Month: February 2006

It Would Be A Cakewalk. After All, More Soldiers Speak Spanish Than Persian, Right?

by tristero

To hell with Tehran. Real men covet Caracas. Doesn’t it seem like the Bush administration is deliberately being as obnoxious as possible so they can start a war somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter, just as long as there’s some bang bang? Where do you find people like Donald Rumsfeld?

“I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money,” Rumsfeld added. “He’s a person who was elected legally _ just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally _ and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others.”

There have been increasing signs of hostility between Washington and Caracas, and on Monday Chavez said Venezuela’s intelligence agencies have “infiltrated” a group of military officials from the U.S. Embassy who were allegedly involved in espionage.

Venezuelan authorities, including the vice president, have accused officials at the U.S. Embassy of involvement in a spying case in which Venezuelan naval officers allegedly passed sensitive information to the Pentagon.

It was not the first such charge by Chavez.

I have a favor to ask. Occasionally, I’ve tried to understand Chavez but can’t. The mainstream press in the US has been worthless (worse than usual and that is not a good sign, frankly). There were a few interesting articles in the New York Review of Books – no fans of the Bush administration – from which I took away the impression that Chavez must have been born in Macondo. It sounded like he was completely nuts but that somehow, through a thicket of immense corruption, life for some poor people in Venezuela were marginally improved under Chavez for the first time.

If anyone has any suggestions about a knowledgeable article or book to read on Chavez, please drop the reference in comments.

In any event, when I start to agree with commentators about how vicious and uncivilized it is to use rhetoric that reminds people that Nazi admirers have no business in the US government and that anything in their past is fair game to humiliate them and get them out of it, i just have to read something like these remarks from a high Bush official to recall precisely the nature of the fight we’re in. Bush’s vicious discourse cannot be ignored, minimized, deflected or muted. It must be met head on. Always.

As Zappa sez, The meek inherit nothing.

(By the way, I’m gonna predict 10 comments or less.)

America’s Nominee For The International Monty Python “Walking Up And Down The Square” Competition

by tristero

Who else?

With the United States beginning its February presidency of the Security Council, John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, reported the failure of his first effort from the chair, to get the 15 Council members to begin meetings promptly at 10 a.m. “Starting on time is a form of discipline,” he said. “I brought the gavel down at 10. I was the only one in the room, though.”

A Belated Open Letter To George W. Bush

by tristero

Dear George,

In your recent TV show, you read

[E]ven tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will…

Given that you only listen to what fellow Republicans have to say, I can only quote the immortal words of your Vice-President, Richard Cheney:

Go fuck yourself.

Love,

Tristero

Tom v. Tom

by tristero

My friend Peter Swales is one of the most important historians of psychoanalysis in the world (I must return his calls). Among his greatest recent achievements is research into the real Sybil, the publication of whose case (but NOT her real problems) eventually spawned an epidemic of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) diagnoses about 10 or 12 years ago, a travesty that seriously wronged a lot of emotionally vulnerable people.

Well, Peter, I love you dearly, but Tom Friedman just proved that MPD is real and it’s not pretty:

Oh, come on, Friedman, get real! The president throws a few paragraphs your way and you go all weak in the knees. Show some spine, man! You need to trash this thing. You know these guys are not serious. This is a president who once called for putting a man on Mars and then just dropped it. You assumed they were going to do the Iraq war right — remember? Look where that got you, you moron. You should have listened to your wife!

Yeah, I know all that. But here’s what else I know: Mr. Bush is going to be president for the next three years. We do not have three years to lose — not on climate change, energy efficiency or improving math/science education. I am not going to sit around for the next three years just trashing these guys and praying that some Democrat gets elected and does all the right things. We don’t have time, you moron!

[snip]

There’s no pain-free solution. Remember how President Kennedy ended his May 25, 1961, State of the Union speech calling for a moon shot? He said: “I have not asked for a single program which did not cause one or all Americans some inconvenience, or some hardship, or some sacrifice.”

Pigs will fly before Bush says that.

You may be right. And if he fails to carry through with this energy initiative, I’ll be the first to rip him for it. In the meantime, I prefer to give him a new reputation to live up to. You never know. … And by the way, pal, you got a better horse to ride right now? [Emphasis added.]

If you think I’m gonna enter an argument between two Tom Friedmans, you must think Mama Tristero raised a fool. But I do want to point out that little phrase I boldified:

You never know. …

Hmm…Didn’t I hear that like a few years ago? Didn’t a guy named Packer or something just say exactly that to excuse his inexcusable naivete?

Dear Tom,

I do know.

Love,

Tristero

Karl The Whistleblower

by digby

So it turns out that the CIA told Cheney and Libby back in June of 2003 that the Niger claims were bogus. (Via Crooks and Liars)

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, “We no longer believe there is sufficient” credible information to “conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.” The memo was titled: “In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq’s Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad.”

Despite the CIA’s findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.

I guess that blows ole patriotic whistleblower Karl Rove’s excuse out of the water, too. Remember how all the wingnuts said he was just warning the press off a bad story when he spoke to Matt Cooper?

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility.

Here’s what Karl said in case you forgot:

“not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger … “

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked. Karl Rove lied. But that is no reason for reporters not to believe him now, of course. It was just the one time.

.

Reflexive Cheating

by digby

So the House Republicans tried to rig their own election. It just doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

But, after all, it’s what they are trained to do from the time they join the Party:

Everyone who watched this summer’s race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent’s “homosexuality”; rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don’t; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

It’s so much a part of their make-up that it’s hardly even remarked upon. Their friends in the media don’t seem to find it worthy of mention either. Republicans believe that stealing elections is perfectly moral and right. They do not believe in democracy. That’s why they talk about it all the time.

.

Bring On The Screeching Harpies

by digby

These missing Cheney e-mails are very intriguing. This is particularly so because we went though a similar event during the Clinton administration and the Republicans went completely apeshit over it. In 2000, it was revealed (through the machinations of Judicial Watch) that some emails had not been properly archived and it was suspected that some of Monica Lewinsky’s had not been turned over as a result. Dan Burton held hearings and the Independent Counsel, Robert Ray, was assigned to look into it.

Judicial Watch ended up filing an ethics complaint against Ray for declining to follow it up but it was clear from the get that it was another bogus witch hunt, as all the Clinton scandals were. But in the course of it we all found out what kind of an archiving system the White House has for maintaining emails:

… whenever a White House staffer clicks “send,” a message reminds them that a copy of their missive is being sent to records management.

When it comes to saving e-mails, the White House is held to a higher standard than the private sector, and even Congress.

Companies that have a policy of saving e-mails usually do so only for three to six months, according to records-management consultants. Many companies consider them the same as phone calls, and don’t archive them unless they are equal in weight to a written communication.

But the White House is different. It saves its records for posterity. After President Clinton vacates his office next January, at least 30 million stored e-mails will be deposited with the National Archives, an unfathomable mountain of data ranging from “how about lunch?” to speech drafts, to perhaps more juicy communications.

Now Fitzgerald says:

We have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

And here I thought the grown-ups from the private sector with their fancy pants ways were going to fix all those technical problems.

Whatever the case, there is ample precedent for a full-on congressional hissy fit and a thorough special counsel investigation. The Republicans held fiery hearings on this matter just months before Clinton left office, so great was the urgency, and there was absolutely no evidence that any emails of the president were involved. But because there might have been an email from Monica to the president that said “I wuv you” that hadn’t turned up yet, they grilled the entire White House counsel’s office for days.

There can be no complaints from the Republicans about Fitzgerald investigating this. None. The precedent was set just five and half years ago — by them.

.

Schwarzenegger’s Got Cash Troubles. It’s Time To Hit Him Hard.

by tristero

The lying piece of Nazi-admiring trash California has the misfortune of having as a Governor doesn’t have any money in his re-election fund. That’s good news.

Democrats should drive him into personal bankruptcy and revisit in lurid detail all those nasty personal issues Schwarzenegger deflected when he was campaigning the first time. They should start right now and not stop, even after he’s been driven from office and he’s sold his last Hummer.

I know. I’m letting him off easy.

Useless

by digby

Sometime back I was in the minority here in the blogosphere when I argued that I understood why NARAL was staying with its backing of Chafee:

I understand that we all need to stick together, but if I were NARAL I’d be getting very, very concerned about some Democrats’ willingness to “soften” their stance on the issue of choice because it’s allegedly hurting the party — you know, moral values and all that. I might just think it’s smart to show some muscle. There is no way I’d blindly trust anyone in this environment to fight this battle for me.

There is a great example of how this works over the long haul and it comes from the grandaddy of all single issue groups — the NRA. They are certainly an indispensible and active part of the GOP coalition as they’ve always been, but they have plenty of Democrats on their side now too. And they did not get to where they are by being good little GOP soldiers. They fought every single battle on the gun issue alone and they insisted on every candidate they backed being on board. When they started their campaign it was not the default mainstream position in either party.

And they backed plenty of Democrats over Republicans if they had to. Sometimes they backed the losing candidates because they were in urban elections where the Republican couldn’t win without endorsing gun control. And if there ever existed a red state Republican who was for gun control you can bet that the NRA would back a Democrat who was against it — even if control of the Senate depends on one seat (which is not the case for Chafee.) In Illinois, for instance, Governor George Ryan was elected to office in 1998 over an NRA-backed Democrat. In the last election they didn’t endorse either senate candidate in Oklahoma because both had a 100% rating with the NRA. The issue was off the table and so were they. More often they support NRA Republicans over NRA Democrats, but that’s just smart politics considering who presently owns the government. They keep focused like a laser on what matters to them and they have done this during good times and bad for the GOP.

But does anyone believe that even though they are a single issue “special interest” that the NRA doesn’t help the Republican party in the most substantial way possible? They’ve pretty much killed us in the rural areas and turned the red states blood red. They’ve won. Except in big cities, this issue is dead. Republicans have nothing but respect for them — even if they backed a Democrat or two along the way. They know what they brought to the party.

If the NRA had been in NARAL’s position this past week, they would have ripped their support from Lincoln Chafee so fast it would make Trent Lott’s hair crack. They know when to pull the strings. Chafee chose his gang of 14 cred over his pro-choice cred. That’s all you need to know about him. He has shown himself useless to the cause and should be dropped immediately. This is a seat that can be picked up by a real pro-choice Democrat who isn’t running as a bowl of lukewarm water.

I honestly can’t understand what in the hell they were thinking. It’s one thing to back Chafee to make the Democrats not take you for granted. It’s quite another to continue to back him after he failed a monumental test. Now Chafee knows they won’t press him when the shit comes down and Democrats see them as a spent and useless force. What a spectacular strategy. When forced childbirth becomes the law of the land, I’m sure they’ll be able to sleep nights knowing they cleverly backed a man who played them for fools.

Jane is all over this one (as I’m sure most of you know.) I’m very disappointed in NARAL — as well as all the other groups to whom I’ve long been giving money in anticipation of these Supreme Court battles. I don’t know if this was winnable, but goddamit, I expected them to pull out all the stops — and that means, at the very least, pulling support from pro-choice Republicans whose only purpose was to step across the aisle in battles like this, trading a vote for a red state Democrat who would lose his seat if he did it and making the vote bipartisan (and, therefore, “winnable” in the eyes of the media.) That’s it. They are now officially not worth the coathanger flyers their names are printed on. And unless NARAL gets a clue, fast, neither are they.

.

Dear Me

by digby

I’m sure most of you have noticed that the Republicans, the media and now even the military have been spending a lot of time on the fainting couch lately and I have to admit that I’m getting concerned for this nation’s security because of it. This isn’t happening just because their whalebone corsets are laced too tight. It’s because the angry left has been saying some very … how can I put this … inelegant things and that makes it nearly impossible for our manly leaders to guard democracy and protect us properly. Think about it.

The Republicans have rightly been in a tizzy about our oafish ways, notably heaving their matronly breasts in indignation at the shocking behavior of the Democrats on the judiciary committee who churlishly badgered Samuel Alito about his perfectly innocent association with a lovely alumni group that consisted of all the best people. Why, they molested that nice Mrs Alito until she broke down and wept at the unfairness of it all. (Little Lord Lindsay nearly mussed his Beaver) Just how are Republicans supposed to defend this country from evil killers if Democrats behave so boorishly in a political debate?

And that’s not all! Why, just the other day a group of hooligans invaded a meeting of the Washington Post Temperence Society and engaged in hate speech! Right out in the open with no regard for anyone’s feelings or anything. The vicious ringleader of the ill-mannered brutes, Jane at firedoglake, has written in one of their grubby little “alternative” newspapers that calling for the firing of an ombudsman for refusing to do her job is just part of the give and take in a freewheeling democracy. Hah! It’s nothing but anarchy! (Somebody should have given the dowager Brady some laudenum in the first few minutes to dull the pain of hearing all that foul language. I understand he burst into tears and had to be led away when he saw some of those crude four letter words. As an ex-sportwriter, he’s never heard such vulgarities. )

And now today, I hear that the Pentagon Ladies Embroidery League has called for the removal of a horrible “tasteless” cartoon featuring a wounded soldier in the Washington Post that they find much too dreadful to bear. Why, seeing such a thing is almost as bad as being wounded themselves — worse! It’s just so, well… insensitive. It’s hard enough trying to eradicate evil and tyranny in our time. But this! Is there no humanity left?

These brave and tough defenders of freedom in the Republican party, the media and the military don’t deserve this kind of treatment. It hurts their feelings and shocks their delicate sensibilities. Again, I ask you, how are these people supposed to defend us from the evil islamofascists who are trying to kill us in our beds if they are swooning with shock at our ill-bred criticisms? Free speech isn’t a suicide pact, you know.

.