Month: January 2005

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I’m with Josh Marshallon this (regarding the DLC and Third Way reportedly coming out publicly against privatization of SS.)

Before proceeding, a side note: Democrats have plenty of things more important to do right now than to fight amongst themselves. And I know a lot of readers of this site have strong suspicions or negative feelings about the DLC — in some cases because of very real policy differences. But members of a coalition party have to strive to celebrate moments of agreement at least a bit more than they rush to clamor over the inevitable disagreements. So maybe take a moment to give these guys (DLC and Third Way) some encouragement for doing the right thing.

Whether we like it or not, the centrist groups are key to winning the fight on SS and it looks as though they are going to come through. If we care more about being right than doing right then we will spit in their faces. If we really want to preserve Social Security, a successful program that affects the real lives of real people, and which serves as the economic centerpiece of everything we believe in, then we will be generous right now and be thankful that these guys have decided to help us hold the line. We need every single ally. This battle is deadly serious.

Also, one other note. I noticed that Somerby gave Kevin Drum a serious going over for his op-ed in the LA Times because he claimed that Clinton and Gore and other democrats had participated in giving the impression that SS needed “saving.” I’m not sure why Somerby got so hot under the collar, but Kevin was right. They did and for some good tactical reasons at the time.

But more importantly, I think, some of us have to realize that Clinton and Gore are not sacred icons to be protected at all costs. I love both of those guys, but they would be the first to tell you that sometimes you have to be tough in politics and right now Kevin’s argument is key to persuading people that SS is not in crisis. By putting some of the blame on Clinton and the Democrats you can get some people to listen who otherwise wouldn’t. It’s just good politics.

Clinton and Gore are big boys and will be around a long time to defend their legacy. They don’t need to be defended on every single issue. (The witch hunts will do quite well to illustrate the perfidy of the media.) On policy, it can be very useful to use them as foils if need be. I suspect they’d be the first to agree.

I Was Only Issuing Orders

The New York Times reveals that Alberto Gonzales circumvented established guidelines and personally requested the Justice Department to draft an opinion as to whether Commander Codpiece could order that detainees be given forced enemas and the like:

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

[…]

Mr. Yoo said that Mr. Gonzales was merely seeking to ‘understand all available options’ in a perilous time, when the United States faced unprecedented threats.

But a senior administration official disagreed, saying that the memorandum’s conclusions appeared to closely align with the prevailing White House view of interrogation practices. The official said the memorandum raised questions about whether the Office of Legal Counsel had maintained its longstanding tradition of dispensing objective legal advice to its clients in executive-branch agencies.

What senior administration official do you suppose that is?

The last few days have seen a flood of off the record statements to the NY Times indicting Gonzales. Evidently, there are quite a few people even within the administration who want to see this guy bloodied up if not derailed. This is highly unusual in the Bush administration, to say the least.

Gonzales is one of Bush’s closest cronies and like Kerik, there’s probably no telling the King that his boy is a problem. It looks to me as if plenty of people know that Gonzales is pathologically loyal to Junior and enables his worst impulses. And they also know that he’s likely to do even more harm to this country than even they are willing to do. That really says something.

I’m beginning to wonder if there maybe isn’t a chance to offload this guy completely rather than just bloody him up. Yesterday, Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED set forth the idea that rehashing the Bernie Kerik episode might be a wiser use of the committee’s time. My initial reaction was that it was better to concentrate on the torture (I can’t believe I’m even writing that) because this was really an opportunity for Democrats to use a losing battle to put the Republicans on the defensive in the values debate. Now, I’m not so sure. If there is any real chance of peeling off a few Republicans, the Bernie Kerik episode is the one that will get the press to pay attention. Sleaze and trivia is what they understand, and the story is quite recent and still unfolding. Torture is so last spring.

I still lead heavily toward the idea that the hearings must be used to highlight the extreme immorality of the Republican Party, but this has certainly made me wonder if maybe Gonzales isn’t a lot weaker than we think.

Welcome To The Evolutionary Elite

In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.

It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.

Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah’s Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.

The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (£13 million) will be the world’s first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America’s most prominent creationist organisations. He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park’s striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago.

“We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs,” said Mr Ham. “It’s going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement.”

Here’s the exhibit Bobo will just have to visit for his next anthropological expedition into the Real America:

More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind’s sin. Mr Ham’s Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a “Bible Authority Room” visitors are warned: “Everyone who rejects his history – including six-day creation and Noah’s flood – is `wilfully’ ignorant.”

[…]

“Since President Bush’s re-election we have been getting more membership applications than we can handle,” said Mr Ham, who expects not just the devout, but also the curious, to flock through the turnstiles. “The evolutionary elite will be getting a wake-up call.”

I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.

Thanks to Doug for the tip.

Karenna’s Revenge

All I can do is quote The Poorman:

God love you, Al, but not only are you a fifty-something rich white guy in a suit with local-news hair, you are also the world’s very biggest nerd. There’s nothing wrong with it – it is an admirable quality if you want to be, for example, President of the US, it’s important to realize that it’s not a great starting point for making “youth” TV. I’m trying as hard as I can to believe this won’t be a total disaster, but I’m coming up short.

I don’t think we’re looking at the alternative to FOX News coming from this quarter.

Arrogant and Ashamed

Via Daou, I found this gem at The Rude Pundit:

“But, you know, there’s something interesting that happens whenever you engage anyone who believes these things in a conversation: they get really, really defensive about Bush. And not in a coherent way. And not even in the knee-jerk-‘I-support-my-President’ kind of way. No, it’s more of an ‘I don’t wanna talk about it – shutupshutupshutup’ kind of way, with ears covered and eyes clenched shut. In other words, they know. “

I have been trying to write something about my foray into the Heart of Darkness, but the Rude Pundit beat me to it. (In a way, I’m relieved. It’s actually kind of painful to think about.) This observation about their reaction to Bush is absolutely spot on. I found the exactly the same reaction — no comment, eyes glazing over, an immediate change of subject to Clinton (or “Fifi LaBourget” as my father dubbed Kerry.) Endless discussions of Kerry’s alleged cowardice in battle, Clinton draft dodging but a total unwillingness to address the similar deficiencies with Bush. You couldn’t joke about him or rail about him or even try to corner any of these people about him. They just refused to address him at all. It was as if he wasn’t even a part of their equation. In a weird sense the Republican party itself has become somewhat vague to them. Their entire political calculation was built around the continuum from McGovern to Carter to Clinton to Gore to Kerry and a general disgust with liberals. Their political worldview is completely shaped by their hatred of the Democratic party now.

It wasn’t always like this. Needless to say, they all watch FOX and listen to Rush.

I doubt that the Rude Pundit has this problem, but I find that Republicans are just much more willing to be complete assholes in public by loudly proclaiming their political beliefs and daring others to disagree. It’s a matter of temperament more than anything else. There was a time when I would go at it, but at this point I don’t have many Christmases with my father left so I just sit back and let it flow. (There are other members of my family, however, who need to watch their step.)

Read RP’s entire post. It is absolutely correct and he nails one very particular point that can’t be said often enough:

“…all the many pundits and prognosticators of the “future” of the Democratic party have it absolutely, exactly wrong when they think the Democrats can triangulate themselves back into consequence. That way lies irrelevance and madness.

The simple truth is that Democrats, moderates, liberals, anyone, won’t win by saying, “Lookeeme, I’m like you, Farmer Brown or Factory Worker Sally, look at me compromise on abortion rights and put on shit-stained boots to go out into the fields and talk about how much I hate queers.” No, winning comes by saying, “Look here, Farmer Brown and Factory Worker Sally, you are like me.” And that means on each and every coming battle – Social Security, judges, tax cuts, Iraq. The people don’t want leaders who identify with them. They want leaders who they identify with. It’s a fine, but important distinction.

That’s why they call them leaders.

lead:

1. To show the way to by going in advance.

2. To guide or direct in a course: lead a horse by the halter.

3.

1. To serve as a route for; take: The path led them to a cemetery.

2. To be a channel or conduit for (water or electricity, for example).

4. To guide the behavior or opinion of; induce: led us to believe otherwise.

5.

1. To direct the performance or activities of: lead an orchestra.

2. To inspire the conduct of: led the nation in its crisis.

6. To play a principal or guiding role in: lead a discussion; led the antiwar movement.

7.

1. To go or be at the head of: The queen led the procession. My name led the list.

2. To be ahead of: led the runner-up by three strides.

3. To be foremost in or among: led the field in nuclear research; led her teammates in free throws.

8. To pass or go through; live: lead an independent life.

9. To begin or open with, as in games: led an ace.

10. To guide (a partner) in dancing.

Drowning the 9/11 Cheerleaders

On Rush Limbaugh’s web site we find a transcript for January 3rd, called From Across The Fruited Plain: No Compassion for Saddam’s Victims; Tsunami Victim Sports Bin Laden T-Shirt:

“CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, ‘Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I’m seeing all these bodies,’ and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we’re going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Now, I love President Bush. I respect him. I voted for him, but when I saw him come out and I realized they were asking for more money —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — I got even madder, and I thought, ‘I don’t think we should be asked to give any more.’ “

Rush goes on to babble some blather about how we give because we are good and how liberals are “screwed up” because we supported Saddam and are taking Christ out of Christmas and that proves that we have no compassion for the people of Darfur. Typical hypnotic wingnut gibberish that doesn’t make any sense but sounds soothingly meaningful in that it identifies one thing clearly — liberals are the root cause of all problems.

Anyway, what interesting about this is what the caller said and I think it’s probably pretty common. I certainly heard quite a bit of it in my foray into wingnutland over the holiday:

Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, ‘Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I’m seeing all these bodies,’

Madder and madder the more coverage she watched. “Why am I not feeling so charitable?” That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Later, she saw a picture of one guy wearing a bin Laden shirt that the wingnuts have been circulating and she understood why she was so mad. These people are terrorists.

A couple of calls later a Sri Lanken man called in:

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, hi. I wanted to answer the lady called earlier regarding to the guy is wearing a T-shirt. I don’t know he was a dead guy or not. I’m from Sri Lanka. I’ve been listening to you for a long time. Sri Lanka is not a Muslim nation. Sri Lanka is 68% Singhalese people, that influence all the Catholics and the majority is Buddhist.

RUSH: Yes, yes.

CALLER: There are Muslims around that, you know, probably hate America, but we don’t hate United States of America. The Singhalese people do not hate America. I just want to tell you that because we have our own problem for years with Tamil, and Muslim people. I just wanted to tell you that.

RUSH: That woman was calling from Pennsylvania, and there’s picture going around the Internet, and I’ve seen it. Some aid is arriving while a body is being carted away, and there’s a kid, a young man watching it all with a bin Laden t-shirt. She said the picture is from Sri Lanka. I don’t know that it is. I don’t know the picture is from Sri Lanka, but you have to understand the power of pictures. You know, there are going to be some Americans who are just going to recoil at the thought that we are bailing out and helping people who swear an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, whether it’s in Sri Lanka or not. I don’t think her comment was actually aimed at Sri Lanka per se, specifically. It was just in reaction to that picture she saw. What are the Muslim nations that were affected by this tsunami, if not Sri Lanka?

Yes, which countries am I allowed to get “madder and madder” about and recoil at the idea of “bailing out” their innocent children, again? It’s so hard to remember which ones to openly hate and which ones I have to pretend to give a shit about. (And besides, those Sri Lankens are… well, they’re rather dark, aren’t they? )

Let’s not kid ourselves about the base of the Republican party, the dittoheads, the alleged Christian Right. A vast number of them are primitive tribalists at best and racists at worst. There have always been many Americans who are racists and many of those have always been and remain very political. It is part of our national psyche. They are now fully sewn into the fabric of the Republican party’s big tent (as they once were the Democrats’) and they wield considerable clout. They have made strides in accepting those African Americans who agree not to discuss race into the fold. (And the leadership have learned how to effectively neuter this entire debate by hoisting the left with our own petard by accusing us of racism whenever we criticize a Republican racial minority.)

But at the heart of their reaction to 9/11, the invasion of iraq, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror in general is a knee jerk racism that says “those people” are our enemy and they must die. Ann Coulter sells millions of books that say it right out loud. Michelle Malkin and Daniel Pipes are both making quite a respectable stir making the case for “muslim” internment. And people are getting all steamed up about illegal immigration again.

It is intense tribalism that fuels the right wing, not ideology. In fact their ideology mostly flows from their tribalism. It fuels their resistence to redistribution of even the smallest amount of wealth (the “wrong” people will be helped) and it fuels their hyper nationalism (those “other” people are our enemies.) They make no distinctions between the “wrong” and the “other”, it is anyone who isn’t like them.

The reason that the Senate of the United States is about to confirm a man who designed an illegal system of detention and torture against any Muslim or Arab (and others to come, no doubt) is because a fair number of people in this country believe that “they’re all alike.” It is a measure of progress, I suppose, in the fact that this Hispanic man is even given the opportunity to make his bones with executions, torture and lifetime detention for public relations purposes. Still, one wonders how long it would take, were he to stray from the party line, for someone to call Rush and say, ” I couldn’t understand why I disliked him so much…”

There are many cosmopolitan writers and think tank intellectuals on the right who have come up with some elegant ideological arguments that explain all this to each other in salons and greenrooms. But in barrooms and factories and churches in Republican dominated parts of America, the reason is pretty simple. Us against them. And basic human empathy for anyone who isn’t a strict member of their tribe is in short supply. Hence, this.

Too bad about this whole globalism thing. These people are going to be very, very angry for eternity. But then they always have been, haven’t they? At one time I thought our history of immigration and assimilation would be what kept us on top during this transition. I was wrong. Our original sin of slavery is probably what’s going to lead to our downfall. It’s infected us much too deeply for us to be able to handle the responsibility of being the world’s only superpower. When you get right down to it, it’s why a majority of the country supported the invasion of Iraq — all Arabs are the same — and that horrible miscalculation is very likely to be our Waterloo.

Armchair Hero

May I just echo Atrios’s outrage at Andrew Sullivan’s pithy little retort to the soldier who says that he’d much rather be helping people than fighting a war saying “Earth to Whitsett: You’re A Soldier.”

Earth to Sullivan: He’s a fucking human being.

Evidently Sullivan believes that soldiers are supposed to prefer killing over helping people in need. Indeed, they should prefer dying over helping people in need.

Here are some words that express this soldier’s humanity a bit more fully, from a man who also knew a little bit about war:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” –Dwight Eisenhower 1953 speech

What a wimp.

What’s The Real Skinny?

So the House Republicans have pulled back the DeLay exception to the no-sex-with-house-pages rule at the last minute and at the behest of The Hammer himself. How odd. Is it even remotely believable that Monsieur Delay had a change of heart and decided that he should face the music like every other public servent?

Well, maybe not so odd, really. He may have taken care of the problem another way:

In Texas, state Republican legislative leaders and party officials are considering some maneuvers of their own in light of the investigation. One proposal would take authority for prosecuting the campaign finance case away from the Democratic district attorney in Austin and give it to the state attorney general, a Republican. Another possible move would legalize corporate campaign contributions like those that figure into the state case.

Or maybe seomebody had a serious heart to heart with David Drier, the chairman of the rules committee, and explained to him that changing the no-sex-with-house-pages rule for Tom Delay won’t exempt him from the no-gay-sex-with-house-pages-for-GOP-hypocrites rule. You never know.

WTF

Via See The Forest I found this story.

AS MANY as 5000 Americans are still unaccounted for a week after the world’s deadliest tsunami pounded a dozen countries across the Indian Ocean, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today.

Mr Powell told reporters aboard his plane en route to Bangkok that the confirmed toll of Americans still stood at 15 with a defence department worker listed as missing.

“The number of private citizens or citizens unaccounted for still lingers around 4-5000,” he said, adding the figure was based on phone calls from relatives or friends inquiring about their whereabouts.

Mr Powell said this did not mean they were necessarily casualties in the catastrophe.

But he added: “We can’t ignore the very distinct possibility that there are Americans within this number who have lost their lives. We just don’t know that”.

Is this for real?

Camille at STF points out:

… the Swedes have declared a day of mourning for the Swedes who died in the tsunami. The Germans are preparing their citizens for the worst.

I certainly have not heard anything about this. Is there a good reason why the US government wouldn’t want people to know that American casualties are potentially so high? What gives?

It’s The Values Stupid

I remember that before the Iraq war vote, millions of Democrats wrote to their Senators begging them not to vote for the resolution. Many of them voted for the resolution anyway, some for regional reasons like Schumer and Clinton and some because of presidential ambitions. (And then there was Joe, true believer.) Ok. It was only a year after 9/11, Bush stood at 75% approval rating, an election was imminent and nobody knew quite how the wind was going to blow. But none of those conditions are currently present. There is absolutely no excuse for Democrats to compromise or preemptively cave on anything of importance. None.

The first thing on the table in this new congress is going to be Alberto Gonzales. He will be confirmed (barring naked pictures of him and Bush in a hammock drinking tequila slammers. And even then… ) But, because of that, the temptation for many Democrats will be to vote with the Republicans on this in hopes of holding a chit or two down the road on something that really matters to them. This is as dumb as it is wrong.

As Matt Yglesias says (regarding social security) today on TAPPED:

It’s compelling logic, that is, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past four years. Democrats have tried this approach several times during the first term, and with only the partial exception of No Child Left Behind, they’ve gotten screwed each and every time. At some point, you’ve got to learn the lesson that the White House and the GOP leadership isn’t interested in constructive compromise. Ask Charlie Stenholm where his bipartisanship on Social Security got him.

I honestly don’t know what it’s going to take to teach this to the Democrats in congress. It’s as if the Republicans have attached a “kick me” sign to their backs and nobody’s told them. We need to tell them in no uncertain terms.

Now, there may be some tactical usefulness in producing some sort of alternative to social security “reform.” There are those who think it will be necessary to do so in order to credibly obstruct the Republican plot to dismantle the program. I’m not convinced that this would be the best way to handle it, but I’m open to the argument. The Republicans used their alternative plans to continuously hobble Clinton’s health care plan as it wended itself tnrough the legislative process.

On Gonzales, however, there is nothing to be gained by doing anything but grilling him under a hot light with everything we have and voting no. As Michael Froomkin said:

Whether Sen. Schumer was expressing a normative or a positive view, that is whether the quote represented Schumer’s personal view or only Schumer’s impression of the views of his fellow Senators on the committee, it’s pretty horrible when the Senate’s advice and consent role is this stunted. The bar is pretty low when that “lowered threshold” will admit a nominee who, in commissioning and passing on the torture memos participated in a scheme to

1. attempt to put a patina of legality on war crimes and

2. totally twist the Constitution to suggest the President has powers akin to Louis XIVth’s and

3. mis-state the relevant precedents to make it seem like the above have substantial judicial support when in fact the opposite is true.

There is of course an element of political calculation here. Many chickenhearted Senators believe that they expend political capital by opposing cabinet nominations, when in fact opposing the right ones may create it. But even if I’m wrong about that, for some things — torture, fundamental constitutional principles — the calculations should be left aside.

As far as I’m concerned, Congress was almost as much to blame for Iraq as Bush — they wrote him a blank check, with the Gulf on Tonkin precedent sitting there in front of them. If there isn’t some serious attempt in Congress to come to grips with the torture scandal in the next year, then some of the torture dirt will stick to them as well.

I have long defended the Democrats from charges that they are “spineless” and “cowardly.” I think that character attacks on our own side mainly helps the Borg convince people that we aren’t worth voting for. But, I have no compunction about calling out our representatives when they are making a mistake. Capitulating on Gonzales is not only wrong it is entirely counterproductive to our cause.

If we are going to be fighting about “values” and “morals” over the next couple of election cycles (as the right seems determined to do) we need to throw down the gauntlet right here, right now. Torture is immoral and even the most craven right wing racist knows that he’s playing with fire to endorse it publicly. They don’t want to have this argument because they know they are wrong.

Torture is not an American value and it’s certainly not a religious value. If they are determined to elevate the architect of Bush’s illegal and immoral torture and detention schemes to the highest law enforcement office in the land then they are begging for a fight. It’s a fight we should be more than willing to wage because there is absolutely no doubt who has the moral high ground.

For once it’s our stance that benefits from today’s political requirement for simplicity and clarity. Torture is illegal,immoral and ineffectual. Period. Let Jerry Falwell dance around trying to explain why it isn’t.

Update: Attaturk points to this nonsense from Federal Judge Richard Posner in which he says:

I just think that almost all Americans would consider that turning back the civil liberties clock to, say, 1960 would be worthwhile if as a result some horrendous terrorist attack was prevented. I am of the same mind. I find it hard to understand the contrary position, but I would not argue against it. I would point out, however, the self-defeating character of civil liberties absolutism. If as a result of such absolutism another major terorrist attacks occurs, civil liberties are pretty sure to go out the window.

I would also argue against those who say that history shows that the threat of terrorism is much less than other threats that we have overcome. That is a misuse of history. History does not contain nuclear bombs the size of oranges, genetically engineered smallpox virus that is vaccine-proof, and an Islamist terrorist (Bin Laden) who visited a cleric in Saudi Arabia to obtain–successfully–the cleric’s approval to wage nuclear war against the West.

Yeah, living with thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at every American city and depending on the sanity and competence of a slowly dying super power not to miscalculate or have an accident was nothing compared to what we face now. Evidently, “Dr Strangelove” needs to be put into the curriculum of the University of Chicago.

(And what in the hell is this talk of nuclear bombs the size of oranges? Calling Richard Hofstadter.)