to speak out against your government. I think they are heroes and I hope their movie is an inspiration and solace to those who've been out here shouting into the void about what's been going on in our country and our culture for the last decade or so.



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digby 10/22/2006 07:04:00 PM |

 
Man, That Bastard Can Lie

by tristero

Yoo hoo, Democrats! If you know what's good for you, you'll make sure that every person in the country gets a chance to watch this:

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’

And also these:

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

I can't imagine how awful it must be to be the parent of a child in Iraq, knowing that your kid's life is being placed in danger by this foul, cynical, unprincipled liar.

h/t, Atrios.
tristero 10/22/2006 03:37:00 PM |

 
Colossal Failure

by digby

What Kevin sez:

I wonder how long it will take America to recover from George Bush's uniquely blinkered and self-righteous brand of ineptitude? In the past five years he's demonstrated to the world that we don't know how to win a modern guerrilla war. He's demonstrated that we don't understand even the basics of waging a propaganda war. He's demonstrated that other countries don't need to pay any attention to our threats. He's demonstrated that we're good at talking tough and sending troops into battle, but otherwise clueless about using the levers of statecraft in the service of our own interests. If he had set out to willfully and deliberately expose our weaknesses to the world and undermine our strengths, he couldn't have done more to cripple America's power and influence in the world. Beneath the bluster, he's done more to weaken our national security than any president since World War II.

This is the argument. Bush's foreign and national security policy has given the world the impression that the United States is a paper tiger. It has made us dramatically less safe in the process. It's not the Democrats or the terrorists who have done this. Bush and the Republican congressional majority did this with their insistence on puerile bully tactics instead of sophisticated use of the "levers of statecraft" --- which they then followed up with almost comically incompetent bumbling of their own misguided tactics. Their failure is total and comprehensive. This world is just too complicated for schoolyard thinking and tinkerbell planning.

The other day someone (a former liberal who now believes the Republicans are better at national security) lectured me about how wonderful the lovely Condi Rice has been in representing this country around the world and how this shows that the modern Republican party, of which I am so critical, has changed. I answered, "The whole world hates us now. Do you really think that's good for this country?" She didn't have much of a response because having the whole world hate you represents a terrible failure of leadership and she knew it.

This is a big problem and it makes me kind of sad. There's always been anti-Americanism, of course, but our greatest responsiblity was to try to manage it, not make it worse. We are much to powerful a natiohn to let that sort of thing get out of hand. It makes countries start thinking of creating alliances and building nasty weapons to protect themselves from such a big powerful threat. Anti-Americanism is far worse than it's ever been now and it's going to affect many aspects of our lives in this age of globalization, from security to economics. It will not be easy to rebuild what respect and trust we once had.

And then there was the failure of Bush to seize the opportunity we had after 9/11 and the Afghanistan operation to launch a new period of international cooperation, when we had the support of the vast majority of the world. With his casual abrogation of treaties he didn't like to the invasion of Iraq, he turned an outpouring of support into international disdain.

Here at home, for his own political purposes, he has done bin Laden's work for him through relentless fearmongering and curtailment of the constitutional freedoms we are supposedly fighting the terrorists to maintain.

The last five years have been a colossal national security failure and the only thing that will change it is if the American people make it clear to the world that they don't support it --- by electing new leadership. We must do it this November and we must do it in November two years from now.

The Republicans are right about one thing:

"These are the stakes. Vote November 7."

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digby 10/22/2006 01:33:00 PM |

 
The Fucking Faith-Based Initiative

by tristero

I'd like to briefly weigh in on the hullabaloo over David Kuo .

From what I can tell, in all the publicity over Kuo's book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, no one seems to have asked what I think is the only interesting question: Does David Kuo believe that the US government actually should have an Office of Faith Based Initiatives?

This interview with Kuo in Salon is typical. He discusses how much contempt some in the Bush administration have for christianist loonies, as if the Bush administration doesn't contain a large number of religious nuts - Jerry Boykin comes instantly to mind, as does the former AG, John "Crisco Johnny" Ashcroft for whom Kuo once worked. Well, I'm as interested in hearing more stories about the hypocrisy and corruption of the Bush administration as the next American, but the larger issue, whether any administration, has, or should have, the right to dole out my hard-earned money to religious groups, is finessed.

To make it clear, there should be no office of faith-based initiatives. The very idea is digustingly offensive. To say so does not make me a "secularist" as many of the devout understand how important such a wall is to their faith. I am merely being an American. A wall of separation between church and state was clearly established by the Founders and over the years, that wall has been determined, quite rightly, to mean that no religion can be privileged by the US government. And that means giving 'em money or other special breaks.

Kuo's basic point appears to be that faith-based initiatives would be great, provided he was in control of it, or some other incorruptible evangelical. No, it wouldn't. It is simply un-American, a direct violation of the Constitution and American traditions.

Amy Sullivan is upset that in discussing all this, Democrats have been shooting themselves in the foot by framing the issue in such a way as to alienate potential evangelicals. I'll grant that, to a small extent, she may have a point. It is quite possible to heap scads of contempt on scum like Pat Robertson while not inadvertently offending the genuinely religious. And, while I strongly disagree with Sullivan's specific criticism - she apparently doesn't seem to grasp how insane and revolting it is, to the many of the devout of all faiths, for anyone to claim Jews will burn in hell because they won't accept Christ,; furthermore, her characterization of what o'Donnell said is totally inacurrate - in principle, it never hurts to gain insight into how to do so in an effective manner.

But she is avoiding the elephant in the room. Democrats need to remind evangelicals that it is in their interest to examine the roots of their involvement in the politics of this country. Back then, it was the ancestors of the modern evangelicals who were among the most fervent advocates of church/state separation. That said, let's get real. Given that there is lots of what Samuel Beckett quaintly called "filth" up for grabs (ie, money), getting the evangelicals to eschew religious welfare will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is the argument that must be addressed. And the delicate sensibilities of evangelicals who get offended when people object to them telling their flocks that Jews will burn in hell is a minor matter.*

The extent to which the wall of separation has been battered and the enormous effort it will take to repair it is just one example of the damage the Bush administration has caused to the very foundation of this country's system of politics. This is not simply about "under God" in the Pledge of the Allegiance (which imo, is bad enough), but about a system in which Muslims are being taxed to give money to Buddhist temples, Christians are taxed to fund Jewish synagogues, atheists are forced to fund churches, and pious worshippers of all faiths are coerced into giving money to cynical political operatives like Colson, Robertson, and Dobson.

Since Kuo appears to have no problems with establishing state-sponsored religion or religions, I wonder whether his book has much importance beyond the gossip stage. Yes, it's nice to have more confirmation that Rove, et al, are hypocrites, and to have some insight into the details of the splits in the Bush administration. But Kuo doesn't seem to grasp the enormous risks of his position. He says, "Invoking God's name to get anything can be a very dangerous thing spiritually." That may be so, but what is certain is taht the founders well understood that the state funding of religion is a dangerous thing, especially for religions. And the Democrats' task - hell, it's also the Republicans' task as well, if they really are as American as they claim to be - is to find a way to say that in a compelling, modern rhetoric.

To call for such rhetoric is the exact opposite of a call for discussion of religion to be off-limits for politicians. Yes, Democrats must discuss religion. To avoid it is to fall into exactly the trap that many of us, including Digby and myself, have been warning Democrats against. When you avoid a subject, you enable the Republicans to define it, and when the avoided subject has in any way, shape or form to do with values, you are a goddamn fool.

Yes, talk about religion and belief. A lot. And be smart about it.

(h/t to Karl Rove who came up with the title for this post.)

Special note to newer readers: It is impossible to tell from what I 've written here what my religious beliefs are or are not. Do not assume that I am either an atheist, an agnostic, or a person of deep faith. My personal beliefs, whatever they may be, are private. Support of church/state separation makes me an American, but says absolutely nothing about my belief in God, or lack of such a belief.

What is not private, as many longtime readers know, is my public support and enormous respect for the practice of all faiths, or for the right not to practice any faith at all. What also is not private is my thorough contempt for political operatives who try to deflect criticism by hiding behind the skirts of their priests. They are the ones contemptuous of religious faith, not I, they are the blasphemers, not I, and I see no reason to tolerate their hypocrisy.

*******

*The sensibilities of bigoted evangelicals may be a minor concern but what is not, obviously, is that such anti-semitic bullshit is being fobbed off by Robertson and others as mainstream Christian belief.

tristero 10/22/2006 12:07:00 PM |

 
The First Lemming Over A Cliff Is No Leader, Frank

by tristero

I'm a longtime Rich fan, actually from the moment he stopped being a theater reviewer. [UPDATE: However, I've always been appalled by his anti-Gore remarks. (ht, Eric in comments.)] But this is simply idiotic:

Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda - enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging "pre-emptive" war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights- and he didn't fudge it. He didn't care if half the country despised him along the way.

Say whatever you want about George W. Bush, but he is a leader only in the same way that the 9/11 hijackers were brave.

When the term is used in modern American political discourse, "leader" does not have the standard generalized meaning of "a person in authority" regardless of whether they are good or bad. When Americans use the term "leader" in reference to their own politics, they are not talking about Kim Jong Il or Vladimir Lenin. Americans are invoking the imagery of great American political and cultural leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Coltrane.

First and foremost, a leader persuades others, by proposing sensible ideas in an honest and convincing rhetorical voice.

A leader is NOT someone who doesn't care "if half the country despised him along the way."* A leader is NOT someone who hides a tyrannical agenda under the skirts of priests and behind cheesy bromides like "compassionate conservatism." A leader is NOT someone who does exactly as s/he pleases.

Bush does not persuade, he does what he wants, and if anybody stands in the way, he ignores or blackmails them. His ideas are not sensible, but nuts. He is thoroughly dishonest and his inability to articulate even the simplest ideas is a national embarassment.

In addition, a leader recognizes when a given course of action, especially one that he himself endorsed, is failing. A leader takes responisiblity for failures as well as successes. Bush, of course, is notorious both for following his delusions until they lead into total fiasco and for simply refusing to recognize that he ever made a single mistake.

In American public discourse, rightly or wrongly, words like "leader" and "brave" are typically descriptive of people with positive virtues. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader. Idi Amin was not. The students in Tiananmen Square were brave, the man who assasinated Rabin was not.

By drawing a direct comparison between Bush and the 9/11 hijackers, am I saying that Bush is a religious fanatic in the grip of dangerous narcissistic delusions of grandeur and who has no regard for the death of innocents?

You bet I am. And that is not what Americans mean by a leader, Mr. Rich.

***

*Ah, you say, but what about Coltrane? Surely he didn't care if he was despised when he went into "free" jazz, did he?

On the contrary, like every other professional musician, he most certaInly did care about his audience. At the same time that some of his more adventuresome music was recorded, Coltrane laid down an exquisite, and deliberately commerical, recording of ballads. The release of some of his most challenging music was alternated, surely with his knowledge and assent, with less "out" recordings. True, his later style was consistent in concert, and led to considerable anger. But Coltrane was dismayed by it, and concerned. He was on a constant search for more tunes like "My Favorite Things," which had nearly universal recognition but also the kind of musical structure that inspired his bolder experimentation. It goes without saying, contra Adorno, that none of this detracts one iota from the incredibly original and genuinely awe-inspiring example of musical integrity Coltrane set for the rest of us.

When musicians treat the audience with apparent disdain, for example Miles Davis, it is always a pose. They know full well the marketing advantage of being considered so "pure" and so "attuned to their muse that they even turn their back on the audience." Back in the 1960's, we went to Mothers of Invention concerts because Zappa would greet us with "Hi, boys and girls" or even "Hi, pigs" in kind of a collusion with his disdain. Yes, the rest of his audience was ignorant buffoons, but we were different. We knew who Varese was. We could follow his experimentation in improvised polymeters. In other words, Zappa's disdain for the great unwashed was a deliberate tactic to rope in the kinds of fans that were influential trendsetters in the 60's, by appealing to their sense of alienation and our desire to seen as special individuals who stood out from the crowd of conformist. Later on, of course, as his audience grew far beyond the original cognoscenti, Frank literally changed his tune. JAP's, closeted rough-sex gays, hypocritical politicians - all became targets of Zappa's acid contempt. But it's hard to find examples, if any, of Zappa insulting actual ticket-buyers to his concerts en masse, as part a routine shtick, which he did, at least at every concert I saw or heard about, in the late 60's/early 70's.

[Edited slightly after original posting]

tristero 10/22/2006 07:45:00 AM |

Saturday, October 21, 2006

 
Marriage Made In Hell

by digby

Wake up before you watch this. Or, if you can't wake up, watch this. It will wake you up.

Those poor Americans fighting in Iraq seem like decent guys who are doing a thankless task. But if you were an Iraqi you'd hate their guts. They are not only invaders and armed occupiers, they all have to wear that body armor that makes them look like gigantic robots. They seem as alien as it is humanly possible to be. And they are.

Some don't even understand human nature ---like the one soldier who says the Iraqis are "too lazy" to stand up so we can stand down. Man, how many times have I heard certain Americans say that about people who refuse to cooperate in their own debasement? Ask some old timers in the south about that.




h/t Dover Bitch
digby 10/21/2006 06:27:00 AM |

 
Praying For A Terrorist Attack

by digby


Fred Barnes is disappointed that the North Korean test wasn't bigger:

The problem here is that national security isn't the leading campaign issue. And saying it should be won't make it so. What's needed is an event--a big event--to crystallize the issue in a way that highlights Republican strength and Democratic weakness. It was two events--the foiled British terrorist plot and the need to comply with a Supreme Court decision on handling captured terrorists--that led to the Republican mini-rally in September.

Of course there's little time left for a major event to occur. The North Korean bomb test wasn't big enough to change the course of the campaign. So Republicans may have to rely on their two remaining assets: They have more money than the Democrats and a voter turnout operation second to none.

Is that really ok now? Republicans are now allowed to openly wish for some sort of national security "event" that would be big enough to change the course of an election? A dirty bomb in NFL stadium maybe? That would shake things up. How about an assassination? That'd get everybody's attention.

Heck, if they can't get themselves a crisis, I guess they';ll just have to depend on making an argument to the American people and letting them decide on the basis of the republican record. It hardly seems fair, does it?

They really have no boundries these days do they?

Link via Arthur Silber.

While you're over there, take a moment to read some of Arthur's writings these past few weeks. Here's a taste:

We proceed steadily down the road to hell, and all the mechanisms for a full dictatorship are now in place -- and our media act as if nothing has changed. Oh, there's some dispute about what it all means, but that's just the normal difference of opinion. And a few people appear to be deeply worried, but they're just those "extremists" and "leftist loons" who come around to annoy us well-balanced "centrists" every now and then.

And I still continue to hear some especially dull-witted defenders of the administration use the long-discredited argument: "But do you know anyone who's been 'disappeared,' who's been taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again? Do you know anyone else who knows someone like that? Of course not! See, we're still a free country! You're just a nut!" I dealt with that one here. These people wouldn't know a principle if it announced itself in one-syllable words and then stabbed them in the gut -- which, by the way, it has now done.

Don't look for the meaning of national and world events in our major media. You'll never find it, because it isn't there. But our leading "reporters" and "journalists" will still have their phone calls answered by the powerful who use the media to trumpet their personalized propaganda, and they'll still be invited to the "right" parties. Everybody's happy.

Except for all the rest of us.

Yep.



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digby 10/21/2006 06:26:00 AM |

 
Rising Hysteria

by digby

CNN cable news has become "the publicist for an enemy propaganda film" by broadcasting a tape showing an insurgent sniper apparently killing an American soldier, said the chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee here Friday.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., called for the Pentagon to oust immediately any CNN reporter embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq.

"I think Americans like to think we're all in this together," Hunter said. "The average American Marine or soldier has concluded after seeing that film that CNN is not on their side."

CNN said its decision to show the brief tape was motivated by a desire to show the public the growing threat insurgent snipers pose to U.S. troops.

"Whether or not you agree with us in this case, our goal, as always, is to present the unvarnished truth as best we can," wrote CNN producer David Doss in a blog on the network's Web site.

Tony Snow, President Bush's press secretary, said the insurgents were hoping to "break the will of the American people" by slipping the tape to CNN.

[...]

Snow, at his regular news briefing in Washington, said the video was misleading because it made it appear that Americans were "sitting ducks" and the insurgents were winning. In fact, the insurgents "are dying in much greater numbers and suffering much greater damage," he said.

Tony needs a rest. And Duncan Hunter needs a lobotomy.

Blaming the media for their screw-ups is the right's longtime favorite sport, but this is bordering on hysterical:

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., who joined Hunter and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in sending a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, called the film "nothing short of a terrorist snuff film."

The Republicans continue to think that if they don't show the coffins coming back (or even acknowledge that soldiers are dying) that people can be conned into believing that we are winning their war. In our continuing revival of Vietnam: The Musical, Tony's even bringing back the Westmorland body counts.

For some reason it's not working. perhaps it might just be because now that the fog of 9/11 has lifted, people look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and see them for the losers they always were. Once the fans are over you they won't buy tickets to your show again.


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digby 10/21/2006 06:15:00 AM |

 
Piercing The Veil

by digby


This debate as to whether women in Britain should wear the full veil brings up some very interesting questions that I'd be interested in hearing people discuss.

In my opinion, the veil is a relic of another time (as are catholic nun's habits) that represents archaic, repressive notions of women's "modesty." But who the hell am I to tell perfectly free Muslim women in the west, who choose to wear it under no cultural obligation or coercion, that they shouldn't?

The argument is that it's a mode of dress that sows division in society, but that's just crap. They could have said the same thing about punks in the 70's. In fact, they did. But what makes this one odd is that the conformists are arguing against a form of dress that in its normal melieu is a form of forced conformity. That certainly does indicate that wearing the veil in England is a matter of political rebellion as much as a religious statement. And that, of course, brings up all kinds of things that make people nervous.

What do you think?



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digby 10/21/2006 06:10:00 AM |

Friday, October 20, 2006

 
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

by digby


I am watching something so bizarre on Fox news right now I hardly know how to describe it. Sean Hannity and Dennis Miller are frothing at the mouth and jerking each other off in front of a big carnival at the Arizona State Fair. (Colmes is holding their coats, I guess.) Miller just shouted "we will be fighting this war for the rest of our lives!" People cheered wildly while the ferris wheel went round and round in the backround.

I have only had one small beer, I swear.



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digby 10/20/2006 07:01:00 PM |

 
Family Values

by digby

This is an incredibly effective ad for Claire McCaskill in Missouri. I urge you to watch it.

Michael J. Fox was a member of the family for many years in this country. He still looks pretty much like he always did -- boyish and charming. But he's suffering from Parkinsons disease and it's clearly taking its toll. In this ad he asks the people of Missouri to support McCaskill because she is in favor of stem cell research and Jim Talent isn't. Essentially, he's asking people to value the promise of curing the horrible disease that has him in its clutches or value a clump of cells in a petrie dish.

As I look at all these issues that have come to the forefront in the last few years, I'm struck by how dumb it is to let the Republicans claim the mantle of values and morality. People who believe that torture is ok or that it's better to let blastocysts be thrown away rather than use them to save living breathing human beings are immoral. If they want to play politics on that field, I say bring it on.

Update: Correntewire has more on the Stem Cell Research and Cures Amendment in Missouri.



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digby 10/20/2006 03:11:00 PM |

 
Liberal Intolerance Of Intolerance

by digby


Pastordan defends himself quite well from a typically obtuse criticism from Amy Sullivan in The New Republic and I'll let him speak for himself. But I have to wonder where she gets the idea that liberals are so blinded by their belief that Bush and Rove have been building a theocracy that they can't see that Kuo's book presents an opportunity to drive a wedge between the evangelicals and the GOP? I never thought that Bush was a serious theologian, only that he was willing to do whatever he could get away with to keep the evangelicals happy. Nothing in Kuo's book undermines that theory. In fact, it validates it.

Rove is a cynical political operative and Bush is an idiot whose only religious commitment is to the idea that he was anointed by God to follow his "instincts" (which amounts to running the country by coin flipping.) I honestly don't know anyone who thinks the big money boys of the Republican Party give a damn about religion except to the extent it brings them votes.

What we did believe is that the religious right wants to build a theocracy and that seems indisputable to me. Of course they do. And because they are an enormously valuable consituency they are managing to incrementally blur the lines between church and state and pass laws of a theocratic nature or that conflict with progressive values. (Like this one, where employees of religious groups have far fewer rights in the workplace than others.) I'm not sure what is controversial about that.

As far as the idea of taking advantage of the developing schism between the Christian right and the GOP, I'm all for it. I think we should point out Republican hypocrisy on these issues every chance we get and as far as I can tell, the liberal bloggers and op-ed writers and progressive radio she ctiticizes have been scathing on this topic.

(It's true that we are a little more than two weeks away from a seminal election so there is quite naturally a rather diffuse critique of the Republicans going on right now. It's a little unfair to compare it to the earlier revelations by Paul O'neil or even the Woodward book, which is about the biggest issue in the campaign and it's written by the official court hagiographer.)

Sullivan is convinced that liberals are so hostile to religion that we refuse to see that religious people are in the process of rejecting the Republican party. I welcome that if it happens and I'm delighted to see that some conservative religious leaders are looking at issues other than abortion and gay marriage,like Darfur and poverty and global warming, which are areas upon which we can agree and work together:

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., pastor of Hope Christian Church, a 3,000-member congregation in Lanham, was among the signers of the Darfur appeal. He said he knows that some evangelicals are concerned that their clout will diminish if they take on too many issues. But, like Combs, he pointed to the need to address subjects that matter to young Christians.

"I think you could call this a PR problem, because young people who are very involved in their churches understand the passion for these two issues," he said, referring to abortion and same-sex marriage, "but in the culture at large we can come across as wild-eyed bigots to some because we have only emphasized these things."

Broadening the agenda, "not to 99 things but to five or six core things," such as fighting poverty and providing aid to Africa, "helps improve our image and more accurately reflects the full panoply of our beliefs," Jackson said. "It's hard to say that those two things -- abortion and gay marriage -- are the only things God had in mind in the Bible."

I am not sanguine, however, that we will crack the Republican hold on the conservative evangelicals and make them want to vote for us. They are after all,conservatives.

To some evangelicals, however, the new issues are less clear than the old ones, which have led evangelicals to vote overwhelmingly Republican in recent elections.

"I definitely don't like the widening of the agenda, because it muddies the water," said the Rev. Michael Haseltine, pastor of the 2,000-member Maranatha Assembly of God Church in Forest Lake, Minn.

"Be good stewards of the environment? Sure, but how? These tree-huggers and anti-hunters think it's terrible to kill animals. Oppose poverty? Sure, but what's the best way to do it? We can't solve everybody's problems for them," he said. "Family and life issues -- abortion, sexuality -- they're much more clear from the biblical standpoint."

I am happy to allow evangelical Christians to fight this out. And I'll be happy to make common cause with them on poverty and global warming and the death penalty. (I gratefully welcome them to that thankless cause as a matter of fact.) But we aren't going to agree on abortion or gay marriage and I can live with that. The question is if they can. If they look at the panoply of issues as followers of Jesus Christ, I feel quite confident they will find that they can easily vote for the Democratic party. If they decide that "abortion and sexuality" trump everything else then so be it. It's up to them.

That won't be enough for Sullivan of course:

Lawrence O'Donnell--former Democratic Senate aide and the resident liberal commentator at msnbc--dropped the ball. "I think the good news here is that people working in the White House think that Pat Robertson is nuts," he said. "They should. Pat Robertson is nuts." It seemed a little off-message--after all, this was a politically embarrassing book for the Bushies, and here O'Donnell was praising them. True, Robertson does regularly spout off truly nutty and dangerous statements (his call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez; his prayer for the death of liberal Supreme Court justices; his belief that UPC symbols are the Mark of the Beast as foretold in Revelation). But what rankled O'Donnell the most was Robertson's "insane" belief that Jews are going to burn in hell. "

While most of them would put it more delicately than Robertson, it is an article of faith for millions and millions of evangelicals that the only way into heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ. (The good reverend has also said he believes Methodists will burn in hell, but that's not really the point.) By condemning and mocking that doctrine, O'Donnell managed an impressive feat. He took Robertson, a figure widely disliked and discredited throughout the evangelical community, and found a way to criticize him that would also insult and alienate evangelicals. Congratulations, Lawrence O'Donnell--you're the new poster-boy for secular liberal intolerance.

I can't help but wonder if Sullivan would find O'Donnell so "intolerant" if he were Jewish? (And yes, the fact that Robertson thinks Methodists are also going to burn in hell is exactly the point.) Sullivan believes that in order to appeal to evangelicals we must not only study their theology in detail so as to understand why they follow some lunatic like Pat Robertson but we are supposed to be tolerant of what would be called racist or religiously intolerant statements from anyone else because they believe it derives from the Bible. Oy.

This is why strictly secular government is the only way to go. When it becomes a sign of religious intolerance to object publicly to a political and religious leader's statement that "Jews are going to burn in hell," we are in real trouble.

But then, we are in trouble on this subject in so many different ways:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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digby 10/20/2006 02:03:00 PM |

 
Treasure Trove

by tristero

About half of the complete work of Charles Darwin is online, with everything expected to be available, by 2009. 'Course, it's easier to read them on paper, but for searching, and for special things, this is just incredibly fantastic. Includes transcriptions of some of the notebooks as well!

ht, Lindsay Beyerstein.
tristero 10/20/2006 01:27:00 PM |

 
Primed For McCain

by digby

The latest GOP mantra on Iraq sounds incredibly pathetic and it's probably why they are losing. Here's Bay Buchanan on CNN yesterday:

BUCHANAN: There's no question in that people have a legitimate concern.

But I think the issue here is not to debate whether we should have gone or not, but that we have a serious situation. We are at war in Iraq. It is not going well . What do you do now?

Bush expanded on that in an interview with George Stephanopoulos:

BUSH: I have always found that, when a person goes in to vote, they are going to want to know what that person is going to do.

You know, what is the plan for a candidate on Iraq? What do they believe? Frankly, I hear disparate voices all over the place on the Democrats' side about Iraq. We got some saying, get out.

The argument seems to be, "yes we've fucked up, and we've fucked up so badly that there are no good choices. Do you want to take a chance that the Democrats will fuck it up too?"

I think people have just come to the reasonable conclusion that they have nothing to lose by letting the Democrats have a crack at it. Certainly, it hardly seems wise to reward these people by validating their policy at the voting booth. The problem, of course, is that the congress has only the nuclear option of cutting off funds, which they will not do. No maqtter how many hearings are held and how much dirt is exposed, Bush would, in my opinion, die before he would withdraw (or even be seen to be withdrawing) from Iraq. That hideous problem will be left to the next president.

Which is where St John McCain comes in.Atrios and Greenwald both discuss his rambling comments about Iraq on Chris Matthews' show earlier this week. I saw that show and I was particularly struck by this:

MCCAIN: I don‘t think we need to think of the draft again because I don‘t think it makes sense in a whole variety of ways. But I guarantee you, if these young people felt that this nation was in a crisis and we asked them to serve, virtually every one of them would stand up because I have the greatest confidence in the young people of America.

The current problem is that unless we are invaded by martians all the crying wolf the Republicans have done these last five years means that nobody believes Bush's abstract claims of threat anymore. They went so over the top with their screeching, fearmongering that it's lost its punch.

McCain could change that. He will be the grown-up reformer who is coming in to fix the mess that the terrible Bushies have made. And his pitch is going to be "sacrifice" wrapped up in all kinds of feel-good symbols of national interest. He will try to persuade the country that the crisis we face(however he defines it) requires that young people cast off their self-centered interests and serve their country. It's a potent message and it doesn't really have to make sense.

John McCain is a bigger warmonger than George W. Bush, always has been. The only difference is that he doesn't believe, as the administration does, that it can be done without a national mobilization. (Like most nationalists he feels that such a mobilization is good for the national character.) The change in policy will involve spending more money and putting more young people in battle, not less.

Bush's warmaking desires have been restrained by his unwillingness to put the country on a real war footing or create a coherent military strategy. McCain will have no such restraint and may very well be the man who sets this country on a militaristic binge the likes of which we haven't seen before.

Here's the opening of his speech to the Republican Convention in 2004:

It's a big thing, this war.

It's a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God's love for every soul on earth. It's a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.

And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.

So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.

And much is expected of us.

We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.

Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture ...liberty.

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.

Coming from Bush that talk is just more "blah, blah, blah." Coming from McCain it is gravitas.

The failure in Iraq is going to cause many Americans to yearn for some sort of restoration of national pride. We really hate losing. If the country can be persuaded that McCain is the competent version of the man with the bullhorn, he could win and he could take the nation down a very scary road. Seven years of relentless rhetoric about a "different kinda war" and "the enemy hates America" has perfectly primed this country for a man on a white horse.

If he can manage to combine America's tribal pride, its yearning for some sort of spiritual meaning and its fear of the other and put together an inspirational, nationalistic message (along with his pre-fab image as a straight-talking "reformer") he could be very hard to beat --- and very, very dangerous. He's a warmongering hawk, don't ever forget it. The only real difference between him and Bush on these matters is that he's willing to attend the funerals of the dead.



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digby 10/20/2006 09:46:00 AM |

 
GOP On Self-Destruct

by tristero

Yes, these upcoming GOP ads are utterly outrageous. That said, they ain't gonna help Republicans, nohow:

The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad concludes. "Vote November 7."

Indeed, and not too many folks are gonna vote for the party that's let Osama stay loose for the five years after 9/11.

Moving right along:

The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, that include bin Laden's Dec. 26, 2001 vow that "what is yet to come will be even greater."

The ad also cites al-Zawahri's claim to have obtained "some suitcase bombs," followed by a scene that appears to show a nuclear explosion.

And American voters will be immediately reminded of the latest nuclear test, North Korea's, which happened on Bush's watch and which he couldn't prevent because he and which happened in great part because the Bushites are as utterly incompetent at diplomacy as they are at protecting Americans from terror attacks, or catastrophic, predicted hurricane disasters, pedophiliac Congresscritters, corporate malfeasance, or anything else you might think of.
tristero 10/20/2006 09:40:00 AM |

 
Liberals

by tristero

Tony Judt wrote an article in the London Review of Books which began by asking, "Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy?" Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin responded in The American Prospect with a manifesto that said in essence, "Who you talkin' about, Tony?"

But Tony has simply observed what all of us have known for the longest time: genuine liberalism - hell, even centrism - has long gone missing from the mass political discourse in the United States. The closest anyone can find to a liberal on tv - and folks, I love them dearly, but Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert are comedians - are liberal hawks of the George Packer/Paul Berman/Peter Beinart variety.

Judt makes this, unfortunately, quite clear by pointing out that in 1988, a "reaffirmation" of liberalism published in the NY Times was signed by, among others, Daniel Bell, J.K. Galbraith, Felix Rohatyn, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Irving Howe, Eudora Welty, Kenneth Arrow, and Robert Penn Warren. Many positive things can be said about the people on the current list (which, btw, includes Arrow and Schlesinger), but in terms of name recognition and cultural status, it just isn't the same. Who has taken their place? Not the signers of the Prospect manifesto, surely. Instead, those presently with name recognition and cultural status in America are genuine morons: Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O'Reilly, William Kristol, Max Boot, and, to take Pynchon out of context, the rest of the Whole Sick Crew.

Please don't misunderstand. I am NOT saying that the signers are in any way lightweights. There are many important thinkers among the signatories. What I'm saying is that they have, at present, next to zero stature in mainstream American culture. To claim, as Judt did of the '88 manifesto, that the present one is an "open rebuke" of a conservative president's folly is to ascribe much more influence to the signers of this manifesto than they command in American intellectual, let alone political and cultural, life.

American culture has literally eliminated liberals and liberalism from any consideration of serious influence. What this esoteric little spat among the intelligentsia illustrates is just how much work we liberals have cut out for us in order to regain anything resembling serious stature, let alone influence, in the US.
tristero 10/20/2006 04:08:00 AM |

Thursday, October 19, 2006

 

Re-United, And It Feels So Good

by poputonian

Church and State finally back together after forty years of separation.

" ... remember the good time we had together ... "

"Once maybe I touched him ..."

"We were just fondling ..."

"He seemed to like it ... "

" ... we enjoyed each other's company."

"... almost like brothers ..."

Oh, those young Christo-Republicans. They were so ... cute.

poputonian 10/19/2006 08:02:00 PM |

 
Grenade-Threatening Lunatic Interviews US President

by tristero

Every once in a while, like three or four times a day, it is important to remember how genuinely, utterly, bogus modern American mass discourse has become. For example:

O’Reilly said that he knew “for a fact that President Bush doesn’t know what’s going on in the Internet.” O’Reilly then said, “I have to say President Bush has a much healthier attitude toward this than I do. Because if I can get away with it, boy, I’d go in with a hand grenade.”

Four things here.

First of all, O'Reilly equates presidential ignorance with presidential mental health. By his reasoning, then, George W. Bush therefore must be the sanest president that ever lived.

Secondly, note the utterly vacuous nature of the threat. Where, exactly, would Bill 0'Reilly go in with a hand grenade to destroy the evil bloggers? A server farm in Virginia? Well, that doesn't really eliminate any bloggers, now does it? To do that, O'Reilly would have to come invade our homes.

But Bill's right. He'd never get away with it. Oh, not that he'd get in trouble with the law: there ain't any. Hell, a government that can rationalize torture can easily find a way to excuse Bill O'Reilly's grenade jihad.

No the reason O'Reilly wouldn't dare attack us is that he knows that many of us bloggers live with the kind of serious protection that would easily scare O'Reilly into dropping a huge load of falafel into his drawers.

And thirdly, even when eliminationism is uttered by blustering fools, it is still elimationism and fascism. This should be particularly disturbing to those who say we need to wait until the Minutemen... sorry, I slipped, I meant brownshirts... start their patrols before declaring the US a fascist state. After all, O'Reilly is presently deemed mainstream enough to rate an opportunity to interview the president of the United States.

And that was point four, in case you missed it.
tristero 10/19/2006 01:44:00 PM |

 
Exceptionalism

by digby

Nearly a third of people worldwide back the use of torture in prisons in some circumstances, a BBC survey suggests.

Although 59% were opposed to torture, 29% thought it acceptable to use some degree of torture to combat terrorism.

While most polled in the US are against torture, opposition there is less robust than in Europe and elsewhere.

More than 27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture would be acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives.

Some 36% of those questioned in the US agreed that this use of torture was acceptable, while 58% were unwilling to compromise on human rights.

The percentage favouring torture in certain cases makes it one of the highest of all the countries polled.

This is kind of embarrassing. More Nigerians, Israelis, Iraqis and Philippinos approve of torture than we do. But we're getting there. A couple more years and we'll be number one. After all, a large majority of our political representatives voted for it.


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digby 10/19/2006 09:58:00 AM |

 
Shorthand

by digby

Word to the wise: if both Joe Klein and David Brooks give the same piece of advice to Democrats, do the exact opposite.

Barack Obama should run for president.

He should run first for the good of his party. It would demoralize the Democrats to go through a long primary season with the most exciting figure in the party looming off in the distance like some unapproachable dream. The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.

Right. Thank Dave, for all your concern, but don't you worry your pretty little head about the Democrats, ok? You've got your hands full keeping your own party from a full scale implosion.

Apparently both Joe and David think we are such idiots that we would put the callow young pup Barack Obama up against the manly old lion John McCain for president in 2008. (Jesus, I hate having my intelligence insulted by people like the Kumbaaya twins.)

I have nothing particularly against Barack Obama, he seems like he has a lot of good qualities. But this nonsense about how Democrats should nominate him because he's a nice bipartisan boy who can change the ugly tone in Washington is just a tad presumptuous.

Here's an idea. How about if the Republicans nominate a bucket of vapid lukewarm spit instead? Joe Lieberman would be a good choice. The Democrats will nominate somebody who is qualified to run the government for a change.


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digby 10/19/2006 01:36:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 
Fooling Only Themselves

by digby

From the Carpetbagger Report:

This month, it's a new set of ads — running in more than two dozen congressional districts nationwide — sponsored by a political action committee called "America's Pac," which is a project of the very wealthy (and very white) Patrick Rooney. I honestly didn't think the right could be this disgusting.

"Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies," a female announcer in one of the ads says, as rain, thunder, and a crying infant are heard in the background. "The Democratic Party supports these abortion laws that are decimating our people, but the individual's right to life is protected in the Republican platform. Democrats say they want our vote. Why don't they want our lives?"

Another ad features a dialogue between two men.

"If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," one of the men says.

"That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," the other replies.

"Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

There's more at the link.



I really doubt this is going to work.





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digby 10/18/2006 03:01:00 PM |

 
Go Team God!

by digby

Now that's what I'm talking about ...

Weighing in on Connecticut's hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture.

The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The legislation, which President Bush was expected to sign into law Tuesday, allows military commissions to prosecute suspected terrorists and spells out violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Organizers say about 100,000 commuters pass the billboard in Stratford each day. The billboard - 14 feet high and 48 feet wide - was sponsored by Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, which describes itself as a statewide interfaith network of religious leaders created in 2002.

The legislation would prohibit war crimes and define atrocities such as rape and torture but would otherwise allow the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, the treaty that sets standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

"This is a shameful law," organizer Rev. Kathleen McTigue said Monday. "It grants extraordinary power to the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, including which methods of interrogation will be considered torture."

And what about Connecticut's most awesomely religious and moral candidate?

"This is just another example of the kind of mudslinging partisanship that Joe Lieberman wants to remove from our debates about how best to keep our nation safe," said Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun. "The fact is, Joe Lieberman does not support torture. He joined 11 other Democrats as well as Sen. John McCain - who is himself a prisoner of war - in voting to uphold the Geneva Convention."

And that is just another example of the kind of slick, Rovian PR spin that Democrats across the country want to remove from our debates about right and wrong. The fact is, Joe Lieberman joined 11 other Democrats and John McCain --- who is himself a man with no principles --- in voting for a law that allows the president to unilaterally decide what constitutes torture, gives him the power to imprison people (including American citizens) indefinitely, try them in a kangaroo court based on heresay and coerced evidence and then sentence them to death with no right to appeal.



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digby 10/18/2006 06:38:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 
Go Team Jesus

by digby

Kevin highlights a post by Rebecca Sinderbrand on the Showdown '08 Blog in which she posits that evangelicals will look at the Kuo book like this:

...Kuo's story -- if it's believed at all -- wouldn't affect the way voters like my mom feel about the president. And the White House-based account definitely wouldn't have an impact on how they view the GOP-controlled Congress, which doesn't make much of an appearance in the book. So what sorts of questions does it raise in their minds? How about: Why did this come out three weeks before the election? Who's plugging this story? And: is there any reason to trust them?

Here's your answers: This story -- which people they trust dismiss out of hand -- comes by way of a turncoat. Even if it is true, the words of some nameless White House aides, and a couple of missing numbers on a spreadsheet, aren't enough for to make them question long-standing frindships. Meanwhile: the fact that these charges are emerging in mid-October makes them feel manipulated. And sure, that kind of manipulation makes them angry -- but not at the Republican party.

...I think the only possible ballot-box impact in the short term, if any, could be a rare bit of good news for Republican congressional leadership: Even the suspicion of an "October surprise" at work might be enough motivate some evangelicals who might otherwise have stayed home to turn out for the GOP.

I have no special knowledge of evangelicals, but I suspect she is correct. Their identification with the Republican party seems to me to be tribal ID and religion as politics. (I sure haven't seen many cases where religion trumps politics anyway.)

Frankly, I have no choice but to also doubt their sincerity as Christians --- and so, by the way, does David Kuo:

Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from "the base," the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups – his old stomping ground - and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.

"You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, and you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," Kuo remarked. "Not a mention of the poor."

"This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda - as if this culture war is a war for God. And it’s not a war for God, it’s a war for politics. And that’s a huge difference," says Kuo.

I'm pretty sure they like it that way. It's competitive, it's fun --- and it has nothing to do with religion. Democrats who try to appeal to them are chumps. They don't care about Jesus (you'll recall he was very, very big on helping the poor.*) They care about beating Democrats.

I continue to believe they will vote in their usual numbers this election. If we win it will be because the independents will vote for us and the non-evangelical Republicans will stay home.




*as are most decent Christians. The Christian Right, however, is not in the least bit interested in poor people.


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digby 10/17/2006 03:03:00 PM |

 
Beautiful Minds

by digby

Following up on tristero's post below discussing this NY Times op-ed, I have to take exception to the vague implication that the Republicans failed to read books about mid-east regional issues, Muslim history or arab culture. They did.

They read books by the neocon nutball Laurie Mylroie:

Historians will be debating that question for years, but an important part of the reason has to do with someone you may well have never heard of: Laurie Mylroie. Mylroie has an impressive array of credentials that certify her as an expert on the Middle East, national security, and, above all, Iraq. She has held faculty positions at Harvard and the U.S. Naval War College and worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as serving as an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. During the 1980s, Mylroie was an apologist for Saddam's regime, but reversed her position upon his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and, with the zeal of the academic spurned, became rabidly anti-Saddam. In the run up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.

Until this point, there was nothing controversial about Mylroie's career. This would change with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the first act of international terrorism within the United States, which would launch Mylroie on a quixotic quest to prove that Saddam's regime was the most important source of terrorism directed against this country. She laid out her case in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a book published by AEI in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the neocon hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing. Its acknowledgements fulsomely thanked John Bolton and the staff of AEI for their assistance, while Richard Perle glowingly blurbed the book as "splendid and wholly convincing." Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is thanked for his "generous and timely assistance." And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of Study of Revenge: His then-wife is credited with having "fundamentally shaped the book," while of Wolfowitz, she says: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult."

None of which was out of the ordinary, except for this: Mylroie became enamored of her theory that Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary. In what amounts to the discovery of a unified field theory of terrorism, Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a crackpot, which would not be significant if she were merely advising say, Lyndon LaRouche. But her neocon friends who went on to run the war in Iraq believed her theories, bringing her on as a consultant at the Pentagon, and they seem to continue to entertain her eccentric belief that Saddam is the fount of the entire shadow war against America

.

Richard Clarke wrote in his book "Against All Enemies":

Finally, Wolfowitz turned to me. "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."

I could hardly believe it, but Wolfowitz was actually spouting the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue.

Mylroie wasn't the only one. They also read books by other crackpots:

The book in question is called The Arab Mind, and is by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at several US universities, including Columbia and Princeton.

I must admit that, despite having spent some years studying Arabic language and culture, I had not heard of this alleged masterpiece until last week, when the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh mentioned it in an article for New Yorker magazine.

Hersh was discussing the chain of command that led US troops to torture Iraqi prisoners. Referring specifically to the sexual nature of some of this abuse, he wrote: "The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind ... the book includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression."

Hersh continued: "The Patai book, an academic told me, was 'the bible of the neocons on Arab behaviour'. In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged - 'one, that Arabs only understand force, and two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation'."

Last week, my own further enquiries about the book revealed something even more alarming. Not only is it the bible of neocon headbangers, but it is also the bible on Arab behaviour for the US military.

According to one professor at a US military college, The Arab Mind is "probably the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military". It is even used as a textbook for officers at the JFK special warfare school in Fort Bragg.

[...]

In contrast, opinions of Patai's book among Middle East experts at US universities are almost universally scathing. "The best use for this volume, if any, is as a doorstop," one commented. "The book is old, and a thoroughly discredited form of scholarship," said another.

None of the academics I contacted thought the book suitable for serious study, although Georgetown University once invited students to analyse it as "an example of bad, biased social science".

There is a lot wrong with The Arab Mind apart from its racism: the title, for a start. Although the Arab countries certainly have their distinctive characteristics, the idea that 200 million people, from Morocco to the Gulf, living in rural villages, urban metropolises and (very rarely these days) desert tents, think with some sort of single, collective mind is utterly ridiculous.

So it really isn't quite fair to say the Republicans and the braintrusts of Donald Rumsfeld's military didn't educate themsleves about arab culture or politics. They did --- by consulting looney, tin-foil conspiracy theorists and discredited comic-book racist tracts. (They also watched "The Sands of Iwo Jima" at least twice.)

Remember, they don't believe they have to be part of the reality-based community. That's for silly losers like us --- and those 650,000 dead Iraqis.


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digby 10/17/2006 02:03:00 PM |

 
A Day Which Will Live In Infamy




by digby

Today President Bush took the constitution and tore it into little pieces.

President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism.

Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

[...]

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

"Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said.

Yet, here is the very next sentence in that AP report:

The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence.

I assume that was written without irony.


I don't ever want to hear anyone on the right talk about moral values again. They are concepts which they clearly do not understand. And if they dare to bring up the Bible or Jesus Christ after this I will laugh in their faces, knowing that by their own standards they are going straight to hell for what they've done.

Remember these faces:



Where's St. John McCain? How odd that he isn't there to enjoy the poisonous fruits of his labor.



Update: Jack Balkin talks about the new law, here.
digby 10/17/2006 10:19:00 AM |

 
Scandalous Ignorance

by tristero

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when the sound of the military airplanes patrolling the skies of Manhattan were still traumatizing everyone, I picked up some books on bin Laden, the Middle East, and Islam. I also peppered with questions the few people I knew back then who had some expertise on the subjects. In fact, lots of people I knew were doing the same thing; we were passing around books, articles, and clippings, emailing links to each other.

This strikes me as totally unremarkable behavior. We were scared stiff, and the first thing we wanted to know - other than that the attacks had stopped for now - was what the hell was going on.

But even today, people involved in counterterrorism policy in the United States still don't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite.

This is scandalous, as in worse-than-covering-up-for-Mark-Foley scandalous. Why? Well let one of the ignorant buffoons explain it to you:

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

Oh, dear God. I'm living in a Mel Brooks movie:

Roger De Bris: Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that...

tristero 10/17/2006 04:16:00 AM |

Monday, October 16, 2006

 
Are There No Real Men

by digby

...like Christopher Hitchens left?

He's very upset. It seems the British have always been a bunch of mincing cowards and now the US is following in its footsteps along with the rest of the chickenshit Europeans.

T. CARLSON: ... will there be any desire at all on the part of anybody in charge of anything in Great Britain to keep British troops in Iraq?

HITCHENS: No.

T. CARLSON: Won‘t the pull-out be immediate at that point?

HITCHENS: It will be, as you say, an abandoned position politically.

And the only question is how to avoid it making—how to avoid making it look—I‘m sorry to keep stumbling—how to avoid making it looks as if it was a scuttle.

T. CARLSON: Right.

HITCHENS: That‘s presumably why this—why Mr. Dannat, General Dannat backpedaled as he did.

Then of course, it would be a phased withdrawal. But they always say that. That used to be, in wartime parlance, when the British army had had to run away from somewhere, such as Dunkirk or—or Terbrook (ph), they would always say it was a strategic withdrawal to prepared positions. That‘s simply military parlance for abandoning an operation.

T. CARLSON: Right. Of course. But this is—I mean, this is inevitable, is it not? It‘s going to happen? The United States must be factoring in the inevitability of this. This is really news from nowhere, isn‘t it? I mean, we‘re going to be alone in Iraq sooner rather than later?

HITCHENS: No. I think it‘s been noticed that a number of those who have been very strong in support for President Bush were leaving office or about to do so.

Surely, that‘s Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Bush. The change in power in Japan doesn‘t seem to have had quite that effect, though the political support will be stronger than the presence of Japanese forces in Iraq.

Yes, look, you‘re generally right. Those who want to leave Iraq to its own devices and who always did want that are much nearer to being able to claim a victory than they have been for a while. And I hope it makes them very happy.

T. CARLSON: What is—just sum up for us. What is the prospects of the idea now floating around on the Democratic side, maybe on the Republican, as well, of partitioning that country into three separate countries or an alliance, a federation of three countries? Is that going to happen? Is that a wise idea?

HITCHENS: Do I have a chance to make one more point before I answer that? I don‘t want to seem top be dodging it.

T. CARLSON: Yes.

HITCHENS: You‘ll notice that the general also says that he‘s afraid of the army cracking under the strain, which is an argument you hear here, as well.

T. CARLSON: Right.

HITCHENS: What he seems to be doing is positioning himself to be the sort of Colin Powell of the British army. Remember, that was always the view of Colin Powell when he was chairman of the joint chiefs, that the U.S. Army was too fragile to be tested in actual combat, as particularly in Bosnia, if you remember, where he had to be challenged by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “So why do we have this wonderful big, shiny army if we never want to use it?”

That‘s the—the line now taken by military men is, “It really inconveniences us if we have to use our troops in warfare.” Nobody says, look, how are we going to...

T. CARLSON: Well, I think...

HITCHENS: How are we going to learn—how are we going to learn how to fight these people in rogue states and failed states if we don‘t—which are bad conditions, if we don‘t try?

T. CARLSON: Yes, but I think—the question—you don‘t want—if you‘re in the position of—if it is, you know, your job to send people off to go die, you want to make certain that their deaths are in the service of something worth attaining, that it‘s, you know, a wise use of their lives, basically.

HITCHENS: That‘s not—that‘s not—that is a decision not to be taken by generals, however. I‘m a voter. I can make that decision, and I‘m asked to.

The extraordinary thing is that the British have lost a very, very small number of people in Iraq and have gained a great deal of experience, it might be said, and have also done rather well in the Shia areas of the south...

T. CARLSON: Right.

HITCHENS: ... which would undoubtedly trump—trounce your other question, would undoubtedly give a large new area of responsibility to the United States if they were to pull out.

So all these are very serious points. Still, there is always something odd to me in the existence of a professional military class that, in effect, is combat adverse, that doesn‘t think anything is worth fighting for.

Colin Powell, if you remember, didn‘t want to even send an aircraft carrier to Kuwait on the warning of Saddam Hussein‘s invasion, less we get ourselves mussed up. I just think it‘s always worth noticing that about the conservative vote here (ph) ...

T. CARLSON: It is worth noticing. And you can interpret it a couple of different ways. It‘s interesting. Anyway, Chris...

HITCHENS: If we‘re going to pay—if we‘re going to pay for this huge military establishment, then I think...

T. CARLSON: Might as well use it.

HITCHENS: Yes. Well, we...

T. CARLSON: We‘ve got all these nuclear weapons, you know, sort of languishing in silos. Let‘s use one.

HITCHENS: Well, those are—those really are—those really are useless to us, of course.

T. CARLSON: I hope so.

HITCHENS: Good point.

Now what was your last question again? I don‘t have time for it.

T. CARLSON: As I always do talking to you, I got caught up in it and we‘re out of time.

HITCHENS: And I talked myself out of a job yet again. So all right.

But you let me do it.

T. CARLSON: Thank you. Christopher Hitchens, I appreciate it.

HITCHENS: You too.

Petulant Hitch is feeling very let down by the warriors these days. He voted for them to die and they are simply not cooperating. (Think of all the experience they're missing out on!)

How long before he looks at the suicide bombers of Al Qaeda and sees the kind of courage, committment and fortitude the west has clearly lost? I'd say it's a matter of weeks.


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digby 10/16/2006 08:47:00 PM |

 
Giving Them A Zero

by digby


Reason #678 why a modern democracy should have a secular government. Here's an excerpt from David Kuo's book:

While the conferences were being birthed, we were also figuring out what to do with the Compassion Capital Fund. Promised originally at $200 million per year then cut in early 2001 to $100 million, and then again to $30 million, it was only faith-based money we had to distribute [even though $8 billion of new money had originally been promised].

Many of the grant-winning organizations that rose to the top of this process were politically friendly to the administration. Bishop Harold Ray of Redemptive Life Fellowship Church in West Palm Beach had been one of the most vocal black voices supporting the president during the 2000 election. His newly-created National Center for Faith-Based Initiatives somehow scored a 98 out of a possible 100. Pat Robertson's overseas aid organization, Operation Blessing, scored a 95.67. Nueva Esperanza, an umbrella of other Hispanic ministries, headed by President Bush's leading Hispanic ally, Luis Cortez, received a 95.33. The Institute for Youth Development, that works to send positive messages to youth, earned a 94.67. The Institute's head was a former Robertson staffer. Even more bizarre, a new organization called "We Care America" received a 99.67 on its grant review. It was the second highest score. They called themselves a "network of networks" an "organizer of organizations". They had a staff of three, all from the world of Washington politics, and all very Republican. They were on tap to receive more than $2.5 million.

All this information trickled in to our office when we requested updates on the Compassion Capital Fund. It took a while, but we finally got the list of recommended grantees. It was obvious that the ratings were a farce.

[A few years later,] my wife Kim and I were together with a group of friends and acquaintances. Someone mentioned that I used to work at the White House in the faith-based office. A woman piped up and said, "Really? Wow, I was on the peer-review panel for the first Compassion Capital Fund." I asked her about how she liked it and she said it was fun. She talked about how the government employees gave them grant review instructions – look at everything objectively against a discreet list of requirements and score accordingly. "But," she said with a giggle, "when I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero."

At first I laughed. A funny joke. Not so much. She was proud and giggling and didn't get that there was a problem with that. I asked if she knew of others who'd done the same. "Oh sure, a lot of us did." She must have seen my surprise, "Was there a problem with that?"

I told her there was actually a huge problem with that. The programs were to be faith-neutral. Our goal was equal treatment for faith-based groups, not special treatment for them. This was a smart and accomplished Christian woman. She got it immediately. But what she did comported with her understanding of what the faith-initiative was supposed to do – help Christian groups – and with her faith. She wanted people to know Jesus.

Whether out of a cynical power grab, as it most certainly is with many of the preachers and all of the Republican politicians including Joe Lieberman, or whether out of a sincere desire for people to know Jesus, this is a recipe for disaster. Right now, they only have to content with atheistic malcontents like me who don't appreciate my tax dollars going to religion at the expense of other programs. But it's only a matter of time before it sets off infighting among the churches themselves.

And I hate to be nasty about this, but this woman he describes is not actually an innocent. She giggled about how clever she was for automatically giving the non-religious Christian groups a zero because she was among people whom she obviously assumed would approve of such behavior. When she saw that she was dealing with someone of integrity she backed off and pretended not to have realized that she was not being a good Christian or a responsible adult. It was not a simple misunderstanding.

This is not to say that only a rightwing Christian would do such a thing. It could be anyone who had a vested interest in the outcome --- which is exactly why people like this woman should not have been making such decisions. But how can you say that committed religious people should not be involved in such things? You can't even ask the question. The only way to deal with this is for religion not to be involved in such things.

Kuo's message is actually very interesting in this regard. He's seen the intersection of politics and Christianity up close and he came away believing that his religion was becoming tainted by politics:

“Christian Americans are at a critical juncture, and we have some hefty decisions to make regarding our personal and political values,” said Kuo. “During my tenure in the White House, I came to realize the extent to which religious organizations were being manipulated for political purposes and rewarded through financial shenanigans. The myriad ways this situation compromised the central tenets of Christianity was deeply and profoundly disturbing for me. What hangs in the balance is not only the integrity of our faith, but the stability and moral fiber of our nation, as well as the religious and political freedom upon which it stands.”

The deal was struck long ago. Churches are not expected to contribute to the public treasury nor is the public treasury supposed to subsidise churches. Not everything has to be part of politics and government. History (and current events) shows that countries are far more stable and democratic when they have religion live side-by-side with government rather than entwined with it.

Kuo's book is about his religion being corrupted by politics. I am concerned about politics being corrupted by religion. I think we are both right. This country does better when the two spheres operate independently. As long as they aren't wrapped up in one another there's no reason we can't all get along.



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digby 10/16/2006 05:43:00 PM |

 
Di-Vaaahning The Will Of The Fixer

by digby


Can we get one thing straight? The "leaking" of James Baker's secret plan to end the war --- which Baker himself is appearing all over television *not* talking about, is a political ploy to get wobbly Republicans to believe --- again --- that the "grown-ups" are riding to the rescue. Jesus, how obvious can they be?

I'm watching Lee Hamilton fall all over himself to say he is not going to be partisan I believe him. He's a very nice,agreeable gentleman. But it's just a little bit much when he asserts that James A. Baker III, the fucking Bush family fixer, is similarly objective. Please. James Baker is as cutthroat a partisan as ever lived.

Once you've sold out your elder reputation to the degree that you will lie, cheat and twist the facts without regard to any sense of fairness or decency to obtain an election victory for your boy, I think you've given up any claim to "statemanship" --- at least until the cheating bastard is out of office.


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digby 10/16/2006 04:32:00 PM |

 
Taking Out The Trash

by digby

DemFromCT has an interesting post up this morning over at Daily Kos discussing the rise of hyper-partisanship. He quotes an interview with the authors of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track,Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann:

Is the current Congress demonstrably more partisan than those in the past? Why does it matter?

MANN: Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s. Now it is tribal warfare. The consequences are deadly serious. Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order -- the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process -- was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption. And grievously flawed policy formulation and implementation.

It really can't be overstated how Newt's bare knuckle style of politics changed the way things worked in Washington. When it was combined with the big money media operations that finally came to fruition during that era --- Limbaugh, FOX etc. --- any old fashioned notions of political comity went out the window. And it was such a strong series of below the belt punches that it knocked the Democrats to the ground for nearly a decade. (It was providence that the Democratic president at the time was a skilled rope-a-dope fighter who could withstand a relentless rain of blows.)

The assault on the political system was so intense that they even pushed the nuclear button and impeached the president for trivial, political purposes. The president's very successful governance and the Senate requirement for a supermajority were all that kept them from going through with it. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, with the use sophisticated media techniques and manipulation of the various levers of government under their control, they managed to seize control of the presidency despite a dubious outcome in a state run by the president's own brother --- and they got away with it. (They even got the press to repeat their snide mantra: "get over it.")

Think about that. Within one two-year period, the Republicans tried to remove a legitimately elected and popular president from office on a purely partisan basis and then assumed the presidency through an unprecedented partisan Supreme Court decision after losing the popular vote.

We all watched that happen, many of us not realizing how extraordinary and how dangerously undemocratic the US political system had become. It was all "legitimate" after all. No laws were broken. Newt's take-no-prisoners political style had become normal. But it was nothing compared to what was to come.

After taking office under the most questionable circumstances in history*, they proceeded to rule as if they had won in a landslide. Once 9/11 happened, he had the mandate he'd been pretending to have and the Republican congress docilely turned their power and responsibility over to the president as if he were a king. What little dissent had been tolerated (such as Jim Jeffords defecting) was completely quashed and Democrats' only function in the government was to serve as a straw-man foil for the Republicans to run against.

DFC writes:

From ... the Hastert policy of only considering bills acceptable to the "majority of the majority", to Frist's considering of the Nuclear Option of changing the rules about filibusters, the House and Senate have become a "my party before my Country" institution, and it started in 1994.

That "majority of the majority" is especially important when looking at this period of Republican rule. In one of the most cynical decisions of their reign (and there have been many) they consciously governed without any support from the opposition, even to the point of scuttling popular bipartisan legislation rather than allowing the opposition to participate in any meaningful way. There has never been a case of partisanship so severe in American history.

Throughout this period they successfully manipulated and co-opted the media in a thousand different ways. Their decades long project to mau-mau the press about its alleged liberal bias and the emergence of rightwing media served to obscure this story as it was unfolding. The leaders of the political media became ensconced in the new Republican political establishment and reflected their attitudes and biases.

Probably the starkest illustration of that was this famous comment about Bill Clinton by the dean of the Washington Press Corps:

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

He was ostensibly speaking about the president having an affair but it is redolent of the common Republican view that after Ronald Reagan, the Republicans had a permanent lock on the presidency that was rudely foiled by this interloper. Republicans constantly mentioned that Clinton won with a 43% plurality and therefore, 57% of the nation had rejected him. Oliver North even said "he's not my commander in chief," during his unsuccessful race for the Senate. Senator Jesse Helms said [Bill Clinton] "better watch out if he comes down here [to North Carolina]. He'd better have a bodyguard."

That was the least of it as any of you who are above the age of 30 or so well remember. There has rarely been a more vicious partisan environment than during the 1990's. And the media, as frightened as anyone of this marauding hoard of political hatchetmen, naturally sidled up to the bullies as a way of protecting themselves. Hence, David Broder saying that it was Clinton who came to town and trashed the place when it was really Newt Gingrich and his wild revolutionaries who broke all the rules of civility and comity.

Here's a little sample of how this worked:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

[...]

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

* abuse of power
* anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
* betray
* bizarre
* bosses
* bureaucracy
* cheat
* coercion
* "compassion" is not enough
* collapse(ing)
* consequences
* corrupt
* corruption
* criminal rights
* crisis
* cynicism
* decay
* deeper
* destroy
* destructive
* devour
* disgrace
* endanger
* excuses
* failure (fail)
* greed
* hypocrisy
* ideological
* impose
* incompetent
* insecure
* insensitive
* intolerant
* liberal
* lie
* limit(s)
* machine
* mandate(s)
* obsolete
* pathetic
* patronage
* permissive attitude
* pessimistic
* punish (poor ...)
* radical
* red tape
* self-serving
* selfish
* sensationalists
* shallow
* shame
* sick
* spend(ing)
* stagnation
* status quo
* steal
* taxes
* they/them
* threaten
* traitors
* unionized
* urgent (cy)
* waste
* welfare

This was was way beyond what we had long accepted as the polite language of politics that allowed people to battle over issues but maintain decent human relationships when the workday was over. The kind of "bipartisanship" that the old lions are constantly going on about was killed in the 80's and 90's by a political machine that consciously set out to demonize first liberals and then Democrats. David Broder and his friends in Washington can't wrap their minds around the fact that there was a deliberate right wing strategy to kill bipartisanship because they reluctantly went along with it, were duped by it or embraced it themselves.

So, why am I taking this little trip down memory lane of which most of you are all too well aware and need need no reminding? Because we are very possibly going to win this election and you can very confidently place a large bet in Las Vegas that the cries to end the partisanship will be deafening. I have little doubt that the entire Washington press corps is gearing up for a full scale vapor-fest if the Democrats attempt to demand even the slightest bit of accountability for the past six years of corruption and failure. The Democrats have to accept that they will once again be fighting the entire political establishment.

You can see the outlines already. Time's cover this week features Barack Obama, the latest empty receptacle of establishment bipartisan wishful thinking:

Obama's actual speaking style is quietly conversational, low in rhetoric-saturated fat; there is no harrumph to him. About halfway through the hour-long meeting, a middle-aged man stands up and says what seems to be on everyone's mind, with appropriate passion: "Congress hasn't done a damn thing this year. I'm tired of the politicians blaming each other. We should throw them all out and start over!"

"Including me?" the Senator asks.

A chorus of n-o-o-o-s. "Not you," the man says. "You're brand new." Obama wanders into a casual disquisition about the sluggish nature of democracy. The answer is not even remotely a standard, pretaped political response. He moves through some fairly arcane turf, talking about how political gerrymandering has led to a generation of politicians who come from safe districts where they don't have to consider the other side of the debate, which has made compromise--and therefore legislative progress--more difficult. "That's why I favored Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal last year, a nonpartisan commission to draw the congressional-district maps in California. Too bad it lost."

This will, I predict, be the latest fad: bipartisan nothingness. Now that the Republicans have successfully moved the political center so far to the right that they drove themselves over the cliff, we must stop all this "partisan bickering" as if the Democrats have been equally partisan and therefore can ask for and expect the right to meet them halfway, which they never, ever do. That means we must let their most heinous ideas congeal into conventional wisdom, let their criminal behavior go unpunished, clean up the global disaster they've created, do the heavy lifting to fix the deficit they caused. While we're fixing things, they'll count their ill-gotten gains, catch their breath and gear up to trash the place all over again.

Modern bipartisanship can be simply defined as Democrats repeatedly getting taken to the cleaners by Republicans. Until the rules of the game are changed it will remain so whether Democrats are in the majority or not. That pathetic Charlie Brown with the football ritual is what Joe Lieberman is running on and what Joe Klein is angling for with his Blankslate Obama love-fest. (Norquist called it date rape but that's too kind -- the Liebermans and Kleins love being in the spotlight giving wingnuts lapdances. They enjoy every minute of their rightwing orgy --- they just don't want to take responsibility when they turn up with wingnut transmitted diseases.)

It is going to take some deft media management and skillfull legislative action to stop this pattern, but stop it we must. We have had more than two decades to assess this and this is how the conservative movement works. You can almost feel the relief (and even the glee) in some of the recent right wing claims that losing will be good for the party.

Richard Viguerie says it right out loud:

"The importance of losing elections is greatly underrated," he adds. "There's not any way Ronald Reagan would have been elected in 1980 if [Gerald] Ford had been elected in '76."

This time the stakes are so high and the failures so manifest that we cannot allow this zombie revolution to rise again. No matter how tempting it is to let bygones be bygones and get to work to "fix" the problems, the Democrats must recognize that fixing the problem requires discrediting this Republican revolution once and for all. Until that happens, they will keep coming back and each time they do they destroy a little bit more of our democracy.

We may win this one but we are basically the janitors, winning the contract to clean up after the conservative frat boys trashed the place for the last few years. And Daddy Broder believes it when his boys tell him it was the cleaning people who caused all the damage because he just can't bring himself to admit that they are out-of-control misfits because they come from good families and dress so nicely when they come to the club. We need to make sure the dean and all his friends have their noses rubbed in what their boys have been up to all these years before we can ever hope to do anything but take out the garbage and change the sheets every few years.



*The fact that the deciding Supreme Court vote was cast by a justice appointed by the candidate's own father in a case based upon partisan decisions made by the president's own brother the governor of Florida made this the most egregious case, even compared with Hayes-Tilden race in 1876. It was corrupt on an entirely different level. And looking at it now from the perspective of six years down the road, we can see that that very first act of blatant cronyism presaged the way the Bush administration would work, from Cheney's energy task force to the botched occupation of Iraq to Katrina.



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digby 10/16/2006 02:59:00 PM |

 
Some Good News

by tristero

Michigan Citizens for Science

Michigan Citizens for Science (MCFS) is happy to announce that we won a major victory with the State Board of Education on Tuesday. Having failed to have pro-ID ["intelligent design" creationism] language included in a bill earlier this year to harmonize the educational standards for public and charter schools in the state, House Republicans turned their attention to the State Board of Education and attempted to influence that board to include anti-evolution language into the new science standards. The BOE rejected those attempts with a unanimous vote.

And this is as good a time as any to make the point that Kitzmiller was a far more important decision than Scopes, for three reasons. First of all, unlike Scopes, scientists were permitted to testify extensively on the theory of evolution. Secondly, the judge's decision was particularly damning, putting creationists on notice that their legal antics were dishonest and wasting the judiciary's time.

But the most important reason is that, unlike Scopes, the good guys decisively won.

Back in 1925, Scopes was convicted, as part of Darrow's strategy to appeal the case eventually to the Supreme Court. Instead, the case got kind of waylaid on a technicality. In Kitzmiller, the verdict was an unequivocal slam-dunk for science, reason, and the core American value of separation of church and state.

ht, Frederick Clarkson whose post has all sorts of interesting goodies.
tristero 10/16/2006 03:38:00 AM |

Sunday, October 15, 2006

 
Spying On The Enemy

by digby


Here we have a smoking gun that should convince everyone that we must continue to honor the constitution and require the government to get warrants before spying on Americans. It's not because we want to help the terrorists and it's not even because we are paranoid. It's because we already know they have been spying on people who oppose the Iraq war:

Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

I can't believe we even have to have this argument or even need this kind of proof. There was never a good reason for the administration to be so stubborn about this issue unless they were doing something nefarious. The FISA court is a notoriously rubber stamp court --- it's designed to be. They always had the ability to spy first and get warrants later and the congress would no doubt have willingly extended the period in between or even enhanced the meaning of probable cause if they'd been asked. They didn't ask and they have resisted any kind of rational accomodation ever since the program was revealed.

The only logical reason they have adamantly insisted on maintaining this power to freely spy on Americans without any oversight is because they know that even the most rubber stamp court in the land would object to them spying on their political opponents. It's the only thing that ever made any sense.

This battle is going to come back after the election. Whether they try to do it in the lame duck session or afterwards, there will be tremendous pressure in the press for the Democrats to prove their national security bona fides and Democrats may very well feel that this is one they can punt on to neutralize the GOP trash talk before moving on to other issues. I don't think winning the congress is going to take this off the table --- we still have Bush for two more years trying desperately to save his agenda and his legacy. I predict he will go to the mattresses on this.



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digby 10/15/2006 03:12:00 PM |

 
Willful Injustice

This is just awful:

Abdul Rahim Al Ginco thought he was saved when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and overthrew the Taliban regime.

Mr. Ginco, a college student living in the United Arab Emirates, had gone to Afghanistan in 2000 after running away from his strict Muslim father. He was soon imprisoned by the Taliban, and tortured by operatives of Al Qaeda until, he said, he falsely confessed to being a spy for Israel and the United States.

But rather than help Mr. Ginco return home, American soldiers detained him again. Nearly five years later, he remains in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in part, it appears, on the strength of a propaganda videotape made by his torturers.

“This was a 22-year-old kid who was brutally tortured,” one of Mr. Ginco’s American lawyers, Stephen R. Sady, said. “And instead of being liberated, he has endured four and a half years of additional confinement.”

It's something out of Kafka, so surreal and horrifying that I honestly can't wrap my mind around the fact that an allegedly civilized country would think this was ok.

But it gets worse:

A bill signed into law by President Bush last December requires the Pentagon to determine if information being used to hold a detainee has been obtained by coercion and “the probative value (if any)” of such information. Another law passed by Congress last month would ban the use of statements made under torture from the military tribunals that are to be used to prosecute some Guantánamo detainees.

But that second law, which awaits the president’s signature, would also sweep away most federal court challenges to the detention of Guantánamo prisoners, including perhaps the one filed by American lawyers for Mr. Ginco, who is now 28.

Well yes. To give this man the right to file a writ of habeas corpus would clog the courts and the terrorists will have won. Much better to leave his life hanging on the whim of the president or some faceless military bureaucrat, either of whom might wake up one morning feeling good about himself and decide to set this poor bastard free.

Really, when you think about it, we could totally unclog the courts by doing away with this archaic writ altogether and just count on the President's pardon to take care of government errors and injustices. (Like Jack Abramoff, for instance.) This would be more in keeping with the traditional values that so many Americans would like to go back to --- the traditional values of feudal England. This whole "rule 'o law" thing is way overrated anyway.



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digby 10/15/2006 12:50:00 PM |

Saturday, October 14, 2006

 
A Rout Vs. A Rogue President

by tristero

Riffing on Digby's post earlier, I agree that Bush et al are too sanguine. And it's very spooky. But rather than speculate on why they are so apparently clueless about reality (yet again), let's speculate on something else. And if I'm shown wrong, I'm wrong (and I'll say so). But I don't think it's frivolous to explore the possible implications of what the November vote could bring. It might help us better deal with it and understand the potential and limitations.

Ok, let's first speculate that it really will be a rout. I, like you, will thank God, Thor, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that it happened. And like you, I'll give myself a little pat on the back for voting for Democrats and helping make it happen.* But what are the first things the Republicans are gonna do the day after?

That's right, goopers gonna demand recounts of as many races as they dare to. Lets not forget that many of the national races are major-league gerrymandered. The Republicans will scream something that boils down to, "Hey! No fair! We *#&*@$ rigged these races within an inch of our lives. We made sure those districts would be slamdunk GOP wins. Democrats simply had to be cheating!"

And so there will be recount demands. Lots. And here's the kicker: Some of those recounts could take a very long time. A very long time, indeed. And cost a lot more money than the Democratic party has. (BTW, a question for legal people out there: Can GOP incumbents be stopped from casting their votes if their seat is up for dispute, the vote is being recounted, and a new term has started?)

Okay, but let's put the concern about recounts aside. Let's speculate that regardless of election disputes, a newly Democratic Congress is finally seated. Now what? Well, William Greider sez we should "insinuate" ourselves as "friendly critics" and push progressive, meaning liberal, ideas. And he rounds up some delicious sounding promises if the Dems win the House, such as investigations into waste and constitutionality. I agree (but geez, Bill, "insinuate?" couldn't you have picked a better word? ) and I promise to help push.

But while we're trying to bring some commonsense back to national politics, let's try to anticipate what might plausibly happen. I think it's a safe bet that a Democratic House that starts genuine investigations will be charged with revenge, payback and fomenting destructive vendettas "during wartime!" by everyone on the right and the mainstream media will let them. And, btw, you haven't seen hysterical yet from the right. It will be ugly: Remember the "White Collar Riot" in Palm Beach, 2000? But all in all, that doesn't concern me too much. Those kinds of charges and fights are par for the course, even if they become exceptionally vitriolic this time around.

No. Here's what concerns me. What if Congress passes laws Bush don't like?

Well, he may just go along with some of them. And for some he will surely release a signing statement or just quietly ignore them. But for certain laws that he thinks his actively opposing them will play well to other rightwing extremists - say bills that roll back the "Patriot" Act to something more befitting a free society - I think the odds are good that Bush may actually publicly refuse to follow them, citing the "overriding principle of the unitary executive."

In short, Bush will say, "Try 'n make me." And the amen choir at Fox and elsewhere will stand up for him, deploring a fascist Democrat [sic] Congress trying to Subvert the will of the People.

Actually, I don't think this dramatic - no, melodramatic - scenario is likely for a very simple reason. Congress wouldn't dare to substantively repeal the "Patriot" Act or the Torture Act or anything else that central to Bushism. I believe that Bush will, as he has done since the beginning, continue to play chicken with the US Constitution, daring Congress to force the constitutional crisis he's created, which has been going on since before he took office, into a full-blown public meltdown. And I believe, just as they did with the filibuster, that Congress will back down to prevent a public meltdown from happening. Congress, either Dem-controlled or not, will prefer to avoid a very frightening confrontation with a rogue presidency - that could lead who knows where - in the hopes that Bush's insane challenge to the very structure of the US government simply will end when Bush leaves office in 2009.**

I'm not saying I like this or that I think it's a good (or bad) idea. All I'm suggesting is that even if there is a rout, don't expect much. With Bush in office, the serious danger to the country's kind of government persists. He will do whatever he wants to do. The Congress, like it or not, will be very anxious to do nothing to exacerbate the crisis, hoping to wait him out.

Yes, indeed, a Democratic House/Congress may raise quite a stink over Bush's desire for the big Iran Bang Bang he's planning. But even so, Congress will do all it can not to confront Bush but avoid the confrontation.

That's right: Even a Democratically controlled Congress may very well go along with Bush's war plans in order to avoid a catastrophic showdown over who really has the true power in America these days.*** It may mean that the confrontation over Bush/Iran could devolve into an open clash between Bush and very reluctant generals, with Congress stuck, badly, in the middle. (And I can clearly see the headlines on Fox declaring a " military coup d 'etat" and "mutiny.") But frankly, I doubt it. I suspect that there will be no major dramatic confrontations and, barring the totally unforeseen, that Bush could get away with starting another war. Possibly even a nuclear war - and then watch the fur fly as the world condemns the US and Congress tries to figure out what to do while the bodies of radiated children are displayed on television and Bush demands "loyalty in a time of active war."

Don't get me wrong. A Democratic Congress is a Very Good Thing and we should all be working to see that it happens. But we should be realistic about how much even a Democratic Congress will feel it can do, given a president who has the unchecked power, the corrupt will, and the truly perverse desire to be a cheap dictator instead of an American leader.

--------

*As for those of you who vote your conscience and vote for a Republican-funded third party candidate, may your music collection vanish in a puff of Green, except for the Yanni and Vangelis compilations your well-meaning and trying-to-be-hip aunt bought for you once and that you couldn't bring yourself to touch, let alone, toss.

**Congress has no reason to doubt Bush will leave at the end of his term, nor do I: Bush is anxious to become Commissioner of Baseball, after all. That's the job he's really wanted all along.

*** Yes, I know the situation and his support is not Fall, 2002 even though Congress did cave in back then to avoid exactly such a showdown. However, I don't think Bush cares about public opinion (or the rule of law). He does what he wants. He's the decider, not the American people. He has the power and he will exercise it. And how, exactly, does a Congress stop a president who believes that he, not the Supreme Court, is the ultimate arbiter of all legislation? And "during wartime," as he will surely claim? And if they succeed, what kind of potentially dangerous precedent does that set? I think Congress will try to avoid gettting into a position where those questions have to be answered.
tristero 10/14/2006 09:06:00 AM |

 
Cheap And Tawdry

by digby

So, the religious right now claims they are all upset about the gay Republicans in their midst.

"It's time for what we call a 'Come to Jesus Meeting,'" said Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. "Homosexuality is a dysfunctional lifestyle, and it must be addressed."

"Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote in an e-mail to activists. "Does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?"

Excuse me, can I just inquire where in the hell they were when this little kabuki took place during the last campaign?

Mary Cheney, one of two Cheney daughters, is openly gay and an official in the Bush-Cheney campaign. The vice president has spoken at length about his daughter’s sexuality and his view of gay relationships, even disagreeing with the president about the need for a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages.

Asked Wednesday night by debate moderator Bob Schieffer whether homosexuality is a choice, Kerry said: “We’re all God’s children, Bob, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was. She’s being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it’s not a choice.”

Kerry issued a statement Thursday after the Cheneys had expressed anger over his remarks: “I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue.”

Cheney told supporters at a rally Thursday in Fort Myers, “You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.” He made no other reference to Kerry’s remarks about his daughter.

Mrs. Cheney, introducing her husband in a post-debate appearance Wednesday night in Coraopolis, Pa., also avoided a specific reference to her daughter’s sexuality when she made clear she thought Kerry had crossed a line into family privacy.

“Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man,” Mrs. Cheney said. “Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

That was one of the most frustrating moments of the campaign. Here they were with an openly gay daughter, working on their campaign, but they had the chutzpah to claim righteous parental indignation at Kerry for mentioning it when asked about gay marriage --- a campaign issue stoked by Bush and Cheney to turn out their religious right base to vote against it. I'll never forget how the crowd cheered wildly when Lynn Cheney made her nonsensical statement.

The only thing I could conclude from that episode is that the religious right is phony or stupid. This recent Claude Rainsing about the "gay cabal" has not changed my mind on that.


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digby 10/14/2006 06:10:00 AM |

 
Crazy Jesus Lady

by digby

Roy reads the Crazy Jesus Lady's latest so you don't have to. She's impressed by how all the Republicans are doing an honest reassessment of their values in light of the party's "problems" while the Democrats are just being so rude about everything, as usual. She says we don't have "grace."

Here's a little advice for her, from her, to think about while she ponders how to deal with the social embarrassment of being a high profile member of the party of criminals, screw-ups and sexual deviants:

A lot of you--you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you've become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Let me be very candidly specific. Some of you need to get a good psychologist and a good holy man or woman, a priest or rabbi or minister--or how about all three--and figure out why you're turning everything in your life into politics. Because I have to tell you what I know: Politics is the biggest, easiest way in all of America to avoid looking at yourself, and who you are, and what fence needs fixing on your own homestead.

A lot of you are in politics not because you want to lead, but because you want to run. From yourselves.

When you're in politics not to live life but avoid it, you become especially susceptible to a kind of polar thinking. You become convinced you're with the good team and the good people over here. You become convinced anyone who doesn't want the same policies you want must be bad. After all, you're good, so if they disagree they must be bad. When you're polar like that you dehumanize the people on the other side. And when you dehumanize them--well, then you wind up ... starting wars on lies, excusing sexual predation of teen-agers, stealing billions from taxpayers and legalizing torture.

Think about it Peggy. You and your little friends really ought to spend some time with your holy men --- if they can pull themselves away from the porn and the spread sheets --- and think about how you all managed to pick a group of leaders whose colossal incompetence is only exceeded by their titanic avarice.

I promise I'll work on my grace.



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digby 10/14/2006 06:00:00 AM |

 
Voodoo?

by digby

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president's news conference this week.

"They aren't even planning for if they lose," says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush's final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

"The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress," said a Bush ally. "Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month."

I don't want to get all tin-foily here, but this just strikes me a very, very odd. Maybe it's the tinkerbelle strategy taken to the next level. But you do have to wonder why they are so eerily confident in the outcome of an elections that looks more and more to be a rout.

Billmon, from whom I lifted this link, points to this:

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

Chris Hedges
Does Bush Think War With Iran is Preordained?
October 10, 2006

I think most of you readers will probably think of this.

I suspect it may just be something simpler: president pissypants:

The President’s Increasing Isolation: A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President’s increasing isolation. Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he’s wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”

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digby 10/14/2006 05:21:00 AM |

Friday, October 13, 2006

 
It's Not The Sex

by digby

...no matter how titillated he was by the pictures.

Chris Shays keeps digging:

"It was a National Guard unit run amok," Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable ... This is more about pornography than torture."

Uhm, no it isn't just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as "material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement."

Rush said, you'll recall:

LIMBAUGH:And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.

(Apparently, it isn't just him. I always wondered why Shays stayed in the Republican party and now I know.)

Seriously, do Republicans really think those pictures of the mentally ill patient covered in excrement or the terrified man who suffered that bloody dogbite were intended to cause sexual excitement? Where does this pornography thing come from? Did it cause them sexual excitement?

Shays said Friday he wished he had more fully explained his views at the debate.

"I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be," he said. "Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it."

Shays said his debate comments reflected the disturbing photos he has seen of Abu Ghraib abuses: "Naked Iraqis, naked Americans, Americans having sex ... gross and despicable pictures."

I guess he was so overwhelmed by the male nudity and the pictures of Americans having sex (which none of the rest of us have seen) that he didn't notice this stuff:



11:15 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003. The detainees were brought into the hard site for their involvement in a riot. The seven detainees were flexi cuffed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Soldiers then jumped on the pile, stomped on their hands and feet. CPL GRANER is depicted holding and in the process of punching a detainee. [Detainee name deleted] is detainee with writing on leg wearing the white underwear.


Maybe Republicans think that's porno, but it sure looks like torture to me.



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digby 10/13/2006 06:04:00 PM |

 
"Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant"

by digby

I would become a believer myself if this happened:

Dear Dr. Dobson and Friends

I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America. Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement. You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.

But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark. It is time to leave the Republican Party. Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.

I know that seems like a radical move, sir, but it has become increasingly apparent that the core values of the Republican Party are not Christian values. It is time all Christian leaders ask ourselves if it is possible for God to bless a polluted party. Make no mistake, the Republican Party is polluted.

[...]


Now is the time to form our own party. You and your friends have the influence to do it. Remember how quickly people got behind Ross Perot? Can’t our Christian leaders do the same? We have the resources and the network. It is time to stop wasting them on Republicanism.

The world has gotten smaller. The power of the internet has changed the way Americans communicate. With one click of a mouse, millions can be alerted to Truth. A network of churches and ministries already exists. We can override the lunacy of television ads, without spending a dime, if we focus now on 2008.


Here is a plan.


· Begin now to build the network of partnerships of those who espouse Christian values. Much of it is already in place.

· Draft Judge Roy Moore as the 2008 presidential candidate. He has proven his mettle. Begin working for his election now. There is no question where his loyalty lies. Work to get him on the ballot in all fifty states. Stay out of the Republican primary. Build a war-chest for the general election.

· Begin a training program for future candidates in Constitutional government as it relates to God-ordained freedoms. Train up men who will not compromise for personal gain. Courageous men who stand in the face of the anti-god establishment. Men who will restore Constitutional government. Men in the tradition of Madison and Washington. In two years we will have a group of God-fearing men to run in local races.

· Hire experts to create PAC’s that will support the candidates giving opportunities for Christians to donate to Godly candidates, rather than compromised Republicans. Thumb your nose at the IRS. Would Jesus be silent on the great moral issues of the day because he was afraid of losing His tax-exempt status?

· Give no money to Republican or Democratic candidates--only those who join the new party.

· Offer current God-fearing officials an alternative to status quo politics, and offer an alternative party for them to join.

[...]

Things are not looking good for Republicans. It is time to abandon ship, to build an ark, to raise the standard. Republicanism is making Christianity look bad.

Dr. Dobson, America needs bold new leadership. You and your friends have the influence to pull it off. Are you and your friends willing to give up your seat at the Republican table? With leadership comes responsibility and the Lord will hold us all accountable for the compromising of His standards. The wonks will tell us a third-party can’t win, that we will only divide the vote, that Hillary will be president.

I say God will do something great if we honor His name and His ways. Matthew 19:6 "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

So, Dr. Dobson, who will you choose to believe?

Praise the Lord! I think there is no doubt that Jesus would want these people to form a third party of conservative Christians with Judge Roy Moore at the top of the ticket.

I'm with them on this 100%. In fact, I'll give money to help them make it happen. Republicans are polluted, yes they are. Long live the Conservative Christian Crusade Party. It is exactly what this country needs at a time like this.


h/t to SarahT

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digby 10/13/2006 05:12:00 PM |

 
Do it For The Constitution

by digby


Glenn Greenwald's blog Unclaimed Territory sort of took the blogosphere by storm this past year or so and for good reason. He is fearless in taking on the right wing --- from the crazed harpy wingnut vloggers to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And he makes such well-reasoned yet passionate arguments they are forced to engage him. His blog is does what the best lefty blogs have to do -- entertain, inform and... kick rightwing ass.

Glenn is just a great blogger and I'd hate to see Unclaimed Territory have to change or go dark. If you have the wherewithal and you value what bloggers like Glenn are doing, head on over and give him a donation. Bloggers aren't getting any institutional or advertising support from the big money boys in the party. This is the way independent bloggers like Glenn can keep the lights on.



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digby 10/13/2006 04:54:00 PM |

 
It Doesn't Bother Him Politically

by digby

More dispatches from the GOP Freakshow:

MJ Rosenberg over at TPM Cafe makes note of religious conservative Dennis Prager's strong moral stand on Larry King last night. It's quite inspiring:

KING: ... Does the Foley matter bother you?

PRAGER: The matter bothers me but not politically. A congressman is given a page to nurture and take care of and not to try to have an affair with, with same-sex or opposite sex, so that bothers me. There's no question about it and a great deal in fact but, it doesn't bother me politically.

KING: Why?

PRAGER: Because it will have no repercussion in my opinion. Even "The New York Times" I'm sure through [sic] its great chagrin had on the front page that conservative, religious conservatives, the people most likely to be offended by such a sexual scandal, are not at all turning away from the Republicans. It was a front page article.

KING: Why aren't they offended?

PRAGER: Oh, they are offended but they're not going to -- they're not going to stop voting Republican as a result. That was what the article was about. They're going to still go to the polls and they should because what is the alternative, a party that doesn't share any of their values.

So, as much as any conservative might say, "Well, it's not been a conservative enough administration," when you look at the alternative, you end up voting Republican.

First of all, since when is a congressman "given a page to nurture and take care of?" This isn't feudal Europe and these Republican perverts sure as hell aren't knights in shining armor.

Second, are we supposed to be impressed that even though the Republicans steal billions of tax dollars, cover up for sexual deviants and demand the right to torture, moral Americans will vote for them anyway because they couldn't possibly be as bad as liberals? That's what's known as moral clarity among religious conservatives like Prager.

Considering that, perhaps some of you will be surprised to learn that Prager is an "ethicist" who said back in 1999:

Five years ago, I became a Republican for one reason -- aside from the religious renaissance, the Republican party was the only force in America that could stop Democrats and liberals from further eroding America's fundamental values. I still believe that undoing and preventing liberal damage is the most noble and honest Republican agenda.

He has always had some rather unusual ideas about sexuality, some of which he shared with the congress when he testified in 1996 against same-sex marriage:

I don't feel threatened by same-sex marriage...I perceive a different danger. It is the danger that is regarding human sexuality, which is a non-issue here. I interviewed a professor of psychiatry at UCLA before coming here to check whether my research on this was valid, and he said, and I quote, Professor Steven Marmer (ph), UCLA Medical School: "Human nature is largely bisexual. In the 18,000 word paper I wrote on homosexuality three years ago, I discovered something that I never knew. Judeo-Christian civilization is unique in human history in saying that sexuality should be exclusively channeled to the opposite sex and in monogamous marriage." I repeat, it is unique.

Homosexuality, bisexuality have been normative throughout human history. Judeo-Christian civilization alone said, channel the polymorphous sexual urge that the human nature has into marriage with someone of the opposite sex. If we wish to dismantle that, it is not Representative Frank, a political gesture in a Republican Congress. [HEARING OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEESUBJECT: SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CHAIRED BY: CHARLES T. CANADY (R-FL) MAY 15, 1996]

Impressive argument, isn't it? He thinks that religion and traditional marriage are the only things saving humans from their natural bisexual state. (Why that state would be bad, he doesn't explain, but it's clear the thought terrifies him.) I'd say that's very revealing coming from a strict religious conservative like him, don't you?

How many of these weirdos are using the excuse of religion and "values" to force the law to keep them from acting on their deepest desires? We need to figure it out because their psychological problems are starting to become problems for all of us.



By the way, Prager holds seminars on many subjects including "male sexuality."

No subject is more perplexing than male sexuality. Dennis unravels the mysteries of the male mind with startling clarity and insight. Every man who wants to better understand his nature and every woman who wants to fully appreciate the opposite sex should listen to this tape course.

That ought to be a real eye-opener.


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digby 10/13/2006 01:37:00 PM |

 
Sex Ring Republicans

by digby


I guess I've been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don't consider myself a prude, but damn.

The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don't much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated "their" party. Talk about moral relativism.

But I really thought that the northeastern moderates might be the last holdouts for sanity. They have always seemed temperamentally conservative in the old fashioned sense of relying on prudence and reason. Apparently not. Yesterday Chris Shays described the events at Abu Ghraib as a "sex ring" and denied that any torture took place. A sex ring:

"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell's campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. "It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn't doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

"I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff," Shays said. "The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn't primarily about torture."

Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.

I don't know what kind of sex these GOP freaks are having, but I don't think most of these things (from the Taguba report) are normally considered "sex," even in Rush's wildest S&M fantasies --- certainly when they are perpetrated against prisoners against their will:

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? That's not torture? That stuff is over and above the things we've all seen with the forced masturbation, simulated fellatio, smearing feces on prisoners and forcing them to wear women's underwear while chained in stress positions to their cells or beds.

Characterizing what happened at Abu Ghraib as a "sex ring" is bizarre enough but he defends his comment the next day which means it wasn't a slip of the tongue or a badly worded phrase. He's thought about this and he believes it.

He said he looked at all those pictures and saw sex. Did you? I sure didn't. But then we libertine lefties base our belief that people should be able to do whatever they like in their private lives on the bedrock principle of individual freedom, agency and rights. It's the coercion that makes all this stuff so wrong. When somebody is coerced or forced into doing "sexual" things against their will, it can most certainly be torture. (I can't believe I even have to make that argument.)

Furthermore, in the case of Abu Ghraib, it's well known that what we saw in those pictures were techniques that were developed and shipped in from Guantanamo when General Geoffrey D. Miller was brought over to "straighten out" the prison and get actionable intelligence. They believed that these sexual techniques were a particularly potent way to break conservative Muslims. This stuff was common and it was pervasive --- if it was a "sex ring" it was a mighty big one that went all the way to Rumsfeld and probably Bush and Cheney too.

This is exactly why you draw bright lines on torture. Chris Shays is pretty much telling the world that the only problems with what went on at Abu Ghraib were matters of inappropriate sex and, therefore, don't violate the Geneva Conventions prohibition against torture. I'll be anxious to hear him explain to the families of American troops in the future that they shouldn't sweat it when their relatives are repeatedly raped or paraded around naked and forced to perform sex acts for cameras. (Hell, even being bitten by dogs or beaten with chairs isn't torture according to him.)

Republicans apparently find these actions little more opprobrious than they find one of their friends hitting on underage boys but I would bet the families of these troops won't see such treatment as being part of a "sex ring" and might just believe their loved one is being tortured. Shays and his pals will have to explain to them why that isn't so.



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digby 10/13/2006 11:27:00 AM |

 
Undaunted

by digby


We all know that before 9/11 the neocons didn't give a damn about terrorism (and still don't, really.) But what were they obsessed with? Saddam, yes. Israel, yes. But they reserved a whole bunch of their firepower for the great yellow peril, the Chi-Coms, whom they are anxious to blame for the North Korean nuclear threat today. They apparently don't feel we have enough problems, we need to start poking China in the eye too.

In their view, Beijing has always had the power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms programmes, and the fact that it has not done so demonstrates that China sees itself as a "strategic rival" of Washington, a phrase much favoured by administration hawks during Bush's first year in office.

Indeed, in the most prominent neo-conservative reaction to the North Korean test to date, former Bush speechwriter David Frum called in a column published by the New York Times for the administration to take a series of measures designed to "punish China" for its failure to bring Pyongyang to heel.

Among them, Frum, who is also based at AEI and is sometimes credited with inventing the phrase "axis of evil", in which North Korea, Iran, and Iraq were lumped together, for Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, urged the administration to cut off all humanitarian aid to North Korea, pressure South Korea to do the same, and thus force China to "shoulder the cost of helping to avert" North Korea's economic collapse.

Frum, who is also based at AEI, urged that Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to be invited to join NATO and that Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, to send observers to NATO meetings.

Frum, who in 2003 co-authored "An End to Evil" with former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, also suggested that Washington "encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent."

"A nuclear Japan is the thing China and North Korea dread most (after, perhaps, a nuclear South Korea or Taiwan)," he asserted.

Somebody has got to get the DEA to confiscate that shit these guys are smoking. What magic do these guys think we possess? Aside from the fact that China is holding all of our markers at the moment, does it seem like a good idea to be encouraging any country to renounce the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty right now? It's an invitation to a nuclear free-for-all. Have their hare-brained schemes to destabilize the middle east failed to satisfy them enough that they have to destabilize Asia as well?

This is the nature of neocon thinking. After all we've seen, after everything they've screwed up, they still believe that they can control events on the world stage as if they were pieces in a board game. I'm not sure a simple madman would be more dangerous.


Update: And yes, the PNAC Democrats should wise up too. They are classic enablers, searching desperately for common ground with lunatics.



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digby 10/13/2006 09:26:00 AM |

Thursday, October 12, 2006

 
Scone Eating Surrender General

by digby

In America, it would be the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, saying this

The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.

In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Sir Richard also warns that a "moral and spiritual vacuum" has opened up in British society, which is allowing Muslim extremists to undermine "our accepted way of life."

The Chief of the General Staff believes that Christian values are under threat in Britain and that continuing to fight in Iraq will only make the situation worse.

His views will send shockwaves through Government.

They are a total repudiation of the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly insisted that British presence in Iraq is morally right and has had no effect on our domestic security.

Sir Richard, who took up his post earlier this year, warned that "our presence in Iraq exacerbates" the "difficulties we are facing around the world."

He lambasts Tony Blair's desire to forge a "liberal democracy" in Iraq as a "naive" failure and he warns that "whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance."

Lucky for us, the president of the United States is looking forward to listening to Jimmy Baker's secret plan to end the war, so this isn't an issue for us.


The speculation is that Sir Richard is going to have to be fired. This could get interesting.



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digby 10/12/2006 07:30:00 PM |

 
Finally

by digby


The grown-ups have awakened from their stupors and have decided to save us:

MATTHEWS: The real grown-ups, gentlemen, and Margaret -- is that the best critics of this war are the Republicans. [Sen.] John Warner [R-VA], the chairman of the Armed Services [Committee] -- it's not the lefties, it's not Jack Murtha out there even. It's the smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy and calling for a change.

We're saved!

Get prepared to go back to the future, folks. If and when we manage to take back one or both houses of congress get prepared to relive those glory days of the 90's, when the Republicans acted like raving lunatics and braindead losers like Chris Matthews blamed it all on the Democrats.

It is going to be as if the Bush years never happened. All this unpleasantness will be disappeared and we will begin anew with a horrible fiscal situation, a terrible global situation, a hopeless military situation which will be laid squarely at the feet of the "lefties" by "smart, grown-up Republicans," the shrieking rightwing harpies and their close relatives the robotic codpiece-worshipping pundits. Oy.




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digby 10/12/2006 06:11:00 PM |

 
Cogs In The Machine

by digby

One of the most hyped tales of political wizardry in recent years is the story of how Karl Rove energized the evangelical base and created an army of Republican GOTV foot soldiers. The facts are that the targeting of the evangelicals goes back much farther than Rove and can be attributed to earlier GOP grassroots strategists:

"With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. 'Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That's it, Falwell exclaimed. That's the name of the organization.' [David Grann, "Robespierre of the Right," New Republic, October 27, 1997]

Rove and these other strategists knew the religious right were "new voters" which is the political promised land. Everybody dreams of dragging some of the unaffiliated, apathetic uninvolved into the political arena. Getting an entire block of voters who will vote according to what they are told by an authoritarian organization is a miracle. Hallalujah.

With the business marketing savvy of the big money boys of the GOP they were quite successful in the last decade or so at convincing the media and many of the public that the Republican party actually is more moral and more sincerely religious than the Democrats. However, the events of the last year have begun to unravel that carefully constructed image.

After Foley's "naughty emails" were revealed, Paul Weyrich said what I think most people would expect an honest religious right leader to say:

"One of the things that people say to me all the time is, in Washington nobody takes responsibility for anything," continued Mr. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. "And I think that he, having not delved into this the way he should have, has to take responsibility and therefore has to resign."

Of course he backtracked the next day, but his first instincts, at least, were consistent with what you would expect of a cultural conservative. Dobson, Bauer and Perkins and the rest of the religious right leaders on the other hand, came out of the box sounding like slick, blow-dried PR spinners feverishly explaining away Foley's predatory IM trail as a prank or a dirty trick. They behaved like political operatives, not religious leaders.

And this week we are also getting a glimpse into how Karl Rove and the Bush white house really view conservative Christians. The new book by David Kuo is causing quite a stir:

Kuo says, 'National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy.' "

So how does the Bush White House keep 'the nuts' turning out at the polls?

One way, regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.

Kuo says, "Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending. Advice was solicited [but] that advice rarely went much further than the conference call. [T]he true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy."

They do get some things from the Bush White House, like the National Day of Prayer, “another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says.

And “passes to be in the crowd greeting the president when he arrived on Air Force One or tickets for a speech he was giving in their hometown. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”

This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It's obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.

If you doubt that, take a look at the response among the evangelical elite to the fall from grace of the co-founder of the Christian Coalition, a man who got so greedy for political power he stepped out of his religious role and went for it:

Given the Reed scandal's potential to erode evangelicals' faith in politics, it's no surprise that the main reaction among movement leaders has thus far been "an embarrassing silence," to quote Ken Connor, the former head of Dobson's Family Research Council. Even Richard Land, the normally forthcoming Southern Baptist powerhouse, has been rendered speechless. ("Dr. Land has decided to pass on this topic," his spokeswoman told The Nation after first agreeing to an interview.) ...One notable exception to the official silence has been Marvin Olasky, a longtime Texas adviser of Bush who literally wrote the book on "compassionate conservatism." Olasky, editor of the most popular organ of the evangelical right, World magazine, has been outspoken in his view that Reed "has damaged Christian political work by confirming for some the stereotype that evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders use moral issues to line their pockets." World reporter Jamie Dean has filed a series of fearless Reed exposes, causing a sensation in the evangelical community. Her dogged questioning of Christian-right leaders whom Reed dragged into his "anti-gambling" campaigns inspired sharp criticism from the most powerful of them all, Focus on the Family leaders Dobson and Tom Minnery, in a February radio broadcast. "They have a reporter who wanted me to dump on Ralph Reed," said an exasperated Minnery, explaining why he refused to answer questions from World.

Nobody has nailed the discomfort better than Reed's old cohort Pat Robertson. "You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy," he told The New York Times last April as the Abramoff-Reed connections began to go public. "'There's been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.' The Bible says you can't serve God and Mammon." Robertson has subsequently fallen quiet on the matter--perhaps because he knows that a willingness to serve both God and Mammon has been indispensable to the success of evangelical politics. It's the very glue that holds together the awkward marriage of Christian moralism and high-rolling Republicanism.

The glue that holds it together is the business of evangelism. Those followers who give their money to these churches and organizations that sell Republicanism as a religious brand might as well spend their money at WalMart. They're buying the same thing. It's tribal identity but it isn't religious and it isn't moral.

It's time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it's not just the national leadership, it's the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others' continued status, even if they spar over who's their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals --- power.

The big losers are the followers who are being sold a cheap bill of goods by both the Christian Right leadership and the Republican Party. Maybe some day they'll wise up but it's a tall order. It means they have to lose faith in both their church and their party and I wonder how many of them have that in them. It would be a terrible disillusionment.

There's a vacuum to be filled in the evangelical leadership by preachers and leaders who eschew worldly, political power for its own sake. It remains to be seen if anyone steps up to claim it --- and whether the sincere believers are not just "red team members" but true Christians who will reject the Elmer Gantrys who have been playing them for fools.



Update:Here's more on the same topic by Hans Johnson in In These Times:

This June, Dobson had to devote a page of the magazine to coming clean about his ties to Jack Abramoff and the other Republican corruption scandal. In classic Dobson fashion, the disclosure was wrapped in an attack on “liberal” philanthropist George Soros and titled, with the subtlety of a schoolyard taunt, “We’re calling your bluff.” So much for mea culpa.

Far from being a free-standing moral voice, Dobson and Company are part and parcel of conservative political machinery. He has used his organization’s tax-exempt status, radio network and greedy data-gathering techniques for the past 25 years to convert it into bare-knuckled political empire dressed up as a Christian ministry.

Update II: And now it is reported that Rove personally threatened Foley when he tried to retire last year. Oh what a tangled web we weave...



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digby 10/12/2006 02:16:00 PM |

 
Don't Ask Don't Tell

by digby


The Republicans really, really need to deal with their latent sexual issues because this is getting ridiculous. I just flipped over to FoxNews and saw two scantily clad young men (with very unmilitary looking mop-tops) sitting across the desk of a giggling and blushing Neil Cavuto, flogging a Marine Hunk beefcake calendar. I'm not kidding.

You can kind of understand why Foley self-destructed. It's strange and creepy in that Republican closet.



Oh and speaking of creepy, if you'd like to sign a petition objecting to the great Christian child psychologist James Dobson's characterization of Foley's p[redation and hastert's cover-up as a joke, you can go here.



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digby 10/12/2006 01:50:00 PM |

 
Brilliant

by digby


Most of you have probably already seen this over at Atrios' place, but if you haven't check it out:


digby 10/12/2006 01:38:00 PM |

 

Unlawful State of Denial

by poputonian

France Sparks Uproar With Genocide Bill

PARIS — French politicians are galloping into diplomatic quicksand with a proposal to imprison anyone who publicly denies that the Turkish massacre of Armenians a century ago constituted genocide.

The draft law, to be debated by the National Assembly Thursday, was submitted by the opposition Socialist Party and has strong support among those on the political right who hope to derail Turkey's candidacy for European Union membership.

Members of France's 400,000-strong Armenian diaspora, whose votes are important to all sides in next spring's presidential election, have lobbied for years to criminalize negating their genocide, just as it is a crime in France to deny the Holocaust.

Is there such a thing as indirect genocide, such as might happen when you intentionally destabilize a foreign sovereign? I suppose in crime parlance, one would call it reckless genocide. The drunk driver, after all, didn't intend for an innocent death to be the outcome of the actions taken (the drinking.) But the driver is nonetheless held accountable. Cause and effect, you know.

poputonian 10/12/2006 04:38:00 AM |

 
Attention: Rightwing Guardians Of Free Speech!

by tristero

Dear Rightwing Defenders of the Politically Incorrect,

Are you bored by Idomeneo? I don't blame you. After all, it's not Mozart's best opera by a long shot. I vote for Figaro or Zauberflote, but won't complain if you say Giovanni. Oh, and if you know what's good for you, get the Gardiner DVD of Figaro.

But I digress. For you courageous defenders of free speech who spoke up so bravely for the wealthy rightwing Danish newspaper magnates that published those Muhammad 'toons, here's your new cause celebre. This guy is about to get into a heap o' trouble for speaking his mind. You must put your considerable moral power behind him, rise to his defense, denounce the thought police that would eliminate his right of free expression and, well, you know the drill:

A university instructor who came under scrutiny for arguing that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks likens President Bush to Adolf Hitler in an essay his students are being required to buy for his course.

The essay by Kevin Barrett, "Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11," is part of a $20 book of essays by 15 authors, according to an unedited copy first obtained by WKOW-TV in Madison and later by The Associated Press.

The book's title is "9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out." It is on the syllabus for Barrett's course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Islam: Religion and Culture," but only three of the essays are required reading, not including Barrett's essay.

Barrett, a part-time instructor who holds a doctorate in African languages and literature and folklore from UW-Madison, is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group's members say U.S. officials, not al-Qaida terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

"Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies," he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

Now, you may think he's just an hysterical nut. But he's not. He's quite thougtful in advancing his bold, audacious thesis. He is not in any way saying that Bush personally is comparable to Hitler. Read on:

"That's not comparing them as people, that's comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that's an accurate comparison that I would stand by," he said.

He added: "Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler."

Now some of you may think that, unlike Germany, this is America where free speech is respected and defended as a matter of course. He doesn't need your help as there are no repercussions. Not so:

The university's decision to allow Barrett to teach the course touched off a controversy over the summer once his views became widely known.

Sixty-one state legislators denounced the move. One county board cut its funding for the UW-Extension by $8,247 -- the amount Barrett will earn for teaching the course -- in a symbolic protest, even though the course is unrelated to that branch of the UW System.

Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and his Republican challenger, Mark Green, have both said they believe Barrett should be fired.

So to the barricades, my rightwing friends! Contact David Horowitz and come ye all together, rise to Professor Barrett's defense! And denounce the liberals and Democrats and Republicans (RINOs, obviously) who are calling for him to be fired and vilified for his views.

love,

tristero

P.S. Please don't ask me to join you. But don't get me wrong. I'm all for free speech and free expression, even if I hate it. That's why I'm a card-carrying member of ACLU who I'm positive are following the attempts to censor, censure, and shut Professor Barrett up very closely. If ACLU determines that his rights have been violated, I'm sure they will defend him, as they have Oliver North and some other paragons of free speech who wanted to hold a politically incorrect march through Skokie, Il. Since I didn't resign when ACLU defended North, I certainly won't resign if they rise to Professor Barrett's defense. But that's as much activism in his cause as I have time for. You see, I'd like to do more but I have some important things I really must do. Like fr'instance, this morning I have to go watch some paint dry. Somebody has to, y'know.

P.P.S. Special note to those who seriously wish to discuss the merits of Professor Barrett's theories on who was behind 9/11: Of course, my friends, I agree with him. And you, especially you. I wouldn't dream of disagreeing with you. Ever. You're all absolutely right, Bush himself meticulously planned 9/11 and set up bin Laden as a patsy. I don't see how anyone - do me a favor, please, and just stay back over there in your chair, thanks - could doubt you. I"m serious. Hey, have you heard about Clinton and Dallas, '63? Well, some say it's just speculation but...no, seriously, please sit down. Please!

Ok, ok. Put it down. PUT IT DOWN, I SAID! Put that CD DOWN! N-n-n-n-n-n-noooooooooooooooooo! Don't play it, please God, no. Anything but that, please! Get away from that cd player. Please I'll do anything you want, believe anything you say. Really, ah...ahh....!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

tristero 10/12/2006 02:29:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

 
Short Term Death


by digby


Reading this article by Jacob Weisberg on the subject of Bush's creation of the Axis of Evil, I realized that one of the most frustrating aspects of right wing hawkish thinking is their belief that it is useless to have any kind of short-term solution to a problem unless it can be guaranteed to result in a long term resolution. Indeed, they even think of truces and ceasefires as weakness. Here's Bush a couple of months ago talking about Lebanon:

"Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace -- not a temporary peace, but something that lasts," said Bush. "We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don't want something that's, you know, short term in duration."

Right. Tell it to the people who died or were wounded because that "short term" solution just wasn't good enough for George W. Bush.

That is just one very bizarre aspect of their black and white thinking that leads to such things as their ridiculous posturing on North Korea in which no interim agreement (like that achieved by Clinton with the Agreed Framework) is countenanced because they will only accept a permanent solution. I suppose one could say that this might be a useful way to run a kindergarten, but real violence in the real world is something that should always be punted if at all possible. This is not because of a general moral revulsion toward violence, although that should certainly be a factor. Nor is it simply that to delay would save lives "in the short term." It's because we cannot tell the future. Kim Jong Il could die from a heart attack. A short term cease fire in Lebanon could have given everyone a chance to catch their breath and perhaps recognize that escalating the war was indefensible. Anything can happen. A break from violence creates a possibility that it won't start up again. A crazy dictator delaying the development of a nuclear bomb opens up the possibility that he won't develop one.

I realize that Bush and his pals think that their "enemies" are nihilistic at best and animals at worst. But they are humans and humans are always subject to change from within or without. The idea that it is "useless" to put off something like a a war or a nuclear showdown until tomorrow when you can have one today (or put off a ceasefire 'til tomorrow when you can have one today) is beyond stupid or irresponsible. It's sick.



* I should note that the right has come to think that anything short of a hostile, aggressive military response to everything is "appeasement." It isn't.

"The word in its normal meaning connotes the pacific settlement of disputes; in the meaning usually applied to the period of Chamberlain's premiership, it has come to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else's expense." D.N. DIlks, Appeasement Revisited, Journal of Contemporary History, 1972.

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digby 10/11/2006 02:41:00 PM |

 
A Man's Gotta Make A Living

by digby


All this lying McCainiac finger-pointing about Clinton being at fault for North Korea having nukes is par for the course. That's the GOP game -- if it wasn't Clinton it would have been Carter --- or Truman --- or Woodrow Wilson. It's never their fault. Here's Rich Lowry explaining it to us from their perspective:

The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, "as the ink was drying." The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.

I like Josh Marshalls pithy translation for those of us who live on planet Earth:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

But let's take Lowry at his word that all the smart people knew that the agreed framework was bunk and that the eight years of a non-nuclear North Korea it bought were worthless. Why in the world was Donald Rumsfeld involved in building those light water reactors back in the 1990's?

I understand that when this story came out back in 2003 the media were still in thrall to the Hunky Rummy, but what's the excuse for not pursuing that question now? The only person besides Bush who still thinks he's even sane is Midge Decter,and she never loved him for his mind anyway --- it was his hot 72 year old bod and macho aggressiveness that turned her on. (That probably explains Bush's infatuation with him too, come to think of it.)

May 12, 2003

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.

[...]

FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done."

The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked "to lobby in Washington" on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." Other former top executives don't recall Rumsfeld's involvement.

Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director. There is no evidence that Rumsfeld, who took a keen interest in the company's nuclear business and attended most board meetings, made his views about the project known to other ABB officials. He certainly never made them public, even though the deal was criticized by many people close to Rumsfeld, who said weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from light-water reactors. Paul Wolfowitz, James Lilley, and Richard Armitage, all Rumsfeld allies, are on record opposing the deal. So is former presidential candidate Bob Dole, for whom Rumsfeld served as campaign manager and chief defense advisor. And Henry Sokolski, whose think tank received funding from a foundation on whose board Rumsfeld sat, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the 1994 agreement.

I guess he must have felt that just because Clinton was conducting a "feckless, photo-op" foreign policy, as St. John McCain used to say, that was no reason he shouldn't make a buck on it. He's a Republican, after all.



Update: Dover Bitch points out the irony of the Republicans blaming Clinton and Carter (yes, they've blamed him too) for all things wrong in the universe while simultaneously decrying the notorious "blame America first" crowd. (They are always able to have it both ways, aren't they?) She found this amazing little nugget from Jeanne Kirkpatrick's famous 1984 speech on the subject:

"When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first."

I suppose they can always fall back on their belief that Democrats aren't "Real Americans" so it's not inconsistent to them that they always blame America first themselves -- and always have. ("Who lost the civil war?" "Who lost China?" "Who lost Vietnam?" "Who lost Iraq?")In fact, their entire worldview is shaped by the idea that the enemy within, the treasonous Americans among them, are at fault for everything that's gone wrong in the world. James Wolcott dismembers Dinesh D'Souza just today for claiming that Americans are to blame for islamic terrorism.

In fact, I suspect that if Republicans couldn't blame America for every single thing that they believe has gone wrong in the world they would completely lose their moorings.


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digby 10/11/2006 11:15:00 AM |

 
What Americans Have Sacrificed In Bush's "War On Terror"

by tristero

Many critics of the Bush administration have it wrong. They have repeatedly charged that while Bush has said the country is at war he has refused to call off the tax breaks for the rich or implement any measures that would require the American people to sacrifice.

Not true. In pursuit of war, he has instituted, and the American public through its apathy has gone along with, an extremely profound hardship. Bush has sacrificed American democracy:

In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s "dependency and trust," he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity.

For nearly two years – from June 9, 2002 until March 2, 2004, when the Department of Defense permitted Mr. Padilla to have contact with his lawyers – Mr. Padilla was in complete isolation. Even after he was permitted contact with counsel, his conditions of confinement remained essentially the same.

He was kept in a unit comprising sixteen individual cells, eight on the upper level and eight on the lower level, where Mr. Padilla’s cell was located. No other cells in the unit were occupied. His cell was electronically monitored twenty-four hours a day, eliminating the need for a guard to patrol his unit. His only contact with another person was when a guard would deliver and retrieve trays of food and when the government desired to interrogate him.

His isolation, furthermore, was aggravated by the efforts of his captors to maintain complete sensory deprivation. His tiny cell – nine feet by seven feet – had no view to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window, however, it was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it was.

In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep. Mr. Padilla was not given a mattress until the tail end of his captivity. . . .

Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla’s interrogations would begin. Efforts to manipulate Mr. Padilla and break his will also took the form of the denial of the few benefits he possessed in his cell. . . .

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig.

He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Throughout most of the time Mr. Padilla was held captive in the Naval Brig he had no contact with the outside world. In March 2004, one year and eight months after arriving in the Naval Brig, Mr. Padilla was permitted his first contact with his attorneys. Even thereafter, although Mr. Padilla had access to counsel, and thereby some contact with the outside world, those visits were extremely limited and restricted. . . .

The deprivations, physical abuse, and other forms of inhumane treatment visited upon Mr. Padilla caused serious medical problems that were not adequately addressed. Apart from the psychological damage done to Mr. Padilla, there were numerous health problems brought on by the conditions of his captivity. Mr. Padilla frequently experienced cardiothoracic difficulties while sleeping, or attempting to fall asleep, including a heavy pressure on his chest and an inability to breath or move his body.

In one incident Mr. Padilla felt a burning sensation pulsing through his chest. He requested medical care but was given no relief. Toward the end of his captivity, Mr. Padilla experienced swelling and pressure in his chest and arms. He was administered an electrocardiogram, and given medication. . . . .

The cause of some of the medical problems experienced by Mr. Padilla is obvious. Being cramped in a tiny cell with little or no opportunity for recreation and enduring stress positions and shackling for hours caused great pain and discomfort. It is unclear, though, whether Mr. Padilla’s cardiothoracic problems were a symptom of the stress he endured in captivity, or a side effect from one of the drugs involuntarily induced into Mr. Padilla’s system in the Naval Brig. In either event, the strategically applied measures suffered by Mr. Padilla at the hands of the government caused him both physical and psychological pain and agony.

It is worth noting that throughout his captivity, none of the restrictive and inhumane conditions visited upon Mr. Padilla were brought on by his behavior or by any actions on his part. There were no incidents of Mr. Padilla violating any regulation of the Naval Brig or taking any aggressive action towards any of his captors. Mr. Padilla has always been peaceful and compliant with his captors. He was, and remains to the time of this filing, docile and resigned – a model detainee.

Mr. Padilla also wants to make clear that the deprivation described above did abate somewhat once counsel began negotiating with the officials of the Naval Brig for the improvements of his conditions. Toward the end of Mr. Padilla’s captivity in the Naval Brig he was provided reading materials and some other more humane treatment. However, despite some improvement in Mr. Padilla’s living conditions, the interrogations and torture continued even after the visits with counsel commenced.

In sum, many of the conditions Mr. Padilla experienced were inhumane and caused him great physical and psychological pain and anguish. Other deprivations experienced by Mr. Padilla, taken in isolation, are merely cruel and some, merely petty. However, it is important to recognize that all of the deprivations and assaults recounted above were employed in concert in a calculated manner to cause him maximum anguish.

It is also extremely important to note that the torturous acts visited upon Mr. Padilla were done over the course almost the entire three years and seven months of his captivity in the Naval Brig. For most of one thousand three hundred and seven days, Mr. Padilla was tortured by the United States government without cause or justification. Mr. Padilla’s treatment at the hands of the United States government is shocking to even the most hardened conscience, and such outrageous conduct on the part of the government divests it of jurisdiction, under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, to prosecute Mr. Padilla in the instant matter.

Now for the benefit of the cognitively damaged out there in the blogosphere, let me insert some boilerplate here to the effect that I have no idea what Padilla may or may not have done. That is an entirely separate issue. The issue here is illegal detention and torture of one its citizens by that citizen's government. That kind of behavior by any state, for any reason, is inexcusable.

After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.

Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he - more importantly, what does the country - gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during "wartime."

And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.

Well, now we know.

Sickening. Absolutely sickening.

[Edited slightly after initial posting.]

tristero 10/11/2006 06:53:00 AM |

 
Dear God

by digby

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the