Month: January 2006

Posted Without Comment

by tristero

New York Times:

Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations.

In a vote Monday, the United States supported Iran’s recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based in Belgium.

Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such status, which enables them to distribute documents to meetings of the council.

Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

[snip]

Mark P. Lagon, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in an interview that the vote did not stem from “being against gay rights groups” but was based on “the controversial history of the International Lesbian and Gay Association — an affiliate of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, was associated with it in the past and openly condoned pedophilia.”

Scott Long, a Human Rights Watch director, said that the association had publicly expelled the man/boy group in 1994.

Mau-mauing the Media

by digby

Jane points me to this wildly enjoyable recounting of a close encounter between the barbarian bloggers and the Beltway Quilting Bee and Ladies Circle Jerk Society, also known as the DC press corps. My goodness, it sounds as if somebody got up on the wrong side of the fainting couch that morning.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about how the mainstream media internalize the criticisms of their right wing critics. I suspect they are always subconsciously seeking ways to prove that they aren’t actually liberal — and the more liberals in general are demonized, the more they want to distance themselves from us.

I’ve also been trying to show how it looks from our side: years of relentless violent eliminationist right wing rhetoric toward liberals goes unnoticed or unremarked upon and yet a few hundred hostile e-mails to the Washington Post ombudsman turns the whole town into a tizzy. The liberal blogosphere is thus turned into a rampaging vulgarian force while the relentless cacophany of wealthy right wing gasbags continues to go out to tens of millions of people unabated, undisturbed and unnoticed by the media cognoscenti.

How can that be, we wonder? Why, after all these years of being called every name in the book by the conservatives, can the “so-called liberal media” be upset when the liberals use very mild tactics in comparison to what has been happening on the right?

Perhaps this is why:

It is another right wing meme that has been absorbed by the mainstream media.

Here’s Michelle:

From the Inside Flap
Un·hinged

adj : affected with madness or insanity; [syn: brainsick, crazy, demented, distracted, disturbed, mad, sick, unbalanced]

– The American Heritage Dictionary

*** Warning: Unhinged liberals are hazardous to the nation’s health.

They’re slashing your tires. Burning your lawns. Heaving pies at Republican pundits. Hurling racist epithets at minority conservatives. Nursing nutty conspiracy theories. And pining publicly for the murder of President Bush.

And they call us crazy?

In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin plays conservative Margaret Mead to the alien political creatures of the American Left. With uproarious detail and rollicking reportage, Malkin chronicles the bizarre world of leftists gone mad in their natural habitats: the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and Washington.

Unhinged unmasks liberals who’ve completely abandoned rationality and reality. They’re taking chainsaws and bayonets to campaign signs. Running down political opponents with their cars. Setting fire to political opponents in effigy. Defacing war memorials. Swiping yellow ribbons off cars. And supporting the fragging of American troops.

Michele didn’t come up with this on her own. It’s a consciously applied meme for specific purposes. All these books allegedly about liberals called “Slander” “Treason” and “Unhinged” would have been written no matter what we did. It’s how they control the mainstream media. After all, they’ve been calling the media liberal for more than a quarter century. They’re talking about them as much as they are talking about us. And reporters don’t like that. They have to live in that town.

Now we can deal with this two ways. We can be quiet and respectful and try to prove to the mainstream media that we aren’t the crazed, violent freaks that Michelle says we are.

Dear Ms. Howell,

Would you be so kind as to check your facts regarding the Abramoff scandal.I think you are mistaken. I do not believe that Mr Abramoff personally gave any contributions to Democrats. Indeed, the evidence suggests that he was part of a long running Republican plan to create a political machine that exclusively funneled money from business to elected Republicans and back again.

I would very much appreciate anything you can do to clear this up. Thanks ever so much for all your hard work.

sincerely,

a nice liberal

meanwhile:

Deb,

I received a call today from Karl Rove on double secret-super-duper-deep backround. He was hopping mad. He says this Abramoff thing is a bi-partisan scandal and we’re going to be embarrassed when it comes out that certain Democrats are the dirtiest Abramoff guys in town. I told him I’d look into it and get back to him.

I’m not suggesting you change your reporting. You are the ombudsman, after all. Just make extra sure you have all the facts and tell both sides of the story. The White House is riding my ass big time.

Len Downie

See you later at Sally and Ben’s picnic. I hear Lynn Cheney’s bringing her famous chili and Russert’s going to sing.

And then there’s this:

“Liberals can’t just come out and say they want to take our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race.”

That’s how it becomes “he said/she said” and “stay tuned” and why the words “crazy liberal” just rolls off their lips. The right has mau-maued the press by going aggressively in their face with everything they’ve got every time they write a word that can cause them trouble. And back in the day, they carefully fed the press the kind of tabloid scandal stories that made good copy and caused ratings to rise. They work this stuff from all angles.

We can be nice liberals and continue that highly successful strategy (for them) or we, the great unwashed blogosphere, can mau-mau the media into being accountable for what they write. It isn’t pretty — they are calling us nasty names and everything. But for the first time in memory we actually have a vehicle for pushing back from the other side and we literally represent millions of people who are willing to take the time to join the fight. That’s powerful juju.

Over time, they will see that we are actually giving them an excuse to lean the other way. When Karl calls up Len, he can say that liberals are on the rampage — what does he want him to do, ignore his own readers? We liberal bloggers and readers can produce some ballast on the other side so that the press has a way to resist the wingnuts.

This is a huge change and everyone involved is going to resist. Tonight they were talking about the “angry left on both coasts” on Lehrer, as if we aren’t real Americans again. That’s nonsense, as we know. My traffic comes from all over the country, much of it deep in the heart of Red America. They don’t know what they are dealing with.

Update: Jim VandeHei has written an interesting piece in the Post today about how we barbarians fit into the Democratic infrastructure. (Short answer: they don’t know what to think about us. They love our money and they need our energy. They just don’t like it that we have dug in our heels and refuse to move any further to the right. It means they have to rethink their whole strategy.)

And I think this is largely correct:

The closest historic parallel would be the talk-radio phenomenon of the early 1980s, when conservatives — like liberals now — felt powerless and certain they did not have a way to voice their views because the mainstream media and many of their own leaders considered them out of touch. Through talk radio, often aired in rural parts of the country on the AM dial, conservatives pushed the party to the right on social issues and tax cuts.

The question Democrats will debate over the next few years is whether the prevailing views of liberal activists on the war, the role of religion in politics and budget policies will help or hinder efforts to recapture the presidency and Congress.

We can’t do any worse, now can we?

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Flip-Flopping Fredo

by digby

The Carpetbagger reports that preznit Bush has adopted candidate John Kerry’s “ignorant” and “dangerously wrong” proposed policy toward Iran.

And some of the preznit’s supporters are all confused:. Apparently they were under the misapprehension that Junior Codpiece had some sort of coherent philosophy.

President Bush’s endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

“I have made it clear that I believe that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear power program under these conditions: that the material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference yesterday. “I think that is a good plan. The Russians came up with the idea and I support it,” he added.

I’ll let you click over to the Carpetbagger for the punchline.

Sigh.

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Straight Answers

by digby

A few weeks ago MYDD put out a call for contributions to finance a poll. There was tremendous frustration at the time, if you’ll recall, at the reticence of the major pollsters to ask questions that were deemed politically incorrect or beyond conventional wisdom. And considering that the major media’s long standing habit of assuming the GOP dominant narrative, they wanted to verify their numbers.

That’s why Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller over at MYDD went out of their way to engage a credible pollster with impeccable credentials and pledged to let the chips fall where they may. We want real information guiding strategy, not push polls or partisan slant. This is for real. Today, the first results are in.

These first numbers are not surprising. They track with what we’ve seen in all the other major polls. But over the next few days, the rest of the poll will be rolled out and we will probably see some questions asked and answered that we haven’t seen before. And perhaps we will gain some understanding of where the electorate stands on so many of the issues we discuss here in the blogosphere every day.

As Lil’ Debbie Howell would say: Stay Tuned.

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Flower Shops and Bodegas

by digby

Via Crooks and Liars

What planet does this man live on?

MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Antonio—Antonio Villaraigosa?

MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D), LOS ANGELES: Villaraigosa.

MATTHEWS: Villaraigosa. Is the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since, catch this, 1872. He’s also been picked, more importantly, to deliver the Spanish-speaking response to the president’s State of the Union address next week. Well, the big question is, will it sound different in a different language, your response, from the Democrats’ response of the Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia?

VILLARAIGOSA: Well, the answer is I made it absolutely clear that I had to have control of the editorial content of this response, since it’s mine. And I thought it’s important—I think any message should be a hopeful message, a positive message, one that speaks to the American dream for more people.

MATTHEWS: What’s the difference in tenor when you speak in English and Spanish? Is there more of a—a more of a—I don’t want to be derogatory, but I know it sounds better. It’s more upbeat? It’s more positive? What would be—call it—more romantic?

VILLARAIGOSA: No, I try to—well, first of all, I was born in the U.S., so my English is a lot stronger than my Spanish, but I say that the message is the same

Is he drunk? The State of the Union response will sound more romantic in spanish? Jesus H.Christ. Maybe we can get Marc Antony and J-Lo to sing the motherfucker, Chris. With a taco in one hand and a pinata in the other.

This is why we cannot have people ever thinking this man is a Democrat. It’s rich, pampered beltway bubble boys like him who are killing us.

But that wasn’t all. Tweety, the voice of the manly working man, had this to say about immigrants:

MATTHEWS: When I think of people who have come to this country from other countries where they speak Spanish—Puerto Rico is not another country, but it’s the commonwealth—hardest working people, they are extremely entrepreneurial. If it’s just owning a flower ship, it’s owning a small business, a bodega, right? Puerto Ricans come to this country to start business. Cubans certainly come here to start businesses. The hardest working people in the United States are people who just got here from Mexico, the first day they get here. Everybody knows—they don’t want a big social democracy. They want free enterprise and entrepreneurialism, don’t they?

VILLARAIGOSA: I think what they want…

MATTHEWS: They sound like they’re natural Republicans to me.

That’s certainly the first time I’ve heard “needing to earn a dollar so I can eat today” described as being “entrepreneurial.” Or Republican.

Poor people are natural Republicans because they work hard to survive. I assume the opposite is true as well. Rich people are natural Democrats because they sit on their asses all day like parasites living off of other people’s hard work. No? Oh that’s right. Rich people are the most productive people in the economy so they shouldn’t be asked to pay a fair share of their income — because they’d lose their motivation to work so hard. See how this works? Everybody who works or hires people who work is a natural Republican in Tweety’s world. Fifty percent of the nation just doesn’t know it. Except for the fags, of course. And the bitches. And the blacks.

Tweety likes to see himself as a man of the people and he is. He’s a man of the rich celebrity people. But even in his little beltway bubble he still has his finger on the pulse of one fine group of regular Americans: the bigots:

The mayor got a firsthand look at the different values held by some Americans as he was peppered with questions about immigration from callers on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”

After saying that Los Angeles is not going to follow the lead of Costa Mesa and involve police officers more in identifying illegal immigrants, a caller from Arkansas said not enough was being done to counter illegal immigration.

The woman declared: “It’s only after the influx of illegals that you were elected, sir. How is this possible?”

Clearly stunned, Villaraigosa responded, “Are you kidding?” After a long silence, he added, “I was born in the United States.”

The mayor of the second biggest city in the nation has to inform bigoted assholes from Arkansas and big money celebrities on MSNBC alike that he was born in America and English is his first language. Unbelievable.

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Thin Skin Tim

by digby

I hear the High Priest of Kewl Kid High is all upset that Arianna is reporting that the Carville radio talk show The Monsignor promoted on his show this past week-end is being produced by his own son — a fact which he omitted. But then he has a habit of omitting information — like the dozens of discussions on his show about the Plame leak without telling his viewers that he was a primary witness, for instance. (He’s since revealed that a reporter has no ethical obligation to tell the public what he knows if doing so might harm his relationships with his social class.)

But this thing with his son really is beyond the pale. How could Arianna delve into his private life like this … into his family for crying out loud? This is his son who has been outed as a radio producer on the pages of the mighty Huffington Post. For shame.

Of course there are times when it’s absolutely necessary to drag the family into it, as in this case: Russert’s first exchange with presidential candidate Howard Dean in his first appearance on Meet The Press in 2003 (via the Daily Howler)

RUSSERT: You said that your son got in a scrap. He was arrested for driving a car in which some of his friends broke into a beer cooler and stole some beer—

DEAN: Right.

RUSSERT: —and was indicted. How are you—

DEAN: He hasn’t been indicted, but he—

RUSSERT: Cited.

DEAN: He’s been cited, right.

Howard Dean had no expectation that his teenage son’s mortifying lapse in judgment would not be talked about on Press The Meat. I’m sure he was prepared for it, although he might have thought that something more important would open the discussion (or at least that Russert wouldn’t claim his high school aged kid was indicted.) Still, it’s part of the game, and public families know what they are getting into. Everybody is just doing their jobs, no matter how sleazy.

But apparently, if someone points out that Father Tim is shilling for his kid’s show on Press The Meat without revealing his son’s involvement, it’s out of bounds, deserving of a full PR push back from NBC News replete with sour grapes from none other than professional Republican sleazebag, Ed Rollins.

Interesting ethics you’ve got there, padre. I must have missed that day in Aquinas class.

Check out the Tim Russert Blog. Leave a comment and help push it to the top of Google search. His Holiness is a busy man and his assistants don’t have time to search for all the things people say about him. Let’s make it easy for him.

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What A Coincidence

by digby

So, Via Talk Left, I see that the lead prosecutor in the Abramoff case is leaving because Bush has appointed him to a federal judgeship:

The prosecutor, Noel L. Hillman, is chief of the department’s public integrity division, and the move ends his involvement in an inquiry that has reached into the administration as well as the top ranks of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.

….Colleagues at the Justice Department say Mr. Hillman has been involved in day-to-day management of the Abramoff investigation since it began almost two year ago. The inquiry, which initially focused on accusations that Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees, is being described within the department as the most important federal corruption investigation in a generation.

Shumer and Salazar are calling for a special prosecutor.

When I read this a minute ago, I was reminded of a similar story from a month ago:

The Florida prosecutor investigating radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh will soon be weighing cases rather than prosecuting them.

Gov. Jeb Bush has announced Assistant State Attorney James Martz has been appointed a Palm Beach County judge, filling a vacancy left after this year’s legislative session.

TOM

Senator Cauly apologized for not coming personally — he said you’d understand. Also, some of the judges. They’ve all sent gifts.

(then, toasting to the Don)

Salute!

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Whirlwind

by digby

With all of my politicking today I failed to note this unbelievable development in the mid-east: the terrists won an election in Palestine. And they won big time.

What does this mean for the preznits cartoon foreign policy? Here I thought that democracy was all like magic ‘n shit and we were spreadin’ freedom to everybody so they’d love us.

Here’s Juan Cole:

How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?

Jan. 27, 2006 | The stunning victory of the militant Muslim fundamentalist Hamas Party in the Palestinian elections underlines the central contradictions in the Bush administration’s policies toward the Middle East. Bush pushes for elections, confusing them with democracy, but seems blind to the dangers of right-wing populism. At the same time, he continually undermines the moderate and secular forces in the region by acting high-handedly or allowing his clients to do so. As a result, Sunni fundamentalist parties, some with ties to violent cells, have emerged as key players in Iraq, Egypt and Palestine.

Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad. And by either creating or failing to deal with hated foreign occupations, he has sown the seeds for militant Islamist movements that gain popularity because of their nationalist credentials.

[…]

Bush has boxed himself into an impossible situation. He promoted elections that have produced results opposite of the ones he wanted. For all his constant rhetoric about his determination to hunt down and kill terrorists, in Palestine he has in effect helped install into power a group he calls “terrorists.” His confusion over whether this is democracy, which should be legitimate, or is an unacceptable outcome — and his unwillingness to address the underlying issues behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — suggest that a fatal paralysis will continue to afflict the region.

The man who is planning to run the mid-terms on his great success as a wartime president just facilitated the first elected Islamic terrorist government and delegitimized moderates throughout the region. That’s quite an achievement.

Here’s what the commentators were saying tonight on Lehrer. (Both of them looked like they were giong to shoot themselves right after the show was over.)

KHALIL JAHSHAN: I think the program that the president has been advocating has definitely suffered as a consequence of these elections. There is a big question mark right now on a program that was hastily put together post 9/11 without thinking of the consequences of this type of advocacy of democracy without tilling the ground, if you will, or tilling the soil to allow that type of democracy to grow and to be able to nurture it from a distance. These results, I think, made that criticism a lot more credible and more forceful today than yesterday.

[…]

MARTIN INDYK: Basically, look, I agree that recently we’ve heard the last few days some interesting statements from Olmert at the Herzliya Conference, some of the Hamas leaders during the election showing some hope that one could build on. But frankly this is deja vu in the sense that these results I think have set us back probably 20 if not 30 years.

We’re going to go back to again negotiating over charters and negotiating over removing the destruction of this party by the other party. And so there is — the chances of two parties who have conducted ten years of negotiations coming back to the table and restarting their negotiations from where things stopped right now are much dimmer. These chances are much dimmer and much slimmer than anticipated.

I’m sure all the warbloggers have been feverishly typing “bring it on!” all day. But this is actually very serious stuff and it is a direct result of a simpleminded American policy. It isn’t the first failure and it is going to be far from the last. You cannot successfully run the world on comic book slogans and third rate biblical homilies. When the Supreme Court installed a halfwit in the oval office we reaped the whirlwind.

Oh, and in case anyone’s thinking that this really wasn’t in the hands of Americans:

MARTIN INDYK: … And, by the way, one should say in this regard, that there was an opportunity to postpone the election. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA wanted to do so. But this administration insisted that it go ahead.

When it comes to elections, there is nothing more sacred to a Republican than an arbitrary, meaningless deadline.

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Learning To Lose Well

by digby

I hope some of the comments I’m reading around the blogosphere aren’t reflections of of a knee jerk cynicism on the part of Democrats who have fallen in love with their assessment that they are superior to their elected leaders. This is a very dangerous state of mind.

John Kerry stepped up today. Apparently, that isn’t enough for some. He is still a “loser” in their eyes and is to be shunned. He didn’t do it soon enough. Or he didn’t do it right. Or he is nothing but a political opportunist. I’m beginning to think that some Democrats have gotten attached to their vision of Democrats as losers so they won’t be emotionally shattered anymore. That’s understandable. It’s painful to get beaten. But, the rank and file need to step up too and be willing to lose and not hate ourselves or our leaders for it. How we lose on issues like this makes the difference for the future.

Sustaining a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee is a huge undertaking with the numbers we have. (Read Kos’ Reality Check on this.) It’s worth doing anyway because it’s important to stand up for principles. We can “lose well” by beginning to make a case to the American people that we believe in something other than splitting the difference. And we might just pull it off. Either way, we make the country (and the media) see that there are lines that we won’t cross.

But the way some people are acting, if we now lose this one it will be seen by the grassroots as just another example of Democratic fecklessness, even Kerry’s fecklessness, which is self-defeating and unfair. If we carp when our elected politicans take risks just as we carp when they don’t take risks, they have no motivation to listen to us at all.

Kerry and Kennedy stepped up today. They aren’t going down without a fight. This is worth doing and if we lose it, we should reward them and those who stood with them with our gratitude and support not another round of complaints about how they are a bunch of losers.

Go vote in this stupid CNN poll and give Kerry some props for doing something out of conviction. This isn’t a big winner for him and he didn’t have to do it. We need to let our politicans know we have their back when they take a stand.

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Heterosexually Yours

by digby

The General is passing the collection plate. He sits on the right hand of Republican Jesus, so helping him is the same as helping the Lord.

A General’s Prayer:

Lord, please bless the State Security Apparatus, that it might conduct it’s wiretaps to the best of its abilities. Provide Our Leader with the ability to look into our bedrooms, so that He might catch French politicians putting their little soldiers in ladies’ mouths and watch celebrities doing it. And Lord, let him share those videos with godly men like myself, who may then rail against these evils from our pulpits.

And bless our interrogators and their glowsticks and electrified nipple clamps of freedom. Provide them with the ability to induce pain as close as possible to that experienced during organ failure without quite equaling it.

And give us the ability to kill brown people more efficiently, so that our contractors may garner more fruit from their labor.

Praise Be.

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