Month: July 2004

It’s Their Party And Their Problem

 

Please Democrats, whatever we do, don’t let the Bush campaign convince even one of us that this election is “unique” in that the key is to excite the base and forget about the moderates and undecideds. It’s Rovian bullshit and Noam Scheiber explains why:

This explanation strikes me as a little convenient for the Bushies. While you obviously never want to ignore your base, the reason the Bushies are focusing so hard on their’s isn’t that they’ve carefully appraised the political landscape and concluded that this is their best strategy. They’re focusing on their base because they have to: Despite Karl Rove’s best efforts, the Republican base still isn’t shored up.

Rove’s grand plan was to spend the first three years of Bush’s term stroking conservatives’ erogenous zones–lots of tax cuts, conservative judges, regulatory rollbacks, and religiously hued social policy (the administration’s marriage initiative, its efforts to restrict access to abortion, its retrograde stem cell research policies, etc.). The idea behind this stuff was that it would give Bush the political capital to tack leftward during his re-election campaign.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the center: Rove discovered that conservatives don’t just want to win on some issues, they want to win on every issue. Conservatives went ballistic over last year’s Medicare prescription drug bill, over additional money for the reconstruction of Iraq, over the deficit and the failure to control spending generally, and over the administration’s perceived indifference to gay marriage. Equally maddening to conservatives were proposals like a manned mission to Mars and immigration reform. So rather than spend this year reaching out to moderates, as planned, Rove found himself in full retreat, junking Mars and illegal immigrants, embracing a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Both sides of the partisan divide have their little problem with purism. The Nader factor is illustrative of ours. But, let nobody ever say that we are anywhere close to being as rigid and uncompromising as the right wing of the Republican party.

I wrote a piece on American Street sometime back called “Welcome To Our Nightmare Mr Rove”  in which I discussed this very problem with the wingnuts. Interestingly, it played off of another article by Scheiber in which he discussed the intractability of the right wing. I wrote:

His thesis, basically, is that Republicans are temperamentally unable to compromise because they see things in black and white,  manichean terms — otherwise known as Yer-With-Us-Or-Agin-Us, My-Way-Or-The-Highway or the I’ll-Hold-My-Breath-Until-I-Turn-Blue philosophy of politics. He further explains that Democrats’ collection of interest groups means that activists who agitate for certain issues like gay rights or choice are more willing to compromise because they are usually personally affected by government and are therefore, more apt to feel the immediate consequences of incremental change. (Regardless of the motivation, it seems to me that Democrats are just more “into nuance” e.g. smarter.)

What he does not point out, however, is that if this description of the Republicans political viewpoint is correct it illustrates why they are fundamentally unqualified to govern in a democratic system. If one is unwilling to compromise then any kind of bipartisan consensus is impossible and rule by force becomes inevitable.

This is undoubtedly why we have seen a steady encroachment of the constitution in the last few years. First came the impeachment, the nuclear option of partisan warfare. Then we saw the Supreme Court intervene in a presidential election despite a clear constitutional roadmap for dealing with just such a situation. Now they are pre-emptively endorsing the radical idea of a constitutional amendment to remedy a supposed problem that has not even been decided by more than two state supreme courts and one act of civil disobedience in California. (And, if California is any guide, amending the constitution will shortly become the default strategy for all of the right wing’s pet causes.)

Karl Rove, however, has to win this election in a system that requires that his boy at least feint to the middle. His strategy, as Schreiber delineates above, didn’t work. There is no pleasing the right wing and there is no room for compromise. And, he is learning, just as the centrist Dems learned in the 90’s when they tried to maintain a bipartisan consensus, that if you give these wing-nuts an inch, they’ll take a mile. The more you move to the right, the more they move to the right. There is no meeting half way.

Welcome to our nightmare, Mr Rove.

This problem is their problem in the election. (It will be our problem when we win and try, once again, to govern.) We Democrats have many issues, not the least of which is our unceasing ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. But, this uncompromising, black and white worldview isn’t one of them. We must not let them draw us blindly into a “battle of the partisans.” Bush and Rove are still having to cater to their base and that is their electoral nightmare. Let ’em have at it. We’ll go to the middle and win the election.

(Incidentally, to toot my own horn just a tiny bit, that piece from American Street was chosen by Barbara O’Brien of Mahablog fame as an excerpt in her new book called Blogging America. Buy the book. It features many great bloggers and is probably the first book published on the subject)

 

Update: Donkey Rising  crunches the numbers and comes to a similar conclusion. The independent and swing voters are looking to be ours for the taking if they keep this up.  

Good Timing

I think this new book by E.J. Dionne sounds just great. It’s all about how the Democrats are wimps and need to start fighting back the ruthless tough guys in the GOP. He thinks we need to frame the issues to our advantage instead of letting the Republicans do it for us.

I’m all for that. Maybe a good place to start would be for left wing pundits (who never said a peep about this for a goddamned decade thus enabling the wingnuts to completely dominate the discourse) to not write books called Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge during an election campaign in which the dominant theme set forth by the Republicans is how wimpy the Democrats are and how the world needs ruthless tough guys like them to defeat terrorists.

It’s just a thought.

Innocence Project

Here’s an interesting article on the brewing controversy over “Outfoxed” at Editor and Publisher.

I thought this was particularly revealing:

Fox was active on other fronts. Staffers showed other memos to USA Today writer Mark Memmott who suggested today that “Outfoxed” focuses only on the memos that uphold its view of rightwing bias at Fox. Other memos, he reported, included instructions to give Sen. John Kerry’s speeches equal weight with those of President George W. Bush, and to not go overboard covering criticism of Kerry by some of his former “swift boat” colleagues.

That’s just funny. Why would the “fair and balanced” network have to distribute memos to its staff reminding them to give equal time to Kerry? And, you have to wonder about why they would need to be told not to “go overboard” on the swift boat charges. I don’t suppose that would be because that entire line of criticism played into Bush’s lack of Vietnam service, would it?

Democratic Prospects

LiberalOasis has a very smart post up about how (not) to be a political base.

He’s absolutely right, especially this:

Kerry may have the toughest job of all, keeping a majority coalition together over something besides Dubya.

But as we tussle with fellow Dems, we will need to be careful not to repeat the mistakes of the GOP base.

It will behoove all of us to remember in the end, it’s not about one faction of the party triumphing over another.

Because when one faction is a loser, that faction could take its marbles and go home. And there goes the majority coalition.

Instead, from the liberal perspective, it’s about convincing the so-called moderates of the party that liberal ideals and views are also political pragmatic.

This is a necessary step for us.

Even though there are enough liberals who have financially backed the Kerry campaign to show that we cannot be ignored, there aren’t enough self-described liberals in the country to have earned the right to call the shots.

We cannot sit back and just expect Kerry to do what we want.

[…]

A healthy party needs a smart and savvy base — one that provides money volunteers and energy, one that doesn’t alienate the center but defines it — for long-term success.

Whereas a demoralized base kept at arms length by the Establishment may provide some short term wins, but cannot sustain in the long-term.

Similarly, a myopic base, as the right-wingers are showing themselves to be, can give away substantive gains and destroy trust within its party.

Along with spreading the good word that liberalism is not, as advertised, another word for deviant, I propose that a good first step would be to seriously propose and build a long term strategy to do away with the electoral college once and for all. It is fundamentally undemocratic and it hurts liberals, always has.

Billmon also has an interesting post up today about class warfare.

Even in the white-collar world of my day job, I’m surprised by the venom some of my fellow drones I now direct at our ridiculously over-paid corporate lords and masters. The last few years have been a real squeeze (at least by middle-class standards) in our office – no raises, shitty bonuses – and some of the guys who used to say they voted Republican (because “they keep the taxes down,” or “the Democrats will take away my guns”) aren’t talking that way now.

[…]

But saying the Republicans can’t win a class war isn’t the same thing as saying the Democrats can’t lose one. Populist messages delivered by angry voices rarely work with the political center. They scare more than they incite. Finding the right emotional pitch – optimistic, eloquent, passionate but not belligerent – is the key. FDR understood this instinctively; so did Hubert Humphrey. So did Paul Wellstone. Most Democratic politicians are too scared – or too compromised – to even try.

Personally, I’m all for it as long as it doesn’t require that we shitcan certain principles like minority rights as so often happens in American forays into populism.

Both of these posts are food for thought about how to win and how to govern. But, I’ve got a different question for anyone who cares to weigh in.

The polls continue to show a close race. I hope it isn’t and that we will all be breathing much easier come October. But, I’m afraid that a close election will again benefit those who hold the electoral apparatus in their grasp and that means most likely the Republicans. I’ve lately been entertaining the horrible prospect of what in hell to do if we lose.

Any thoughts?

Paul Revere Was Unpardonably Shrill

I see that level headed grown-ups are giving us looney leftists another lecture on shrillness. The Bush administration isn’t laying the groundwork for another undemocratic power grab with their discussion of postponing of the elections in the event of a terrorist attack. They are just being prudent. Everybody take a deep breath and calm your little selves down. This is silly.

It would be unforgiveably obnoxious to point out that little partisan impeachment episode and the very dubious election results in the state run by the president’s brother back in 2000 as evidence that the Republicans are generally willing to go to unprecedented lengths to attain and maintain power. Neither should we be suspicious of their motives after they plainly decided after the WTC attacks to continue to govern with no regard for their political opposition in the congress or their allies overseas. Taking the country to war based upon false information should not be seen as evidence of their perfidy. Some might even say that the Republicans have been systematically defining democracy down for quite some time, but it would be unattractively shrill to mention it publicly.

One could also question the timing of this newfound concern about election tampering, if one were to retreat into leftist hand-wringing. Seeing as 9/11 actually happened during the NY mayoral primary and there was much discussion of whether the city should extend the heroic Giuliani’s term, this concept of elections and terrorism is not new. One might wonder why nobody in this great country of ours this didn’t think of this sometime before now, what with all the discussion of Homeland Security and electoral reform. But, it would be crude to mention that such things are probably best debated in the US Congress outside the election season rather than dealt with by ad hoc committees just three months prior to a national election.

It is true that the many thoughtful, restrained pundits on the right have made the case that the Spanish elections were manipulated by the terrorists and certainly the administration has been far from reticent in setting forth the proposition that should a similar thing take place here it would be with the express purpose of electing the soft ticket of Kerry-Edwards. It would be unpardonably disrespectful to mention that this is crude political fear mongering for which theme the alleged antidote — postponing the elections in case of a terrorist attack — contributes mightily. (And it would be very, very silly to note that this campaign theme is illogical in the extreme because to do so would be to accuse the administration of being dishonest, which is much too hysterical.)

I know that I have been shrill in the past — as when I opposed the Iraq war because it was clear to me that the Bush administration was mendacious and incompetent to an extreme. And I was rude when I railed about the modern republican party’s undemocratic tendencies as they systematically destroyed all pretenses of bipartisanship and consensus in the pursuit of raw political power. When I have said that they are incrementally corrupting the system to such an extent that by the time we notice it will be too late, people find that to be overwrought. These observations are unattractive and uncomfortable for people of genteel disposition.

When it was revealed, for instance, that there were no WMD, that the president intended to govern radically as if he had a mandate instead of a very dicey claim to power or that his administration believed that the president has the right to ignore laws under his power as commander in chief, one would have thought that would serve as a cautionary tale about their intentions. But apparently there is still a tremendous reserve of trust in these people’s motives and our system’s magical ability to hold back every undemocratic urge with no necessity for public involvement.

Certainly, some believe that our past history of success at beating back bad political actors should be seen as a something of a guarantee that our system will always hold. But, if that’s so, it’s likely because of one little amendment to our constitution — the first one. Empowering the shrill is what keeps these people from going too far. Shut them down and the whole house of cards will fall apart.

Pavlov’s Heathers

“Kerry, Edwards show public affection”

By LIZ SIDOTI

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

NEW YORK — Bear hugs. Pats on the back. Shoulder squeezes. John Kerry and John Edwards are all over each other. The two Democrats and one-time rivals have shared so much public affection since becoming a team Tuesday that the presidential candidate even joked about it in New York after Edwards introduced him at fund-raisers and rallies – and hugged him before turning over the podium.

Kerry grinned and shook his head. ‘There’s been a lot of hugging this week,’ the Massachusetts senator remarked with a chuckle Friday.

Later, Kerry mentioned that Jay Leno had teased the Democratic ticket for being so touchy-feely. Mocking the apparent chemistry between the candidates, ‘The Tonight Show’ strung together clips of the two in their first three days as running mates with Joe Cocker’s weepy 1974 hit single ‘You Are So Beautiful’ played in the background.

‘We make a great couple, ladies and gentlemen,’ Kerry joked as New York donors cracked up.

Hugging, kissing and squeezing has become a part of every event since Kerry and Edwards set off on the campaign trail with their wives, Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards, for the first time together Wednesday.

It doesn’t matter if Kerry is introducing Edwards, or vice versa, the scene is always the same, the lovefest playing out at rallies in Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, New Mexico and New York.

With a toothy smile, the North Carolina senator opens his arms wide and wraps an equally sunny Kerry in a bear hug. The two clap each other sometimes once, often twice, on the back with both hands. Pulling apart, they each drape an arm around each other. Kerry waves with his free hand, and Edwards pumps his fist in the air, thumb up. Sometimes the two tilt their heads together to make inaudible comments.

Often described as aloof, wooden and emotionally detached, Kerry now appears much more relaxed and affectionate, his style more closely resembling his younger Senate colleague.

Foes in the Democratic primary season, Kerry and Edwards were joined at the hip as they strode across the lawn of Kerry’s wife’s sprawling estate in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, making their first public appearance as running mates. Holding hands with their respective wives, the two walked side by side, grinning, laughing and leaning into one another to talk.

As Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico welcomed the ticket on stage in Albuquerque on Friday, Kerry and Edwards threw their arms around each other or patted each other five times in less than a minute, and then clasped hands and raised them above their heads.

It’s not just the candidates; their wives have been affectionate as well. On Friday, Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards embraced at three different venues.

And both men have covered their wives – and each other’s wives – with kisses and hugs. At an outdoor rally in Beckley, W.Va., Heinz Kerry introduced Edwards, saying: “We have two ‘Johnnys Be Good’ here. John, without much ado.” Edwards walked up and kissed her cheek.

Later in Albuquerque, Kerry returned the favor, leaning in and giving Edwards’ wife a peck after she offered words of praise for Heinz Kerry.

Last week I wrote that the absurdity of this “John-John” affection theme was designed to give the mainstream media a bitchy, elitist chortle so that they would be unable to resist passing on the not-so-subtle propaganda point that there is something ridiculous about the Democrats — particularly to those white males who have a long standing mistrust of liberals. It’s done as a joke, in the mode of puerile bully Limbaugh who often insults with a stab in the gut and then claims he is a victim of political correctness if anyone complains. This particular one is the familiar Gore character assassination technique. The idea is to make it just silly enough that to respond with any outrage makes you look ridiculously sensitive but to not respond is to allow this theme of “deviance” of some sort to travel through the body politic in a subliminal way. I heard someone laughingly remark about it in the line at Starbucks — “It’s kind of creepy.”

I don’t think it really has anything to do with gay rights or gay marriage, although the cruder Michael Savage sorts will take that shot. It’s actually subtler than that. It’s more about Kerry and Edwards being unserious, soft and strange. And, like the mindless little children they are, the press has run with it without ever questioning whether they might just be being manipulated. Again.

Friendly Advice

Note to David Brooks who has so generously advised the Democrats on the subject of how our lack of values, religious fervor and embrace of secularism are holding us back at the polls this year: You’d better take a look in the mirror, Mister, before your party goes down that same path to perdition.

It is terribly unfair and ultimately counterproductive of your leadership to exclude the voices of grassroots “Red Lobster” Republicans from your convention. As you have repeatedly stated, the vast, vast majority of real Americans are social conservatives — or would be if they could just hear the good news — and they have a right (and you have an obligation) to see that their voices are heard throughout the land. Those fighting the good fight against the homosexual agenda, sex outside of wedlock, women’s libbers and satanists are the backbone of America. To treat them with such contempt is to ensure your defeat at the polls this November. Remember, I only have your best interest at heart.

P.S. Be sure to spend lots of time pushing the gay marriage ban and the “women are subservient” themes. These are the issues American’s are most concerned with today. Ignore them at your peril.

Tin Foil Government

In the comments section of the post below about postponing the elections, Rodger Payne alerts me to a disturbing article in the Atlantic called The Armageddon Plan.

While it doesn’t specifically mention postponing elections, the Reagan administration evidently began a series of rather bizarre exercises to practice contingency plans in case of a nuclear attack. Even more disturbing is that Cheney and Rumsfeld, neither of whom were actually in the administration at the time, were intimately involved in the elaborate planning and gaming:

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.

After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new “President” and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve “continuity of government,” and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

The inspiration for this program came from within the Administration itself, not from Cheney or Rumsfeld; except for a brief stint Rumsfeld served as Middle East envoy, neither of them ever held office in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, they were leading figures in the program.

[…]

The U.S. government considered the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union more seriously during the early Reagan years than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Reagan had spoken in his 1980 campaign about the need for civil-defense programs to help the United States survive a nuclear exchange, and once in office he not only moved to boost civil defense but also approved a new defense-policy document that included plans for waging a protracted nuclear war against the Soviet Union. The exercises in which Cheney and Rumsfeld participated were a hidden component of these more public efforts to prepare for nuclear war.

The premise of the secret exercises was that in case of a nuclear attack on Washington, the United States needed to act swiftly to avoid “decapitation”—that is, a break in civilian leadership. A core element of the Reagan Administration’s strategy for fighting a nuclear war would be to decapitate the Soviet leadership by striking at top political and military officials and their communications lines; the Administration wanted to make sure that the Soviets couldn’t do to America what U.S. nuclear strategists were planning to do to the Soviet Union.

[…]

The outline of the plan was simple. Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President. If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over.

This was not some abstract textbook plan; it was practiced in concrete and elaborate detail. Each team was named for a color—”red” or “blue,” for example—and each had an experienced executive who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had served at high levels in the executive branch, preferably with the national-security apparatus. Cheney and Rumsfeld had each served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration. Other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of the CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, who served for a time as Reagan’s actual White House chief of staff.

[…]

Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order. According to Robert McFarlane, who served for a time as Reagan’s National Security Adviser, the President himself made the final decision about who would head each of the three teams. Within Reagan’s National Security Council the “action officer” for the secret program was Oliver North, later the central figure in the Iran-contra scandal. Vice President George H.W. Bush was given the authority to supervise some of these efforts, which were run by a new government agency with a bland name: the National Program Office. It had its own building in the Washington area, run by a two-star general, and a secret budget adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Much of this money was spent on advanced communications equipment that would enable the teams to have secure conversations with U.S. military commanders. In fact, the few details that have previously come to light about the secret program, primarily from a 1991 CNN investigative report, stemmed from allegations of waste and abuses in awarding contracts to private companies, and claims that this equipment malfunctioned.

The exercises were usually scheduled during a congressional recess, so that Cheney would miss as little work on Capitol Hill as possible. Although Cheney, Rumsfeld, and one other team leader took part in each exercise, the Cabinet members changed depending on who was available at a particular time. (Once, Attorney General Ed Meese participated in an exercise that departed from Andrews in the pre-dawn hours of June 18, 1986—the day after Chief Justice Warren Burger resigned. One official remembers looking at Meese and thinking, “First a Supreme Court resignation, and now America’s in a nuclear war. You’re having a bad day.”)

[…]

The exercises were designed to be stressful. Participants gathered in haste, moved and worked in the early-morning hours, lived in Army-base conditions, and dined on early, particularly unappetizing versions of the military’s dry, mass-produced MREs (meals ready to eat). An entire exercise lasted close to two weeks, but each team took part for only three or four days. One team would leave Washington, run through its drills, and then—as if it were on the verge of being “nuked”—hand off to the next team.

[…]

When George H.W. Bush was elected President, in 1988, members of the secret Reagan program rejoiced; having been closely involved with the effort from the start, Bush wouldn’t need to be initiated into its intricacies and probably wouldn’t re-evaluate it. In fact, despite dramatically improved relations with Moscow, Bush did continue the exercises, with some minor modifications. Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense and dropped out as a team leader.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed. A Soviet nuclear attack was obviously no longer plausible—but what if terrorists carrying nuclear weapons attacked the United States and killed the President and the Vice President? Finally, during the early Clinton years, it was decided that this scenario was farfetched and outdated, a mere legacy of the Cold War. It seemed that no enemy in the world was still capable of decapitating America’s leadership, and the program was abandoned.

There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before. Operating from the underground shelter beneath the White House, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Cheney told Bush to delay a planned flight back from Florida to Washington. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld instructed a reluctant Wolfowitz to get out of town to the safety of one of the underground bunkers, which had been built to survive nuclear attack. Cheney also ordered House Speaker Dennis Hastert, other congressional leaders, and several Cabinet members (including Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton) evacuated to one of these secure facilities away from the capital. Explaining these actions a few days later, Cheney vaguely told NBC’s Tim Russert, “We did a lot of planning during the Cold War with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident.” He did not mention the Reagan Administration program or the secret drills in which he and Rumsfeld had regularly practiced running the country.

Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States—inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting.

What a huge mistake it ever was to let these paranoid wierdos have any control of the US Government. No wonder they all bought Myleroie’s nutball theories.

If this is any guide at all, there is absolutely no reason to believe that they would hesitate to suspend elections, institute martial law and stage a coup. Indeed, it appears they’ve been training to do just that for more than 20 years.

Romance Heroes

The Fighting Hellmice of the 101st Keyboarders have a new dreamboat to fantasize about:

Some of us first met “Jack” in 2001, when the Taliban had retreated from Kabul, victorious Northern Alliance fighters were parading in the streets, and US and British forces were pouring into Bagram airbase. A dapper man in a black T-shirt and combat trousers, a Glock pistol strapped in his shoulder holster, Idema gave a graphic account of his supposed experiences as a former US army Green Beret who had trained with the SAS and, as an adviser to the Tajik and Uzbek militias, had helped plan the operation to take the Afghan capital.

The meeting took place at the Mustafa Hotel, then being built in the city centre. It was another example of the seemingly endless carpetbagging opportunities then on offer. The owners were, and continue to be, a family of Afghan expatriates from New Jersey, the hotel named after one of three brothers. Sipping whiskey, then retailing at $140 a bottle at the Chelsi supermarket off Chicken Street, Idema offered to organise a convoy to Tora Bora, where the Taliban and al-Qa’ida were making what was thought to be their last stand and where, the Americans were confident, Osama bin Laden was trapped.

After making a few checks with the British military, some of us decided to decline his offer. Those who went were robbed at gunpoint a quarter of the way through the journey by their “guards” and made their way, bedraggled, back to Kabul. Jack professed to be outraged. He would take the matter up immediately with his “good friends” General Quononi, the new Defence Minister, and Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord, and the bandits would be summarily executed.

After that Idema would regularly turn up at the Intercontinental Hotel, where most of the foreign journalists were staying, attempting to sell videos and photographs purporting to show Taliban and al-Qa’ida terrorists training for assassinations and rehearsing gas attacks using dogs.

Some of these were bought for large sums of money, and one tape was shown on American network TV. However, Idema later declared he was going to sue over alleged breach of contract, and also threatened to “punch out” Geraldo Rivera and a Fox TV presenter in a dispute over the recordings.

This is the real story of the GWOT and it would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing. But what do we expect? We have a president who evokes Wyatt Earp dimestore novel dialog and we have a bunch of washed up losers hanging around the Mustafa hotel pretending to be glamour boys in a cheap airport thriller.

This war calls for Joseph Heller and Graham Greene and all we’ve got is Louis L’Amour and Frederick Forsythe.

And lets not forget Doug Upland, who reader James Woodyat reminds me is the “writer” who posts fun wingnut fantasies at Free Republic.

Just yesterday he wrote this one, which I’m sure gave the Fighting Hellmice extreme discomfort in their groin areas when they read it:

The target date was Thursday, September 2. On primetime television, the President would accept his nomination as the party standard bearer. They would prove that, no matter how good the security, they could hit where they want and when they want.

In June, 2004 they had made a dry run with three of the planes in the California desert about two hours east of Los Angeles. The chips and GPS system worked perfectly. The planes were very, very fast and performed exactly as programmed.

All of the planes were put together in their rooms a week before the convention. The deadly cargo would be installed a few hours before showtime.

It was a tense four days in New York. A hundred thousand protestors were causing mischief in the streets and did considerable amount of damage to vehicles and store fronts. The usual suspects were there — Earth First, free Mumia, A.N.S.W.E.R., N.O.W., PETA, Mothers against Guns, No More Florida 2000, No Blood for Oil Coalition, Berkeley Peace and Justice Center, Legalize Hemp, Blind Women Who Want to Have Michael Moore’s Baby, and hundreds of other Democrat groups of whiners who were bused in, many at taxpayer expense.

Michael Berg was scheduled to be a featured speaker at one of the protest rallies, but he was unfortunately accidentally hit in the face by a rock thrown by one of his leftist pals that missed the police officer at whom it was thrown. Berg returned the next day, but with his jaw wired shut, his statement had to be read by Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi blamed FreeRepublic for the rock that hit Berg. When he had his fling with her some years before, Ted Danson proved not only that white men can’t jump, but sometimes white men can’t see.

It was a stifling hot September day and, since most of the leftists don’t bathe very often, the stench in the streets was almost overwhelming.

They wanted to kill and injure as many people as possible. Their goal was for a casualty count in the thousands. To them, it didn’t matter whether they killed delegates and support staff or the leftists in the street who actually were their pals. They hoped to get high ranking officials including, of course, the President.

Since the heroic Jumpin’ Jack Idema is languishing in a Kabul jail, maybe the stateside hellmice could get together and form a perimeter around Madison Square Garden to protect the prez from the unwashed leftists and their allies al-Qaeda.

Of course, you know what the real problem with all this mayhem would be:

If al-Qaida deliberately kills leftist protesters, it would send the loony left into a conspiratorial tizzy (against Republicans, of course). Politics in this country would get VERY ugly; there would be plenty of revenge attacks by loony leftists (against Republicans, not al-Qaida). It would be very , very bad. Hopefully they aren’t smart enough for that.

Conspiratorial tizzy, indeed.

Covering Their Bases

Tom Ridge wants John Ashcroft to look into the possibility of postponing the election in case of a terrorist attack. Considering that Ashcroft and company have believed that the GWOT justifies everything from unlimited detention to torture it’s going to be very surprising if they don’t back the idea that doing so would be constitutional.

But constitutionality aside, why would there be any need to do this? We lived under the threat of nuclear war for decades — real weapons of mass destruction pointed at all of our major cities — and nobody ever contemplated suspending elections and devised no plans to do so. We have held elections during every war, including the civil war, and didn’t contemplate suspending them in case of an attack.

This is absurd. Unless the terrorists are somehow able to prevent large numbers of people from exercising their right to vote by bombing individual polling places there can be absolutely no reason to postpone this election.

Besides, if I recall correctly, the Bush administration made quite a case a few years back that there should be no changing of the rules, even when certain rules are contradictory, in election procedures. I remember that deadlines, particularly, were sacrosanct. Indeed, the dates surrounding election laws were seen as written in stone.

Somehow, I have to believe that if terrorists attack us around the election, Americans will crawl out of the rubble on their hands and knees to vote. But then, that’s obviously what they’re really afraid of, isn’t it?

thanks to John Gorlewski for the tip