Month: May 2006

Getting Played

by digby

I certainly hope that Democrats aren’t going to follow John Dickerson’s tepid analysis that concludes they shouldn’t mention investigations or risk losing in November. They are being played.

Over at Political Animal, Zachary Roth writes:

It’s also worth noting that Republican attempts to highlight the investigations issue have come almost exclusively in fundraising emails. In other words, they’re using it as a tactic to gin up their plugged-in supporters, but not, so far, as a part of their broader message to ordinary voters. And when you think about it, you can see why they might not be too enthusiastic about a campaign message that draws voters’ attention, even obliquely, to the slew of scandals and screwups of the Bush years. After all, it’s not exactly inconceivable that voters might welcome the prospect of a party pledging to look into, and then fix, the policies of a president with a 32 percent approval rating.

Ya think? The Republicans are in free fall. Considering that, is it not possible that the American people would like to find out what happened to the billions missing in Iraq? That they would be happy to see the congress exercize its oversight of the executive branch? That looking into the hanky panky leading us into a dramatically unpopular war is good for the country? Hello?

Many in the establishment believe that Democrats are in grave danger if they ever show they give a damn about anything. It’s one of the reasons why people don’t feel anything for the Democrats. And for some, the strategy is always the same no matter what the circumstances: when the Republicans are popular, don’t make waves. When the Republicans are unpopular, don’t make waves.

But think about this. Do the Republicans really want all these scandals being brought up constantly during the campaign? I don’t think so. That’s why they are trying to manipulate the Democrats into keeping quiet about them. Any six year old could see through this cheap ploy.

Update: Yglesias has more on this, here. He makes the interesting point that “One of the main things those people might be hoping for from a Democratic congress would be a check on Bush’s power. Indeed, many of them may not be very interested in a progressive agenda for America at all, just scared of where the current crew is heading things. By promising oversight, Pelosi is re-iterating that though you can’t vote the unpopular Bush out of office, you can vote in a congress that will keep him under control.”

Update II: Billmon says Rove is smoking crack if he thinks ginning up the wiretapping is going to work:

The point is, when you get down to 31% approval in a Gallup Poll, and your disapproval rating is trying to poll vault over the record high set by Richard Nixon just before he resigned in disgrace, it means the American people essentially think you’re the political equivalent of crab lice. At that point, they’re probably going to hate anything and everything you do — even if they actually agree with it — just because you’re the one doing it.

Update III: Harold Meyerson writes:

…to stave off the specter of Democratic rule, Rove has decided that the only way to rally the Republican base is to invoke the specter of Democratic rule. Democrat John Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spoken of investigating the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy will get subpoena power if the Democrats win both houses. Unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner if the Democrats take control and hold hearings about the administration’s relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, Republicans prophesy, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.

As a strategy, this has its shortcomings. It’s not clear how many independents, or even conservatives, will warm to a campaign that focuses on forestalling congressional oversight — not with gas prices soaring and the American military bogged down in a war with an increasingly undefinable mission.

Again, I think Rove is trying to mau-mau the Democrats and getting the always compliant press to help him do it. He’s shaping the battlefield the way he wants it. It won’t work unless Democrats take the bait.

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All That’s Left Is Our Friendship

by digby

I have had a few conversations and email exchanges over the past few months in which we all sort wondered whether it was such a good idea for Bush and Cheney to be so publicly derisive of the CIA. Calling them incompetent and lazy and (*gasp*) liberal just seemed like stupid thing to do with an agency filled with spies.

Then I read this today, from Tim Grieve in Salon and I just have to wonder…

The White House said Monday that it intends to hire as the No. 2 man at the CIA a former agency official who quit in 2004 in a dispute with Porter Goss. As admissions of mistakes go, this is a pretty big one — even if no one at the White House will actually admit it.

Stephen Kappes, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, resigned from the agency in November 2004 after Patrick Murray — a former Hill staffer who was serving as Goss’ chief of staff at the CIA — ordered him to fire his deputy, Michael Sulick. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Murray’s order to Kappes came after Sulick had confronted Murray about a threat Murray had made to another agency official.

The threat? That the agency official would be held responsible if anything from the personnel file of the “newly appointed executive director” made it into the media. And the “newly appointed executive director”? He wasn’t identified in the Post’s account back in 2004, but we all know his name now: Dusty Foggo, who resigned from the CIA yesterday amid a corruption probe.

[…]

So where are we today? Goss is gone. Murray is presumably gone. Foggo is gone. And the White House is trumpeting the fact that Kappes will be coming back. “The move was seen as a direct repudiation of Goss’ leadership and as an olive branch to CIA veterans disaffected by his 18-month tenure,” the Post says this morning.

Holding out an “olive branch”? From here, it looks more like “falling on your sword.” The White House may indeed be interested in repudiating Goss, but let’s not forget who forced his brand of “leadership” on the CIA in the first place.

Just what happened to make the white house change it’s approach on this when it refuses to do the kind of things that might boost them in the polls and help their guys win in the fall is anybody’s guess. But you have to wonder if it went something like this:

GEARY

I didn’t do anything.

TOM

It’s okay. You’re very lucky — my brother FREDO operates this place, he was called before anyone. If this had happened someplace else, we couldn’t’ve helped you..

GEARY

I — when I woke up, I was on the floor — and I don’t know how it happened.

TOM

You can’t remember?

GEARY

I passed out.

[He stands up and moves over the bed where we see a bloody dead girl.]

I — I’ll fix it.

[He unties the girl’s hand from the bed post.]

Just a game.

[He takes a towel and begins to wipe up the blood that is all over her. He looks at the towel and wipes off his hands.]

Jesus, Jesus.

[He begins to cry. As he does, TOM looks over at NERI who is wiping his hands in the bathroom.]

Jesus, God — Oh, God. I don’t know — and I can’t understand — why I can’t remember.

TOM

You don’t have to remember — just do as I say. We’re putting a call into your office — explain that you’ll be there tomorrow afternoon — you decided to spend the night at Michael Corleone’s house in Tahoe — as his guest.

GEARY

I do remember that she was laughing…we’d done it before — and I know that I couldn’t’ve hurt — that girl

TOM

This girl has no family — nobody knows that she worked here. It’ll be as if she never existed. All that’s left is our friendship.

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Spook Kabuki

by digby

Now here’s something to make you scratch your head. Jason Vest over at the Project For Government Oversight blog points out that the congress always intended for the CIA director or his deputy to be someone from the military, active or retired, and until recently it was actually explicit:

First, pertinent legislative history about intelligence chiefs: Since the CIA’s beginning, it has been, as our august legislators put it, “the sense of Congress” that “it [wa]s desirable” to have as either Director or Deputy Director “a commissioned officer of the Armed forces, whether in active or retired status,” or someone who has “by training or experience, an appreciation of military intelligence activities and requirements.” Congress specifically stated that only one position could be filled by an active duty officer, and further mandated that such an officer be removed from the Defense Department’s chain of command.

In 2004, when the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act severed the dual DCIA/DCI roles (acronym translation: where the head of the CIA also headed the entire intelligence community) and created the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Congress amended the existing statute, and applied the language to the new DNI and his Deputy. For some reason, however, Congress neglected to re-apply the same language to the new CIA Director and Deputy Director positions (indeed, Congress actually forgot to re-authorize the Deputy Director position altogether). But last year–in addition to correcting that little boo-boo–the Senate intelligence committee suddenly decided, after all these years, that the top two CIA officials should only hail from “civilian life.” (Of 19 CIA directors, six have been active-duty flag officers, five have had some previous military service as commissioned officers, and three have previous served as intelligence officers.)

Isn’t that interesting? From what we have been hearing, Hayden being a member of the active duty military is unprecedented. I confess that although I knew several directors had military titles, I assumed they were retired. WTF?

But the point of Vest’s post is not actually this interesting new spin point, it’s that the congress has been, typically, rubber stamping every intelligence function the pentagon wanted, particularly empowering the rightwing ideologue Stephen Cambone. This entire debate is some sort of kabuki.

But even more galling about the sudden flurry of Congressional concern about the Pentagon’s influence over intelligence is that the biggest enabler of expanded military intelligence power has been Congress itself. The Armed Services’ committees happily (and quietly) acceded to Donald Rumsfeld’s request to create a Deputy Undersecretary for Intelligence in 2002; in 2003, the Senate committee took about 15 minutes to confirm Stephen Cambone after a farcical hearing. Since then, Cambone’s set to building himself an empire that’s rife with red flags, ranging from unresolved Abu Ghraib related matters, to sketchy overseas covert units to troubling domestic intelligence activities. The state of things at the miltiary’s National Ground Intelligence Center hasn’t exactly inspired confidence.

[…]

There are no shortage of reasons to be leery of Hayden as potential DCIA. But if Congress is really worried about expanding military control of intelligence, they might want to consider the performance not of four-star generals who’ve been statutorily taken out of the military flow chart, but of certain Pentagon civilian officials who direct military intelligence policy and generals under them.

[more]

Now check this out from Dennis Hastert today (via Roll Call):

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has come out against the nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA, calling the ousting of former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) from the agency’s top post “a power grab” by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
Hastert’s opposition to Hayden is not based on any personal reservations about the nominee. Rather, Hastert is concerned that installing a top-ranking military official at the “CIA would give too much influence over the U.S. intelligence community to the Pentagon.”

“I don’t know anything about him. He has never darkened my doorstep,” Hastert told reporters on Monday in Aurora, Ill., when asked about Hayden. “I don’t think a military guy should be head of CIA, frankly.”

Hastert added: “I don’t oppose him, I don’t know anything about him.” Hayden has been serving as Negroponte’s deputy following a six-year stint as head of the National Security Agency.

Hastert’s aides later expanded on his comments. “The Speaker does not believe that a military person should be leading the CIA, a civilian agency,” said Ron Bonjean, Hastert’s spokesman.

Hastert also said Negroponte stopped by his office Wednesday and made no mention of the fact that Goss, who served in the House with Hastert for 16 years, would be stepping down as CIA director two days later.

“It looks like a power grab by Mr. Negroponte,” said Hastert.

I don’t pretend to understand the byzantine maneuverings of the spooks, the pentagon and the congress on this issue. But you would think that somebody in the press would have noticed that this argument about Hayden being in uniform is bizarre considering that six Directors of 19 have been active duty and that until recently the congress explicitly desired a military man in charge, wouldn’t you?

And this caterwauling about the pentagon having too much control of intelligence is obvious bullshit since they’ve been giving Rumsfeld everything he wants in that area for years. There may be a turf war going on, but it looks like there’s a very active CYA operation in the congress as well.

This story gets stranger by the day.

If there are any mainstream reporters out there reading this, you should make it a habit of checking out Vest’s stuff. He consistently sees things that others in the field do not.

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Nothing A Glass of Bourbon Couldn’t Cure

by digby

I got in late last night and was able to only muster a short spurt of lefty blogger vitriol for Richard Cohen before I collapsed, but I’ve had my coffee and I realize that I’m not finished with him.

First, let’s just stipulate that this “war” between the blogosphere, its readers and the mainstream media is completely understandable. People like Cohen’s only feedback for thirty years has been a letter or two from cranky old ladies in Bethesda and a good natured spirited debate about motherhood over a bottle of fine 1998 Hirsch Vineyard Pinot Noir at George Tenent’s house. He is out of touch. And that is the problem.

He believes that his angry readers of all political persuasions are crazy and violent because they are angry. Today he calls the lefty criticism a “Digital Lynch Mob.” When the right barraged him with criticism over a column about Bernard Kerik in 2004, he wrote:

I got a bucket full of obscene e-mails right in my face. I was denounced over and over again as a liberal who, moreover, never would have written something similar about anyone Bill Clinton had named. This would be news to Clinton.

What struck me about the e-mails was how none of these writers paid any attention to what I had to say. Instead, they preferred to deal with a caricature — someone who belonged to a movement, a conspiracy, and was taking orders in the service of some vast, nefarious cause. E-mails are the drive-by shootings of the common man. The face of the victim is never seen…We have become a nation of B-52 bombers, hitting targets we never see.

“The drive-by shootings of the common man.” My, my, my. One does tend to get a bit non-plussed when the hoi polloi forget their place, doesn’t one?

Critical Emails are neither ropes, rocks or drive by shootings. (And in this day and age foul language is not “obscene.”) They are the written opinions of Richard Cohen’s readers, many of whom until recently didn’t know what dreck the columnists for the Washington Post produced everyday. The internets have brought him legions of new readers — many of whom are appalled at what he writes.

This is why:

Even the after-hours camaraderie of Washington is gone. Republicans hang with Republicans, Democrats with Democrats — and they all get out of town as fast as possible. A little bourbon would do wonders for our dysfunctional government.

The reason I started with the startling scoop that George Tenet has a mother is that too often, especially in Washington, it is easier to avoid such humanizing touches than to deal with them. Like Will Rogers, I (almost) never met a man I didn’t like — and after that, honest, rigorous criticism becomes very hard indeed. It is easier by far to turn government officials from conscientious public servants, or even just hapless human beings, into mere celebrities. But they don’t make big money in their jobs (though some, of course, do later on), and they almost always work very hard. And when they screw up it often appears on the front pages of newspapers or on the nightly news. Sometimes, when things are dark and people are dying, they sit before the TV and watch what they have done — and cry. They do, and I know this for a fact.

Boo fucking hoo.

Damn that partisanship, and damn both sides equally for this sordid state of affairs. The fact that character assassination of Democrats is a fundamental tenet of the peculiar institution of the Republican party does not mean that it isn’t Democrats’ fault for not trying harder to be friendly. A little honey works better than vinegar, after all. Except … except, it actually doesn’t. The Republicans rolled them and rolled them and rolled them; the GOP took total control of the US government and then they rolled them again. All the while the alleged liberal Richard Cohen has been wandering through Georgetown drawing rooms having conversations about people’s mothers and, apparently, watching others weep as they confront the fact that they are responsible for killing people (which is, I agree, better than when the president lifted his fist and said “feels good!” in the moments before he ordered the invasion of Iraq.)

The media elite’s wide eyed shock that average Americans are angry about this state of affairs is simply mind-boggling. The polls show that it isn’t just the “angry” left, it’s the entire Democratic party, most of the independents and a growing number of Republicans too. Does he not know how his condescending elitism sounds to the people who read his column? (Joe Klein similarly goes on and on about populism in his new book Politics Lost, his tone dripping with contempt for the idea that common rabble are challenging those who know what’s best for them.)

We are dealing with a political culture so insular that that they no longer resemble the seat of power in a democracy but rather the court of Versailles. Richard Cohen and the rest of the professional political class in the capital are misreading what is happening just as Louis XVI did when he asked “This is a revolt?” —- to which the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt replied, “No, sire. It is a revolution.”

For the first time, I’m truly feeling the democratizing power of the internet (and I’m realizing why the powers that be are trying to cut off its oxygen.) The beltway courtiers are nibbling idly at their cakes, unnerved by the unruly mob of common men committing drive-by emails and digital lynch mobs and storming the stifling, airless social club that has become the nation’s punditocrisy. They don’t realize yet that this isn’t a fringe group of long haired hippies (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who are going to make the whole country hate us for our unruly ways. It ain’t 1968. There’s a lot of water under that drawbridge.

And, of course, it wasn’t that simple anyway. Liberals of a certain age are just terrified of liberal passion because they believe that 60’s leftists destroyed the Democratic party. (I would argue that it was the overreaction — the pale, flaccid, politics of the Richard Cohen school that killed us.) In any case, they always failed to notice the lurking radical rightwing beast that was just as active during that radical period building a movement that was far more damaging to Democrats than anything the SDS ever dreamed up. (But then, they are nothing if not pathologically self-absorbed.)

The 60’s New Left is not particularly relevent to this debate. It’s time that establishment liberals exorcized those demons. The political architects of today’s political era are not FDR liberals, but Nixonian conservatives. It’s stunning to me that after all this time they still fail to recognize that.

We may win an election or two coming up. I fervently hope so. But if anyone thinks that the conservative movement is just going to shrivel up and die, they have another thing coming. We are still fighting on their turf and will be for some time to come. Worrying about offending the “silent majority” again is beside the point. Our little blogswarms can hardly cause a backlash that would rival the non-stop anti-liberal rhetoric that’s been spewed into the atmosphere for the last two decades. But it’s just possible that we might convince a few people out there that the Democratic party still has a pulse.

And as I wrote last night: there is no political downside to hating Richard Cohen. Everybody does. And why shouldn’t they? He stands for nothing. The problem is that he’s been sold as a liberal — which is why we are bothering with him at all. He’s the poster boy for flaccid, ineffectual progressive politics and we’re sick of it. He is not us.

Update: Swopa notices that Cohen’s latest trip to the fainting couch over the digital lynch mob is quite at odds with his earlier view that character assassination is the coin of the realm in DC — and that we who complained should grow up.

I can see why he thinks bourbon is the answer. He must need a lot of it to calm the competing voices in his head.

UpdateII: Jonathan Schwartz comments on Cohen’s equivalence theory. Check this one out too.

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Words Fail Me

by tristero

As Atrios says, Alphonso Jackson immediately must resign:

Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That’s the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.

Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

“He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,” Jackson said of the prospective contractor. “He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’

“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’

“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”

Anyone want to calculate the odds Jackson will stay?

Feingold Talks Like A Democrat

by tristero

I’m sorry to say that this kind of genuine straight-talk is so rare it’s refreshing:

“We must get out of our political foxholes and be willing to clearly and specifically point out what a strategic error the Iraq invasion has been,” Feingold, D-Wis., told a National Press Club audience.

He said some Democrats in Congress gave in to “intimidation” by the Bush administration when they voted to authorize the war in 2002, and warned: “If we do not show both a practical and emotional readiness to lead in the fight against terrorism, we will lose in ’06 and we will lose in ’08, just like we did in ’02 and ’04.”

In March, Feingold called for the censure of Bush over the administration’s warrantless surveillance program. So far, only two Democrats, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Good for Feingold. However, I really would like to comment briefly on this next point of his, at the risk of being completely misunderstood:

Feingold, who also has proposed that U.S. troops leave Iraq by the end of the year, rejected criticism that such a move could lead to chaos.

“I believe the situation would probably get better” if U.S. troops left, he said. “The lesson of insurgency is when the occupying power leaves, it tends to lessen, rather than increase, the level of violence.”

I disagree and the reason I do is because the tragedy goes beyond the dichotomy of stay or leave.

The truth is that as long as Bush is in power, it doesn’t matter whether the troops leave or stay. If they stay, the Bush administration’s utter incompetence will ensure that the way in which they stay will be fine-tuned to maximize Iraq’s slide into disaster.

Likewise, if the troops withdraw, Bush’s incompetence will guarantee that the troops will be withdrawn in such a fashion as to all-but-guarantee they will leave a catastrophic situation in such a state that it will rapidly get much worse.

An effective approach towards confronting the problems in Iraq may, repeat may, be possible once Bush is no longer in office and a sensible administration is in charge. Until then, which will not be until 2009 at the earliest, the situation is tragically beyond relief. No matter what this US administration does, they will make the worst of it.

Therefore, Feingold’s prediction that things could improve if the troops leave strikes me as unfounded. He has not properly factored in how poorly the Bush administration would handle a withdrawal.

If a responsible, competent government were in place, I would immediately side with those demanding immediate withdrawal. But given Bush, I’m afraid in Iraq there is only disaster, death, chaos, and a slide into the abyss no matter course he chooses to take.

I realize this is a dreadful position to take, that nothing can be done until 2009. To be clear: I don’t want to see US soldiers killed or maimed – or killing and maiming in the pursuit of an insane, pointless war – anymore than anyone else does. And I also don’t want to see innocent Iraqis slaughtered and brualized, either by US troops, each other, or other countries. But if Bush keeps the troops in place the slaughter will continue to escalate. But if Bush withdraws the troops the slaughter will continue to escalate. I see nothing good coming of either as long as this malicious scoundrel is president.

A responsible approach to ending the misery in Iraq can only begin to be imagined after Bush is back at his lake doing what he loves – pretending to be a great fisherman – and the country (hopefully) is back in the hands of mature, responsible people.

Arguments that it is the troops’ presence that are the main problem strike me as not quite accurate. It is the troops presence plus Bush’s incompetence that are the main problem. Ditto, arguments that if the troops leave the problems will start to lift are not accurate. If Bush withdraws, given the near perfect storm he’s created in every area and around every issue and action, then increasing disaster is all but sure to follow because of the way the withdrawal will be run.

Put another way, step one for Iraq is that Bush must leave. Discussions of the relative worth of different approaches to Iraq are pointless until then. And I think Feingold runs the risk of being tragically contradicted because he misuderestimates Bush’s sheer incompetence.

The War On Fucking

by tristero

As the father of a 9 year-old daughter, I take this story personally. Turns out that Merck has developed a cervical cancer vaccine that is coming up for FDA approval:

Gardasil was developed by Merck in Montgomery County. It targets the human papilloma virus. Virtually all cervical cancers are caused by some strain of this virus, known as HPV. It’s very common among both men and women, and is transmitted by sexual contact.

Most women never know they’re infected with HPV until a suspicious Pap test…or worse.

Dr. Richard Boulay of Lehigh Valley Hospital says Gardasil breaks the infection chain.

Dr. Richard Boulay/Lehigh Valley Hospital: “Those that get the vaccine can expect greater than 90 percent protection&Many studies have shown 100 percent prevention.”

According to the current Discover Magazine (not yet on line) this could potentially save 2,500 lives. As Alan Kaye of the National Cervical Cancer Coaltion says in the article, “How could we deny our children and grandchildren awin against cancer…Why should we?”

Well, as it happens, our morally-stunted fellow citizens on the right have the answer to the questions. Turns out the the best time to administer the vaccine is when the girl is between 10 and 12 years old. And Hal Wallace, head of the anti-fucking activist group that’s deliberately mislabeleld as”Physicians Consortium,” believes that vaccinating an 11 year-old girl against cervical cancer would send a message “that you just take this shot and you can be as sexually promiscuous as you want.” And the equally loony Family Research Council (James Dobson’s band of self-righteous prigs) says “it would oppose any measures to legally require vaccination.”

Since it is likely to win approval (sounds like there’s at least some integrity left somewhere at the FDA), let’s assume here that the vaccine is as effective as Merck claims. And that it’s safe. It would border on the criminal to withold this vaccine, to ensure that every child receives it at the optimum age to guarantee efficacy. It would be simply insanely stupid to advocate such an idiotic reason as fear of increased promiscuity to oppose its administration to pre-pubescent girls. (Oh, for those of you who like to waste time refuting utterly stupid arguments with facts that are irrelevant to the stupid, it turns out, that according to Discover, there is proof that such vaccinations will not alter the sexual habits of the vaccinated. Duh.)

Obviously, if the vaccine is not as safe or effective as Merck claims, the case for widespread use becomes morally complex. But as it stands, the only reason to oppose this cancer vaccine is because you believe that fucking should harm, if not kill, you. Unless, that is, you refrain from sex until you’ve received a state license to procreate. And you don’t fuck anyone else. Especially if you’re a woman.

If these people have any moral values at all except for a belief in excrutiating punishment and death if you don’t agree to forgo all pleasure by debasing your mind and body by submission to their weird beliefs, I can’t see them. This isn’t morality. Opposition to the wide distribution of a cancer vaccine that is apparently both highly effective and safe is nothing but perversion, pure and simple. To knowingly deny a child prevention against a terrible disease flies in the face of everything I believe in.

[UPDATE: A Spork in the Drawer has some info on how a public discussion on the uselessness of “abstinence only” sex education – for which little positive can be said other than the composition of numerous bad jokes – was forced into a fake semblance of “balance” by Republicans.

Lapfull of Dick

by digby

Richard Cohen got 2,000 mean e-mails and this signals the end of the Democratic party. I’ll leave you to figure out why that should follow. In case Cohen hasn’t noticed nobody on the fucking planet likes squishy faux liberal courtiers. There’s no political downside to hating Richard Cohen.

I do have to highlight one particular passage of this waste of valuable Wapo real estate:

I said the man wasn’t funny and not funny has a bullying quality to it; others (including some of my friends) said he was funny. But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was — as was most of the press, I found out — George W. Bush’s lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap.

Where on earth would anyone get the idea that Cohen might be one of Bush’s lapdogs?

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

Richard Cohen has been upset by the angry mob for some time. And when that happens he inevitably turns to the Republicans to set things right. They are, after all, the “conciliators.” But far be it for me to say he has a political agenda. I frankly don’t think he does. He is just easily upset by human beings who object to being treated like imbeciles by sniffing sycophants like Richard Cohen and don’t feel like taking his condescending shit anymore.

I’m not quite as old as Cohen but I lived through the same era. How pathetic now to see liberals of my generation get so exercised over a few hostile emails. It’s obviously been a while since they felt anything more strongly than irritation at too much foam on their cappucino. They sound exactly like the older generation sounded when we were young — afraid of change and seeing political passion as being “hateful” and dangerous. Baby boomer elites are now that creepy old guy muttering at the kids to stop walking on his lawn or he’ll call the cops.

And by the way, all that “hate ” in 1968 may have upset the Democratic party, but that misbegotten piece of shit war would still be going on if it hadn’t been for those “haters” who were willing to take on their own party when it behaved in an immoral fashion. Cohen’s hero George W. Bush and his followers are too busy playing one-handed “Kill the Islamofascist” XBox in their basements to fix the damned mess their brand name in a suit has made. We of the perpetually angry left will have to step up and do the dirty work one more time.

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Crawling With Liberals

by digby

You can’t make this stuff up.

Yesterday I wrote this:

Today, the CIA is crawling with liberals. The military is crawling with liberals. The Bush administration itself is nothing but a bunch of liberals as must be the GOP congress since they signed off on everything Bush has proposed. The media are, needless to say, nothing but squishy liberals.

The country is going to hell in a handbasket. The president and the congress and all their policies are dramatically unpopular. This, then, is just further proof of the failure of liberalism.

Today, the Nationl Review writes this:

Too often the agency has performed that job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.

And in a terrific rhetorical sleight of hand they then write this:

Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman who once served as an official in the CIA’s clandestine service, was named by President Bush to head up the agency 19 months ago. His primary task was to end its bare-knuckles insurrection and policy interference, and return it to the business of intelligence collection and analysis. His tenure was marked by non-stop turmoil and bickering, as he moved to root out the insurgents and they fought back with a vengeance.

Goss’s sudden ouster is, at best, ill timed. He had merely scratched the problem’s surface. Further, the lack of a clear explanation for his departure is extremely harmful. It is certain to be spun as a coup by the insurgents. Such a perception will only embolden them, laying the groundwork for more leaks—and more damage to national security.

Leftists = Insurgents, the term that is used interchangeably by Republicans with the word “terrorist.”

And by the way, it’s worth mentioning again and again that while the CIA was often wrong during the cold war, it never even came close to being as wrong as the conservatives and necons were wrong, which was completely and totally and comprehensively wrong in every single case. While they continue to conduct their Stalinist purge in the CIA, let’s not forget that.

Porter “Brownie” Goss is about to be succeeded by Michael “Andropov” Hayden. It never gets any better.

Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald for pointing me to this editorial.

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No… Wire… Hangers

by digby

Perhaps this has gotten wide distribution, but I hadn’t seen it before. It’s a personal account of an Ann Coulter appearance at Loyola University in Chicago. It’s amazing. Here’s just a little snippet:

I went to my seat and prepared myself mentally to take in Ms. Coulter objectively. The Loyola Anti-War Network protested her appearance by forming a chain in the back of the auditorium and facing the other way. As soon as Ms. Coulter came out she said, “Since you are feminists, standing makes your butts look really big.” I was a little upset by this comment, but I held my cool. I was stupid and had the college republicans seat me up close so I could get good pictures. Needless to say I was sitting next to some Coulter-lovers who were practically foaming at the mouth in ecstacy with all of Coulter’s comments. All of the protestors were taken out by security. This elevated the level of joy in the Coulter-supporters sitting around me.

Coulter of course went on her usual bloviating saying that Democrats have bumper stickers that say, “I heart partial birth abortion.”

[…]

he protesting from the balcony only increased with time with shouts of “ANN IS A RACIST” to even an immature, yet mildly amusing, call for “Show us your tits.”

Ann addressed her supporters in the crowd with this statement. “You’re men. You’re heterosexuals. Take ’em out.” She chided them further when they did not rise. Before you knew it there was about 25 students marching to the balcony to supposedly “take out” the protestors above. I saw a priest holding students back and deans and security warning the students to go back to their seats. Chaos erupted. Ann left after taking one question. The question was, “How can you justify the marginalization of women when you yourself are a woman?”.

To which Ann replied, “I don’t.”

Does anyone get the feeling that Coulter is on the verge of doing a Joan Crawford turn? Keep her away from the pruning shears.

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