Month: May 2006

If You Build it, They Will Use It

by digby

As Bush continues to push his party over the cliff with this nomination of Michael Hayden, I’d like to look once again at the Hayden quote I posted over the week-end:

I’m disappointed I guess that perhaps the default response for some is to assume the worst. I’m trying to communicate to you that the people who are doing this, okay, go shopping in Glen Burnie and their kids play soccer in Laurel, and they know the law. They know American privacy better than the average American, and they’re dedicated to it. So I guess the message I’d ask you to take back to your communities is the same one I take back to mine. This is focused. It’s targeted. It’s very carefully done. You shouldn’t worry.

This same man, also quoted in that post, became indignant when asked if the NSA was spying on Bush’s political enemies. He seems to truly believe that the nation must trust him and all the other people in the government to do the right thing because they are good people. This is the same attitude we see coming from George W. Bush.

And yet history suggests that we have ample reason to suspect people of using the awesome power of government to spy on political enemies if they are allowed the latitude to do so. Totalitarian systems around the world do it. We’ve had ample evidence of such activity within my own lifetime — in this country. McCarthy, Hoover and Nixon all abused their power this way. General Hayden was alive during that period too. He must know this.

And then, you read things like this:

In the Atlanta suburbs of DeKalb County, local officials wasted no time after the 9/11 attacks. The second-most-populous county in Georgia, the area is home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI’s regional headquarters, and other potential terrorist targets. Within weeks of the attacks, officials there boasted that they had set up the nation’s first local department of homeland security. Dozens of other communities followed, and, like them, DeKalb County put in for – and got – a series of generous federal counterterrorism grants. The county received nearly $12 million from Washington, using it to set up, among other things, a police intelligence unit.

The outfit stumbled in 2002, when two of its agents were assigned to follow around the county executive. Their job: to determine whether he was being tailed – not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they’d written the license-plate number of an undercover car, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now suing the county. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial neatly summed up the incident: “So now we know: Glazed hams are safe in DeKalb County.”

Glazed hams aren’t the only items that America’s local cops are protecting from dubious threats. U.S. News has identified nearly a dozen cases in which city and county police, in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web. Unlike with Washington’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, little attention has been focused on the role of state and local authorities in the war on terrorism.

A U.S.News inquiry found that federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into once discredited state and local police intelligence operations. Millions more have gone into building up regional law enforcement databases to unprecedented levels. In dozens of interviews, officials across the nation have stressed that the enhanced intelligence work is vital to the nation’s security, but even its biggest boosters worry about a lack of training and standards. “This is going to be the challenge,” says Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, “to ensure that while getting bin Laden we don’t transgress over the law. We’ve been burned so badly in the past – we can’t do that again.”

Chief Bratton is referring to the infamous city “Red Squads” that targeted civil rights and antiwar groups in the 1960s and 1970s (Page 48). Veteran police officers say no one in law enforcement wants a return to the bad old days of domestic spying. But civil liberties watchdogs warn that with so many cops looking for terrorists, real and imagined, abuses may be inevitable. “The restrictions on police spying are being removed,” says attorney Richard Gutman, who led a 1974 class action lawsuit against the Chicago police that obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of intelligence files. “And I don’t think you can rely on the police to regulate themselves.”

Good or bad, intelligence gathering by local police departments is back. Interviews with police officers, homeland security officials, and privacy experts reveal a transformation among state and local law enforcement.

Read the whole article for a litany of abuses by state and local officials that will make your hair stand on end. Everything changed on 9/11 all right, not the least of which is the fact that the federal government began pouring huge sums of money into policing with no guidelines, no oversight and a simple directive to “find the terrorists.” The ramifications of this are potentially staggering.

And since big money is involved, you can bet that we are not going to find a lot of support from politicians of any stripe. This is totalitarian pork we’re talking about and there’s probably no putting the piglet back in the pigpen. This is “Jerry” Bremer’s CPA accounting methods brought home to America. The foundation of the American police state is in place.

We could, of course, demand that the feds issue strict guidelines, follow the money and ensure that civil liberties are not being abused thorough rigorous oversight and accountability. Needless to say, there is no leadership from the top about this. Bush’s choice to head the CIA is another guy who says “trust us” we’re good people who would never do anything wrong. His boss, John Negroponte, is a certifiable war criminal.

I’m sure this guy thinks he’s a good guy too:

The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, a $7 million fusion center run by the state Department of Justice, also ran into trouble in 2003 when it warned of potential violence at an antiwar protest at the port of Oakland. Mike Van Winkle, then a spokesman for the center, explained his concern to the Oakland Tribune: “You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act.”

He was reprimanded by the Democratic Attorney General of California for saying this, but do you think he’s the only one who thinks this way? All you have to do is read Little Green Footballs to see that many people have that attitude. They celebrate when peace activists are beheaded in Iraq. Is it not entirely likely that there are thousands of cops throughout the country, armed with a ton of new toys and lots of funds, who are going to go “terrorist hunting” among the people that Rush Limbaugh and his compatriots make millions deriding as enemies of the state?

I don’t know whether Michael Hayden or any of the people who work for the NSA and CIA believe that those who protest the Iraq war can be seen as terrorists, but I’m quite sure that if they do, it would not alter their view of themselves as good patriots who are guarding the civil liberties of all Americans. That’s why it cannot be left in their hands, or the hands of the local police or the pentagon or anyone else to decide on their own what constitutes reasonable grounds to spy on their fellow citizens. You cannot judge such things based upon one man’s vision of himself as being a “good” person.

How utterly foolish Americans are if they are willing to depend solely upon the decency of people in power to protect them:

Civil liberties watchdogs like attorney Gutman, meanwhile, want to know how efforts to stop al Qaeda have ended up targeting animal rights advocates, labor leaders, and antiwar protesters. “You’ve got all this money and all this equipment – you’re going to find someone to use it on,” he warns

James Madison and others of his time were shrewd observers of their fellow men. He wrote this famous passage in Federalist 51:

What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Update: Predictably, there also this: A Politicized Internal Revenue Service Examining Progressive Nonprofits

I’m sure the IRS cronies who have launched these probes all believe they are “good” too. No politics of any kind are being practiced. Move along.

.

Krugman

by tristero

Fantastic:

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren’t part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn’t do such a thing.

The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like ‘loopy conspiracy theories’ are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review’s Web site, want to ‘confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree.’ Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; ‘It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again,’ said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration’s harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can’t handle the truth. They won’t admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left – which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe – the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won’t blame those who led us into the quagmire; they’ll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

Beautiful Monday

by digby

Here’s a little piece of news to start your week off with a bang. The good kind. (Well, not that good…)

From Newshounds:

TVNewser reports

“Young viewers just don’t watch The O’Reilly Factor like they used to. April marked Bill O’Reilly’s lowest-rated month in the 25-54 demographic since August 2001.*

His 415,000 demo viewers in March was a new low, but O’Reilly managed to lose a few more in April, averaging 412,000 in the demo. Here’s his post-Katrina track:

Sept: 1,115 / Oct: 518 / Nov: 468 / Dec: 460 / Jan: 472 / Feb: 458 / Mar: 415

But this trend started long before the hurricane. for O’Reilly, April’s numbers reflected his lowest demo rating in almost five years.

Among total viewers, O’Reilly delivered a respectable 2,102,000 million viewers for the month. But that, too, was low — the lowest, in fact, since July of 2004 (when he had 2,042,000). Click here to feast your eyes on O’Reilly’s monthly averages since 2001…”

* Notable that O’Reilly, like his president “Trifecta”, benefitted from the attacks of September 11th.

And in case you’re wondering, Keith Olbermann’s 25-54 numbers were up to 242,000 for April, continuing to climb. I’m just saying.

I’ve actually been tuning in once in a while because I don’t want to miss the inevitable full-on Howard Beale meltdown. They must be making book in Vegas.

More Fun:

Ever since Stephen Colbert opened his mouth at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner and pointedly mocked Bush in front of Bush, online buzz on the fake newsman has reached scalding temperatures. The response started with a kind of did-he-really-do-that shock. Then it escalated into furious takes on whether Colbert was funny or not, why the mainstream media blew it off, and how the great blogosphere struck back—or just seized another opportunity to parade its own virtues.

There’s a boulder-coming-at-Indiana Jones quality to the story now. Searches on the eyebrow-raising comedian are up 5,625% this week and picking up speed. Trajectories for “Colbert speech” and “colbert video” are racing off the chart. And “The Colbert Report,” its fan site Colbert Nation, and the newly created ThankYouStephenColbert.org also launched upward in Buzz.

In one corner of the Search ring, we saw gratitude toward the Comedy Central smarty-pants. What’s in the opposite corner, looking to cuff him? We noted searches for “colbert roasts bush,” “colbert bush,” and “bush dinner.” But no DamnYouStephenColbert.org or “bush looks ready to throttle colbert” (although he did).

Two of the characters wielded by Colbert that night also jumped in Buzz. Veteran reporter and Bush haranguer Helen Thomas, who costarred in the performance-closing video, leapt in searches. And outed CIA agent Valerie Plame spiked 262%. So, will the White House get revenge against the fake pundit and his phony news show? Let’s just hope his wife is no undercover spook.

The word on the street is that Colbert is a MySpace phenomenon too, which may be part of what’s driving this. Whether or not you think it was funny — it has become a certified internet event. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

.

Embarrassing Us All, As Usual

by digby

Reader RM translated the first part of Bush’s German magazine interview for your reading pleasure. Try to keep your eyes from rolling back in your head. He mentions once again that he knows nothing about the carpet, leaving out the fascinating detail that he “delegated” the chore of picking it out to Laura. I do not know why he finds this story so interesting.

“This Office is the Shrine of Democracy”

BILD and BILD am SONTAG in the White House! For 45 minutes the most powerful man of the world took the questions of BamS publisher and BILD editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann.

But the president didn’t only give a big interview – he also led us personally through most famous office of the world: the Oval Office!

Washington, 2 o’clock local time. The creme door opens. US President George W. Bush greets BILD head Kai Diekmann and BILD second Jörg Quoos with a firm handshake.

Bush wears a dark-blue suit with thin brown stripes, a light blue shirt, a blue-striped tie. On the reverse: a pin with the US flag, also the dial of the simple golden clock shows the flag.

The Oval Office is classically, simply furnished. Before the fire-place two striped armchairs, next to them two creme sofas, a dark wooden living room table.

Bright sunlight falls through the low-earth(?) bullet-proof glass panes, through which the president can look into the enormous garden of the White House.

Bush points at the crème-colored carpet woven with the US coat of arms, and says laughing: “I have no inkling about carpets.

In order to be a successful president, you must constantly think strategically. And therefore I said to my wife: You select the colors, you are responsible for the policy, but I want the carpet to spread optimism. Here lay the results. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Then the president points to the slightly curved wall, on which oil paintings with Texas motif landscapes hang. “They reflect the lifestyle and viewpoint of a Texan.”

Bushs view falls on the large portrait of George Washington over the white fireplace. It shows the first President of the USA as a rider. Bush: “I read three or four books about him in the last year. Isn’t it interesting that they still analyze the presidency of George
Washington?”

Then he adds thoughtfully: “you never know as a president, how your history will be written – until after your departure. Therefore presidents should not think about their historical image. You must do what you consider correct! And if you think in categories that are large enough, history at the end will show whether you were right or wrong.”

The president points to a smaller picture showing Abraham Lincoln: “I think, he was the most influential president of all times.

In the middle of civil war, in which Americans killed Americans, he had the vision of the United States. It is even conceivable that this country at the end would have disintegrated into two states, if he had not had this clear vision.”

Bush explains, moved, what this office means to him. “It is a shrine of democracy. This room is respected and esteemed, because the office of the President is larger than the person who holds the office.

Some presidents forget that they are not larger than their office. But all presidents must always respect their office and remember that it is their holy obligation to maintain the honour of the presidency.”

Suddenly Bush stops and says very seriously:

“I know that in parts of Europe some make fun of my beliefs! That does not disturb me. But for me personally faith is a way to guarantee that my moral concepts remain intact.”

“While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. ‘Did you meet with any of them?’ I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. ‘No, I didn’t meet with any of them,’ he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. ‘I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’

‘What was her answer?’ I wonder.

‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.'”

.

There’s Something Truly You-Know-What About This Story

by tristero

Bush claims he caught a 7 1/2 pound perch* in his very own lake.

Yeah, right. Gotta picture? But just for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s true (but see below). He really did catch that large a fish and that was his happiest moment in five years. Does he realize what this says about him and his presidency?

With all the daily opportunities available to do such good for your fellow country-folk, and the world, the only thing Bush specifically mentioned that made him happy is catching a big fish. In his own lake. Which could very well be deliberately stocked with big fish.

There are, imo, only three ways to understand this comment, assuming it’s true. Quite possibly it’s the pathetic whine of a deeply, perhaps clinically. depressed man who believes himself a total failure. Or maybe this is a man so uninterested in his job, let alone in serving his country, that he has no business whatsoever being president. Or perhaps this is simply an arrogant bastard who holds in utter contempt anyone who dares to ask him a question, so he responds with the stupidest thing he can say. (Obviously, nothing precludes all three or some combination of two.)

To be all pre-emptive about it, someone’s bound to comment that maybe this just shows how much of a down-to-earth regular guy Bush is. Yeah? All the down-to-earth regular guys I know don’t have their own lake, fer chrissakes. Those people are filthy rich, even if they wear jeans on their estates. But there’s a character thing here, too. The down-to-earth people I know who hold important jobs are mighty proud of of what they do and mighty happy with their achievements. And they can tick them off without thinking too hard about what they might be. And, even as a joke, they don’t talk about catching a big perch when a newspaper asks them to name their best moment in more than five years. They name their accomplishments. Or, if they’re trying to play up the down-to-earthiness, they name their children or something they did with their spouse.

Oh, by the way, check this out. Turns out the BBC also has an article about the same Bild am Sonntag story. Here is more of what the president of the United States said to the German press:

In a more serious moment, he said he understood German opposition to the war in Iraq.

“The Germans today simply don’t like war… And I can understand that.

“There is a generation of people whose lives were thrown into complete disarray by a horrible war.”

It’s sad, isn’t it? I count at least two reasons weep your eyes out after reading this.

First of all, who knew? The Germans today simply don’t like war. Unlike we Americans, who still really, really dig war. That poor, traumatized country. They have no idea all the good times they’re missing.

But more importantly, we have a president who actually said to a German newspaper, “The Germans today simply don’t like war…” That’s why everyone I know who travels abroad makes a point of telling the people they meet within twenty seconds that they didn’t vote for George W. Bush, ever. I’m far from ashamed to be an American, but I’m thoroughly ashamed that this malicious moron is the leader of my country.

(And let’s pass over in silence that the generation thrown into complete disarray is retired. Or that that horrible war, unlike the pretty good war in Iraq, was in fact started by the Germans).

But we digress. Let’s get back, shall we, to whether or not we should believe Bush actually caught a perch weighing 7.5 pounds. (See update at the *) I’d like to caveat this by saying I am not a fisherman, so if I’m wrong, please correct me.

It is true: the perch record in Texas is for a 12 pound 1 ounce Nile Perch caught in 1980, . But I gather that’s very small, actually, for a Nile Perch (the fish itself is, via its introduction where it’s not supposed to be, a textbook example of an ecological disaster). So if Bush caught a Nile Perch in his own lake, that is nothing to brag about.

But here may be the smoking fish. According to this link of perch fishing records, which goes to 2003, the heaviest perch officially caught in the US (besides the Nile mentioned above) was a Sacramento Perch from 1971 weighing 4 pounds, nine ounces.

LIke I said, I don’t know enough about fishing to know whether I’ve been swimming up the wrong stream. But even if I”m way wrong, I wanna see a photo of this fish Bush is all boasting about catching all over the world.

One last thing: A long time ago, when the country was led by a qualified and patriotic American, Candidate George W. Bush memorably said, “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

Well, if you believe the president’s latest fish tale, apparently not.

Hat tip to Peter Daou.

[Edited slightly after original posting.]

[UPDATE: More proof that Bush never did believe that human beings and fish could peacefully coexist. Check it out:

A story on the front page of today’s paper reports that “the Bush administration proposes to roll back ‘critical habitat’ for the ever-declining salmon and steelhead trout by 90%. Developers applaud the plan.” Who on earth could possibly think this is a good idea? Do millions of Bush supporters have some personal vendetta against fish? Does Bush have something against fish? Like I said, it’s a mystery. I don’t understand the country or the times that I’m living in.

]

Update: Digby here, rudely horning in on tristero’s post.

Julia from Sisyphus Shrugged emailed me with this little gem from January of 2003:

THE PRESIDENT: This is pretty good (inaudible) in there.

Q Is this man-made, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Man-made.

Q How many acres?

THE PRESIDENT: About 11 acres lake, 17 foot deep. The deepest spot, I put 600 black bass in there a few years ago, and about 30,000 bait fish. And they’re about two-and-a-half to three pounds now. A bad time to fish, because the fish are lethargic during the cold. We’ve got blue gill and shad and perch.

*[UPDATE: According to Salon, it was a large-mouthed bass. According to the commenters to this post, catching a 7 1/2 pound bass in an artificial lake stocked with bass is not a big deal. A few points:

1. I still wanna see a pic of that fish before I’ll believe it.

2. One of the trackbacks informs us that Bush was laughing when he boasted of this. As if that makes it any less bizarre a statement – that’s just the old “I’m jes’ regular folks” nonsense Bush pulls, to distract people from the fact that he’s a rich prick who has an artificial lake stocked with sport fishes on his private estate.

On the other hand, Salon also reports that Bush feels that part of the toughest moment of the past five years was trying to “be empathetic for those who had lost lives.” I believe that. Bush has always had problems empathizing with people and I’m sure it was real tough for him to try to do that.

3. Notice, in Digby’s update to this post that Bush is quite specific about the number of Bass and bait fish added to his pond. He is also clear and his thinking is organized. A far contrast to when he is talking about taxes or anything connected with the job of being president. Fishing: Bush really cares about that and pays attention.

4. The translation issue here is a minor one – in fact, obviously the whole thing is trivial when measured against the monstrous problems Bush has created and lied about. But it does highlight how important language fluency is, and that reminds me, again, that those who don’t speak Arabic or Persian well have no business passing themselves off as experts on the Middle East. They may be knowledgeable about US foreign policy towards the Middle East, but they are in no better position to make specific reccomendations about what to do than I am. They really don’t know what they are dealing with, only how the US has dealt with the Middle East, which is a very different matter.]

.

“Real Conservatism Has Never Been Tried”

by digby

That has a kind of familiar ring to it doesn’t it? Get used to this new permutation of a very old trope. It’s about to enter the lexicon. Predictably, like the Trotskyites about whom the fathers of the modern conservative movement obsessed, (and the fathers of the neocons were) the modern conservatives are reaching the point at which that sad rationalization is all they have to hang on to.

There is a very interesting discussion taking place all over the left blogosphere about how the conservatives have discovered that the entire Republican establishment, particularly the George W. Bush administration, are liberals. Glenn Greenwald has been directly taking on Jonah Goldberg on this subject (which is something like my cat “taking on” his toy mouse), Hunter at DKos has written a lengthy and fascinating explication of the process, and Kevin Drum, in a different vein, discusses political Lysenkoism as the consequence of conservative loyalty over policy.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that I’ve been talking about this for some time as well (here, here and here) as has my pal Rick Perlstein, an expert on the conservative movement, who went into the belly of the beast last fall and talked about it right in front of the grand poohbahs of the conservative movement. (An academic version of the Colbert Miracle, IMO.)

This has been percolating for a while, but is now exploding in full effect as the fog of 9/11 lifts and Bush’s failure becomes manifestly obvious to the vast majority of Americans, including many who voted for him.

This is still a work in progress. The “L” word is being hurled about willy-nilly at anyone who looks at a self-described “conservative” sideways these days, especially fellow conservatives.

Going back to the days when the it failed to back up the Committee For A Present Danger predictions that the Soviets were planning to kill all of us in our beds any day now, the CIA has been seen by the Cheney cabal as a determinedly cowardly bunch of liberal elites who refused to see the true dangers lurking in the world — a problem they were determined to finally fix by naming loyal GOP hack Porter “Brownie” Goss to purge the institution of all non-believers. (Never mind the fact that while the CIA was often wrong — the Cheney cabal and the neecons were never, ever right.)

“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”

And how about those retired generals who spoke out against Rumsfeld? As Rhandi Rhodes said, they are all a bunch of acid loving hippies:

Nothing inspires liberals in the press more than the opportunity to glorify liberals in uniform. Conservative military or ex-military types are just jingoistic hacks. But those critical of the military in general or of the Iraq War qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize or Time’s Man of the Year.

“Liberal” you see, is the all purpose epithet used to insult anyone who crosses a self identified conservative — no matter what their politics. It is a particular fighting word when used against people who consider also themselves conservatives. (Remember how fiesty Bush go when McCain “dared” to compare him to Clinton?)

As we all know, conservatism itself cannot fail. It can only be failed. And it isn’t just the mediocre conservatives think tank intellectuals who believe this. Here’s a commmenter on the blog Parapundit writing about Bush and the US Military:

It would still be possible to win if Junior was willing to brutally prosecute the war, as Roosevelt or Truman would have done. It is clear now that Shrub is way too liberal for that. It is not clear if he could have gotten away with it even if he was not a modern liberal. It is not clear if US Army is capable of prosecuting a brutal war now (but Marines probably could do it), way too many officers are squishy liberals in various stages.

This is a version of my father’s favorite Vietnam War rant, taken one step further. He never blamed the military — he said they’d had their hands tied behind their backs and should have been allowed to bomb the Viet Kong back to the stone age. Now the conventional wisdom is that the Army has been infiltrated with cowardly liberals who couldn’t prosecute a real war if they had to.

(Notice too that Truman and Roosevelt are much less liberal than Bush. But then they are seen by history as successes and that means they can’t actually be liberals.)

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.

The only thing that can save us is conservatism.

.

Spinning Class

By digby

Referring to Laura Rozen’s provocative post (linked below) Kevin Drum wonders what’s up with the press corps. Why are they buying this pile of sliced and diced baloney?

Two words: Tony Snow.

They are giving him “the benefit of the doubt.” He’s a nice guy. They are establishing a new relationship — it wouldn’t be nice to be skeptical of him before he’s even had a chance to prove them wrong.

Snow knows exactly how to feed the cocktail weenies to the little baby birds waiting to be fed pre-masticated explanations that they can say are “insider” scoops.

Tony Snow was Linda Tripp’s good friend. He put her in touch with Lucianne Goldberg. He’s a member of the club.

.

That’s The Ticket

by digby

Laura Rozen raises all the right questions about this Porter Goss snowjob. I too found it a bit hard to swallow that the reason he was forced out was because of his fierce loyalty to the CIA in his turf wars with Negroponte. His rep was just the opposite — he was a wrecking crew at langley. It’s possible that both could be true, but Rozen points out all the reasons for skepticism, and there are a lot of them:

So then he was forced out on very short notice? No notification to the House Intelligence committee? Not a single newspaper report in the past few months about the tension between Goss and Negroponte? (Indeed check out the recent coverage about Congressional raised eyebrows over the empire Negroponte is building, and his alleged visits to a fancy DC club for swim and cigar breaks). On the contrary, can anyone remember a single article about Goss fighting for his folks at the Agency?

I don’t. Much of the operative camp of the Agency perceived Goss as a political enforcer, someone who wasn’t just not looking out for them, but who almost leaned towards suspicion of them, someone who was rather passive and out of touch and who delegated day to day affairs to his staff, “the Gosslings,” led by the fiercely partisan Patrick Murray. I don’t believe I have ever heard from people in that world a sense that Goss was looking out for them or the Agency, and not seen a single article where anyone ever suggested that. The newspaper coverage has suggested rather that a lot of the experienced bench strength cadre at the Agency had left in fights with Goss and his staff during his rocky tenure, and that the Agency had never been more demoralized. So all that time, during all those departures, Goss was covertly fighting for his folks against the new intel reorganization? He was a misunderstood champion of the Agency?

Does something about this story line that Goss suddenly left because of his long-standing tension with Negroponte, his fraternity brother from Yale, over Goss fighting to hold CIA turf seem a bit canned to you?

(More…)

Yeah. With botulism inside. I suspect this is Snow taking out his new toy for a spin — and the press corps, thrilled to give the Bush administration a 276th chance, have all piled in the back seat.

.

Heckuva Limo

by digby

The limousine company run by a convicted felon who ferried the Dukestir to his poker games and inexplicably won 25 million dollars in Homeland Security Department contracts denies ever bringing hookers to the parties. That’s a relief.

You have to read this article to believe it:

Shirlington Limousine had financial troubles for years before winning two transportation contracts from the Department of Homeland Security in 2004 and 2005 worth $25 million. Department officials said that Baker’s company was not the low bidder on either contract, but that they were awarded for “best value,” based on Shirlington Limousine’s past performance and technical ability.

Homeland Security officials said they did not know that Shirlington Limousine lost a contract for shuttle bus service with Howard University in 2002 amid charges of poor service. Baker did not cite the university contract on his bid proposal, despite instructions to list recent contracts involving similar services.

If Homeland Security had known about the Howard contract or other previous financial problems of the company and its owner, officials said, Shirlington Limousine’s bidding score might have been lower — but not necessarily enough to give the contract to a competitor.

Officials said Baker’s criminal record, which includes numerous misdemeanors and two felony convictions, would not have affected the company’s bid. When the agency contracts with a company, officials said, they do not check the criminal backgrounds of its executives — nor do they run their names against the government’s terrorist watch list. In Shirlington Limousine’s case, only the drivers’ backgrounds were checked.

Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general for Homeland Security, said the vetting process was badly flawed because it left security gaps and failed to turn up readily available information about Shirlington Limousine’s finances and performance.

“At best,” he said, the agency was guilty of “really, really poor — textbook poor — due diligence.”

No kidding. I’m beginning to think Brownie was the cream of the crop.

This is the kind of thing that makes you very comfortable giving the executive branch unfettered power. Aside from the principles involved, they are just so good at the job of “pertektin’ the Amurikin people.”

.

The War On Fucking

by tristero

It’s not online yet, but the Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long, and I mean very long, article detailing the rightwing’s attempt to limit access, if not entirely ban, contraception. Those of us who’ve been saying all along that the pro-coathanger crowd aren’t anti-abortion but anti-sex were, of course, right. The right is trying to start a discussion as to whether it is possible to be a Christian and use a condom – and not only if you’re Catholic, mind you. Tellingly, the White House won’t respond to the question as to whether or not George W. Bush believes in the use of contraception.

Me, I don’t think the article, at least as much as I’ve read of it, goes far enough. So-called “Christian” sex manuals go into considerable detail as to what intimate activities are permitted or not – to opposite-gender married couples only, naturally. Speaking about one rather popular leisure activity, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, “don’t recommend or advocate oral sex” but they can find nothing in the Bible that prevents a married couple from “enjoying” it. Actually, this is a bit of a dodge, because if you read what Tim LaHaye has to say elsewhere, it’s clear he finds oral sex disgusting. These clowns not only want to limit sex to state-approved coupling, but also dictate to the rest of us where we can put our lips, vulvas, penises, hands, asses, and breasts. And if we don’t do sex their way, we are immoral. They fervently hope, once again, we’ll be subject to arrest.

Oh, about the title of this post. I originally was going to call it “The war on sex,” but changed my mind because that simply isn’t accurate. It is fucking the rightwing opposes. The ecstatic, transgressive, transcendent, life-affirming, overwhelmingly selfish and also ego-obliterating ecstasy that is sex.

It is this the rightwing wants to deny us. And they can go to hell. Because what else could hell be but a place that bans fucking?