Month: May 2006

Digby Scoops NY Times

by tristero

Well, well, well. Finally, the New York Times noticed the article in the Boston Globe that Digby linked to on April 30, about Bush’s infamous signing statements. I told a couple of people in the meatworld about this, including My Smart Spouse, who don’t follow the crimes of this administration closely, and they found it very hard to believe Bush was that imperious. But he is, my friends, so much so that even the Times can’t fail to notice it anymore:

President Bush doesn’t bother with vetoes; he simply declares his intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750 “presidential signing statements” declaring he wouldn’t do what the laws required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners.

In this area, as in so many others, Mr. Bush has decided not to take the open, forthright constitutional path. He signed some of the laws in question with great fanfare, then quietly registered his intention to ignore them. He placed his imperial vision of the presidency over the will of America’s elected lawmakers. And as usual, the Republican majority in Congress simply looked the other way…

The founding fathers never conceived of anything like a signing statement. The idea was cooked up by Edwin Meese III, when he was the attorney general for Ronald Reagan, to expand presidential powers. He was helped by a young lawyer who was a true believer in the unitary presidency, a euphemism for an autocratic executive branch that ignores Congress and the courts. Unhappily, that lawyer, Samuel Alito Jr., is now on the Supreme Court…

Like many of Mr. Bush’s other imperial excesses, this one serves no legitimate purpose. Congress is run by a solid and iron-fisted Republican majority. And there is actually a system for the president to object to a law: he vetoes it, and Congress then has a chance to override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

That process was good enough for 42 other presidents. But it has the disadvantage of leaving the chief executive bound by his oath of office to abide by the result. This president seems determined not to play by any rules other than the ones of his own making. And that includes the Constitution.

In Barbara Kopple’s great documentary on Woody Allen’s Dixieland band’s tour of Italy, there’s a scene where the band plays its heart out in an Italian town. Kopple cuts to the audience to get their reaction, and the audience is just sitting there, expressing as much emotion as if they were watching a lecture on the industrial uses of zinc. The band plays even more ecstatically, but the audience remains unmoved.

After the concert, the Mayor of the Italian town goes to Woody’s dressing room to congratulate him. He smiles ear to ear – he’s talking to il Maestro! And he’s dazzled. Pissed off at the tepid reaction, Woody decides to avoid the usual exchange of compliments: “Such a pleasure to be in your charming town!” but instead waxes sarcastic, pulling out all the stops, something like, “Oh yes, what a wonderfully responsive audience! Why there were several times I could swear they were so moved I heard a couple of them tapping a foot or two.”

The mayor continues to beam. He knows enough English to understand exactly what Allen said. But the Mayor is so starstruck and Allen’s nasty comments are so far beyond the conventions of congratulatory discourse with entertainters that he can’t hear them. Woody, fully confident that his celebrity will insulate him from a bop on the nose, continues to get away with insulting the Mayor’s town to his face.

And that’s a little like Bush and the signing statements. Presidents of the United States don’t do things like that. They just don’t. There is nothing in American history that prepares us for a president who acts like he’s Louis XIV. Not even the odious Nixon. And so, Bush blithely issues his signing statements, telling the country over and over and over that he simply has no intention whatsoever of obeying any law he doesn’t like. And the country not only doesn’t bother to notice. The country doesn’t have the political/cultural framework to notice. Look, Bush’s signing statements can’t be compared to those of a tinpot autocrat. We’re talking the United States of America here, the very symbol of democracy – remember government of the people, etc etc?. So whatever he’s up to and as much as you dislike him personally, the president of the United States is not a fascist dictator, relying on his personal charisma to do anything he wants to. Of course, he respects and obeys the Constitution, no matter what the signing statements say.

Wake up, boys and girls.

If, at the moment, this president has reserved torture and long imprisonment without trial primarily for non-US citizens, or for deeply marginalized citizens like Padilla (Hispanic, a felon, and a Muslim), there is nothing to prevent either Bush, or some other crackpot, from extending such practices to members of the larger population they don’t particularly like. For example, liberals. Or the “wrong kind” of Hispanics.

Or maybe in the future, the president will follow the logic of the Pat Robertsons, decide that abortion really is murder, and have women stand trial for 1st degree homicide. And there’s nothing to stop Bush, or any future US president, from unilaterally deciding – as per the dictator in “Bananas” – that all US citizens must change their underwear twice a day; therefore, all underwear will worn on the outside, “so we can check.”

Why not? Think it’s so implausible?

If you had told me in 1999 that, by 2006, an American president could openly declare that he had no intention of obeying 750 bills he had signed into law, including a law ordering the US to refrain from torture, I would have assumed you’d been Bogarting one two many j’s from Tim Leary’s private stash. But it’s happened. If, back then, you had told me that the governor of Florida would try to kidnap a brain-dead patient, nearly sparking an armed confrontation between state and local officials, and that that governor was the president’s brother, I would have agreed with you, not tried to get you any more psychotic, and backed away very, very carefully until I was safe enough to run and call 911 to bring Thorazine and restraints, stat. But that, too, happened.

Slowly, but not stealthily, the movement of the American government away from any semblance of democracy towards some kind of fascism shows every indication it will continue apace.* The only serious setback I know of to this trend was Kitzmiller v. Dover. And that was only because a christianist-infected schoolboard jumped the gun and moved a few years too soon, probably because its leader had become addled from an oxycontin addiction.

The 2006 elections are crucial – even in its weakened state, can the Bush administration and the Republicans maintain their vice grip (literally) on the government? If they can, it will become exceedingly difficult – next to impossible – for this country to reverse its tracks and recover. Even if Republicans do lose a house of Congress, it remains to be seen whether Democrats have the will, and the skill, to lead this country back from the abyss. The politics of national opposition to Bushism are exceedingly complex, as Kevin Phillips’ book points out (that’s an optimistic reading of it).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. These upcoming elections, let’s return to them. Krugman has made the point over and over that there are so many crimes the Republican leadership has committed that they have a tremendous incentive to do whatever it takes to remain in power, if for no other reason than to avoid long incarceration. It is going to a long, ugly, expensive, and potentially dangerous summer for the United States. But it cannot be avoided and all of you need to vote, to get involved with campaigns you feel you can support (even if they are not perfect), and to get your friends and neighbors to go to the polls to vote these bastards out.

*To continue that hypothetical lookback: If, back in ’99, you had told me I would write a sentence like that, I would have laughed uproariously. The very notion that I would be that involved and have such a “radical,” pessimistic attitude! But I have, because I’m convinced the country’s federal government – and many state governments as well – have moved to the extreme right of American politics. Let’s not forget John Ashcroft with his white supremacist ties, my friends. Or the Hitler-admiring piece of trash that governs California, due to the recall of a Democrat and a special election.

Every Picture Tells A Story

by digby

Today I am breaking down the formidable Chinese Wall of the Hullabaloo Empire to editorially endorse my favorite advertiser, Michael Shaw at BagNewsNotes whose work this week is outstanding.

First,he has a take on Joe Lieberman that is both funny and inspired: Holy Joe as man-boy, which explains why he and Lil’ Junior get along so well. (It also explains his fear of sex.)

Without a better way of understanding such things, most people attribute the Lieberman – Bush attraction to a combination of political expedience and shared ideology. However, I think it’s more psychological than that.

When you look at relationships — be they marriages, or the working kind — you tend to find people with generally equivalent degrees of moral and emotional development. (To understand “delayed” moral development, you need only look at the way this country has been governed over the past five years. For example, you find a lot of black-and-white thinking, such as “good” versus “bad” and “us” versus “them”; a preoccupation with authority and obedience; and dramatic, self-centered acts mostly rationalized after the fact.)

Delayed moral advancement tends to go hand-in-hand with the lower rungs of emotional maturity. In kids trapped in adult bodies, you tend to see silliness substituting for wit; awkwardness in the place of poise; passion masquerading as love; aggression covering for strength; and rituals standing in for originality.

[…]

When the Senator says he will run as an independent if he gets knocked off in the Democratic primary, he’s not making a thoughtful judgement, he’s throwing a hissy fit. When Lieberman cozies up to Bush and the two embrace in the Senate chamber, the best analogy is not two mature gay men so much as innocent and excited children recognizing a possible new playmate from the other side of town.

It’s important to click the link so you can see the hilarious visual analysis that accompanies the story.

BagNews also covers the Colbert Miracle from the prespective of duelling screenshots of The Man and the president at the dinner, dissects the Flight 93 trailer, finds the poetry in the rally for Darfur and takes us back to New Orleans with more pictures from the great photographer Alan Chin.

And, by the way, BagNews is also up for best Political Blog in the Webby Awards, which is quite the honor. You can register to vote, here, if you haven’t already. The balloting closes on Friday night. Bagnews is one of the most original blogs out there. His analysis of politics and culture through pictures is incredibly valuable in a culture where “politics is TV with the sound turned off.” Michael has also been a great friend of the left blogosphere, (this blog in particular) buying ads since the dawn of our little venture always creating innovative and interesting visuals for any blogs that feature them. If you have a chance today to go over and vote for BagNews, it would be a nice affirmation of great blogging by a great guy.

.

Lapdogs

by tristero

Salon has a nice, extended excerpt from what looks like a great book, Boehlert’s Lapdogs. This leaped out at me:

In truth, Bush never could have ordered the invasion of Iraq — never could have sold the idea at home — if it weren’t for the help he received from the MSM, and particularly the stamp of approval he received from so-called liberal media institutions such as the Washington Post, which in February of 2003 alone, editorialized in favor of war nine times. (Between September 2002 and February 2003, the paper editorialized twenty-six times in favor of the war.) The Post had plenty of company from the liberal East Coast media cabal, with high-profile columnists and editors — the newfound liberal hawks — at the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, the New Republic and elsewhere all signing on for a war of preemption. By the time the invasion began, the de facto position among the Beltway chattering class was clearly one that backed Bush and favored war. Years later the New York Times Magazine wrote that most “journalists in Washington found it almost inconceivable, even during the period before a fiercely contested midterm election [in 2002], that the intelligence used to justify the war might simply be invented.” Hollywood peace activists could conceive it, but serious Beltway journalists could not? That’s hard to believe. More likely journalists could conceive it but, understanding the MSM unspoken guidelines — both social and political — were too timid to express it at the time of war. (Emphasis added.)

Let’s assume Boehlert is right, that without the press playing along, Bush couldn’t have gotten away with invading Iraq. That argues for leaving no stone unturned to make sure the press doesn’t roll over for Iran.

(Note to rightwingnuts and other cognitively defective types: I’m NOT suggesting that the press should suppress prowar voices. I’m advocating that the press simply should do its job, which is critically to report a wide spectrum of information and viewpoints about Iran, to analyze what’s reported, and to investigate on their own. Which, to be kind, they did not do in re Iraq.)

However, I’m not entirely sure that Boehlert is, in fact, right. I remember 2002 and early 2003 quite well. This country had gone insane with fear after 9/11. Friends of mine, lifelong liberals, believed every word Bush said and were perfectly happy to believe that Saddam was somehow involved with 9/11. Had the press reported the truth, Bush would have demonized the press and invaded anyway, imo. Had Congress objected, Bush would have ignored them and invaded anyway. He made it quite clear in the spring/summer of 2002 that he believed he had the legal right to invade Iraq without consulting Congress; the resolution in the fall of 2002 was, from Bush’s standpoint, simply redundant. And what the UN does is irrelevant.

Nevertheless, things are different now. The military is publicly dissenting from Iran. The CIA is unlikely to be the fall guy for fixed intelligence given how they were dealt with over Iraq. The Republican Party is interested in winning in the fall elections and they seem to be calculating that opposition to Bush is more likely to play well than signing on without reservations to an Iran bang bang. And Tony Blair isn’t doing very well, either, so the coalition of the willing dodge won’t work this time.

It is extremely important, if you want the US to avert another war, for the feet of American reporters to be held to the fire by the public to report Iran in a truthful But imo, the forceful opposition of the military, Republican candidates, and perhaps the intelligence services to Bush’s jones for war will be just as, if not more, decisive. Note that I truly don’t think Bush – meaning the Bush administration – cares what the country wants; therefore the low poll numbers don’t factor into the decision to initiate a first strike nuclear attack on Iran.* Bush is confident, and probably correctly so, that at least 50.1% of the country will support what he does when the bombs start to fall and that is all that matters.** Of course, Democrats can be safely ignored, as always. And since, to Bush, the press is merely an especially obnoxious species of Democrat, they don’t matter, either.

Remember: he’s The Decider. He decides what’s best. And it is what’s best because he decided it was. The rest of us are, like it or not, along for the ride. That’s the problem with living in an authoritarian state, even one that doesn’t resort – despite Volokh’s fervent desires – to the public torture of its criminals before killing them. You really cannot affect its politics or influence its behavior very much. And if it frightens you to think that the fate of your country, if not the world, rests on the outcome of a desperate power struggle between a goddammed malicious idiot, the Joint Chiefs, the calculations of corrupt Republican politicians and no one else in the world, then… Welcome to the 21st Century, my friends. This ain’t your father’s Missile Crisis.

*Imo, I think it’s beyond serious doubt that if Bush is not stopped, the attack on Iran will be pre-emptive and include nuclear weapons. Both Hersh’s recent article and the response make that clear. Whatever they might be called – surgical, tactical, whatever – they are nuclear bombs, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They may be a bit smaller, they’re still atomic bombs and atomic bombs do rather nasty things to lots of people. Furthermore, given what we know of his personality from his past behavior, it’s safe to say that Bush has no intention of letting anyone – let alone the head of an official Axis of Evil country – be the first person since Truman to order atomic bombs dropped on people.

** Bush’s advisers have almost certainly estimated how low his poll numbers can fall and still ensure that, once the bombs fall, a majority in the US will bounce back to support him. I suspect that number is considerably below the current 1/3 approval rating, so Bush sees no reason to take public opinion into account, at least right now, in his plans for nuclear war. The support of the Congress (for money) and the military leadership (for execution) is more critical and if they don’t play ball, they very well could derail the invasion.

.

Anonymous Putz

by digby

Joe Klein had an online chat at the Washington Post today. There are many amusing moments, but for me, this one took the cake:

Beeville, Tex: Without meaning offense, how responsible do you yourself feel for contributing to the political environment of canned political discourse? After all, you wrote Anonymous at a time when all political reporting seemed to center on undermining a sitting president.

Joe Klein: I always thought Primary Colors was a tribute to larger than life politicians. As for Bill Clinton, if I’ve been criticized for anything in my career, it’s being too favorable towards him. Primary Colors was a novel. No harm was intended. When Mike Nichols bought the film rights, he said: “There is no villain in this book.” Amen to that.

Oh really.

I’m tired and I can’t really write about this in the detail it deserves, but luckily Columbia Journalism review did a terrific post mortem on the “Primary Colors” fraud. Not only did santimonious prick Joe Klein personally help set the table for the asinine Monica Lewinsky scandal — he committed journalistic malpractice while doing it.

Here’s a highlight:

Once his Anonymous gambit took shape, Klein’s life, like Jekyll’s, became dangerously schizophrenic. Outwardly, he was the journalist-pundit, exuding moral rectitude, culling fact from rumor, reporting truth as he saw it – the man who once denounced as “despicable” those who were spreading charges about Clinton’s private life “to make money.” Yet secretly he worked to breathe life into the most scandalous suspicions about the Clintons in the course of making a pile. (Klein’s denial of any connection between the Clintons and his fictional “Stantons” is, of course, transparent nonsense.)

As the Newsweek pundit, he had written a scathing column (“The Politics of Promiscuity,” May 9, 1994) faulting Clinton for having a fragmented identity “composed of all sorts of persons”; for “always living on the edge, as if he were begging to get caught”; for “lawyering the truth . . . petty fudges, retreats, compromises, denials.” Sounds like a description of Klein himself.

He may have thought he could keep his professional duality concealed indefinitely. But ultimately he went the way of Jekyll, who lost control of his experiment and started turning into Hyde spontaneously, without warning, against his will, and was found out by suspicious colleagues. By the same token, Klein began wondering whether he was losing a grip on his original self (“I asked my agent: ‘Have I changed . . . ? Am I becoming Anonymous? Am I different now?’ ” he wrote in the Book Review piece.) Meanwhile, the relentless scorps closed in until, at last, The Washington Post hit pay dirt. The game was up.

Needless to say, in the frenzy that followed his unmasking (more than 500 articles and editorials, dozens of TV segments), Klein came under intense moralistic assault. The New York Times, for one, stung him in a lead editorial: “People interested in preserving the core of serious journalism have to view his actions and words as corrupt and – if they become an example to others – corrupting.” Meanwhile, Newsweek editor Maynard Parker was being lashed as well. He had known all along that Klein was Anonymous but allowed items to appear in the magazine which suggested that writers other than Klein were plausible suspects. The Dallas Morning News called this “a gross violation of journalistic ethics.”

Tell me again why Democrats are supposed to listen to insults about “inauthentic” politicians who listen to “self-serving” strategists from this man? I keep forgetting.

Hat tip to Tristram Shandy who has more here.

.

Suit Turns Voting Rights Act on Its Head

by digby

It’s good to see the Gonzales Justice department has its priorities straight.

Ike Brown is a legend in Mississippi politics, a fast-talking operative both loved and hated for his ability to turn out black voters and get his candidates into office.

That success has also landed him at the heart of a federal lawsuit that’s about to turn the Voting Rights Act on its end.

For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites.

Brown, head of the Democratic Party in Mississippi’s rural Noxubee County, is accused of waging a campaign to defeat white voters and candidates with tactics including intimidation and coercion. Also named in the lawsuit is Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens, who has agreed to refrain from rejecting white voters’ absentee ballots considered defective while accepting similar ballots from black voters.

[…]

The Justice Department complaint says Brown and those working with him “participated in numerous racial appeals during primary and general campaigns and have criticized black citizens for supporting white candidates and for forming biracial political coalitions with white candidates.”

Can you believe it? Racial Appeals? And in Alabama Mississippi, too!

Noxubee County a rural area along the Alabama line named for a Choctaw word meaning “stinking water” has a population of 12,500, 69 percent black and 30 percent white.

Whites once dominated county politics here, but now only one white person holds countywide office, and he says Brown tried to recruit an out-of-county black candidate to run against him three years ago.

The federal case against Brown, scheduled for trial this fall, represents a change in direction in the use of the Voting Rights Act, says Jon Greenbaum, director of the voting rights project for the Washington-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The law was written to protect racial minorities in the 1960s when Mississippi and other Southern states strictly enforced segregation.

“The main concern we have in the civil rights community isn’t necessarily that that DOJ brought this case,” Greenbaum says. “It’s that the department is not bringing meritorious cases on behalf of African-American and Native American voters.”

Justice Department records show the department’s last voting-rights case alleging discrimination against black voters was filed in 2001. Since then, six cases have been brought on behalf of voters of Hispanic or Asian descent in five states plus the case involving white voters in Mississippi.

Well now, that’s how it ought to be, in my book. For too long this country has suffered under the yoke of the African American political power brokers. You can certainly understand why they have chosen to investigate this particular complaint as opposed to say, the voting irregularities in Duvall County in the 2000 election, or the oddly long lines in black precincts in Ohio in 2000. This one county with 12,500 votes is where the real action is.

“This case is real simple,” Brown says, stretching back in a maroon chair during an interview in Mickens’ office, where voter-registration records are kept. “Find me one white person that was discriminated against.”

The main white person who makes the claim is Ricky Walker, the county prosecuting attorney who believes Brown recruited an opponent for him simply because he’s white, an action Walker called “racist.”

Ah yes, the cursed legacy of the discriminated against white male in Alabama Mississippi. It’s a good thing the white citizens of Alabama supported that voting rights act. Where would they be now?

Walker says that when he qualified to run again in 2003, Brown brought in a black lawyer from another part of the state to run against him. A circuit judge found that the lawyer, Winston James Thompson III, had not established residency, and Thompson was not allowed on the ballot.

“I think he just wanted to have a person in that office that he had some control over, a black person,” Walker says.

Thank God racism against African Americans is solved in this country, eh? But gawd help us, we’d better get a handle on this scourge of black discrimination against whites if we ever hope to have a color blind society.

“I think Ike does play race politics,” Colom says. “He is a black political leader who fights the fight like we were still in the 1970s. He doesn’t recognize the progress that we have made.”

But Colom criticizes the Justice Department for filing a complaint against a black political consultant while ignoring similar behavior by white political operatives in Mississippi.

“It has overtones of politics and that’s the wrong road for Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department,” the attorney says. “It’s going to destroy their credibility the next time they ask black people to listen to them.”

No need to worry about that. The Justice Department is just evening the score for the little guy. The African American power structure is just going to have to get used to it.

Hat Tip to Eugene Akers
.

Lost In Translation

by tristero

There are those (heh heh) who think I’m picking on poor Ken Pollack ’cause he never bothered actually to become a Middle East expert before marketing himself as one. They think that fluency in a country’s language is optional in order to demonstrate expertise in a country’s culture.

Okay, my friends, try translating this into Farsi. Hell, I can’t even translate it into recognizable English:

President Bush said Wednesday the verdict rejecting the death penalty for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui ‘represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror.’

Without commenting directly on the jury’s decision, Bush declared, ‘Evil will not have the final say. This great nation will prevail.’

I have absolutely no idea what Bush is talking about.

Who ever implied that the “fight against terror” would “end” with the sentencing of Moussaoui? And what does a man receiving life imprisonment have to do with “evil” having the final say, or not having the final say? And how did evil have the penultimate say here? And what’s this about prevailing? Prevail against what? A man spending the rest of his life behind bars? The future of the United States is somehow called into question by the verdict? What on earth is Bush talking about?

Okay, I’m exaggerating. I do think I understand the remarks. Bush is saying to his fans – one of out three Americans, even now, can you fucking believe it? – that he thinks the jury was infested with liberals and they let him off the hook; Zac should be whacked.

But really, that interpretation doesn’t begin to do justice to the extremely weird way in which he said it – a fusion of mealy-mouthed Biz Speak, government double-talk, and American fundamentalist claptrap. And it’s just as important that Bush left things out, like, for example, a mention of the actual decision – life imprisonment. I’m sure you guys can find numerous other subtleties, but these will do for starters. Read more of the Bush remarks in the article to get a sense of how peculiar they all are.

There simply is no way in hell – none – that the uniquely bizarre nature of these comments – and their implications- can be crisply translated into, say, Arabic. You’ll inevitably lose the sense of vertigo Bush’s perversion of the English language induces, not to mention the cynical manipulation hidden within the remarks. The important cultural context is lost without access to the original language. Bottom line:

You need to understand Bush and explain him to the leaders of your country? You’ll personally need to read his remarks in the original. Need to understand Ahmadinejad to explain to the leaders of our country? Ditto.

QED.

[UPDATE: Correspondent WBC writes, ‘Okay, I translated it to Farsi and then back into English just to measure any loss in the translation. I think you’ll agree, nothing was lost. It translates to:

“We will continue our crusade with or without this death.” ‘]

I Can’t Hear You

by digby

Via Atrios, I see that the timorous press is calling for the smelling salts again. In the comments of the post in question, we see the following exchange:

Mr. Ververs,

I noticed you gave four examples of lack of civility by the blogosphere:

1. Michelle Malkin complaining about those evil liberals.
2. Joe Klein complaining about those evil liberals.
3. Nathan Gardels complaining about those evil liberals.
4. Deborah Howell complaining about those evil liberals.

Bo234
————————————————————————————
Bo234,

I just went with the most recent examples I was aware of to talk about it in general terms. I welcome your additions of other examples. I certainly don’t believe this is an issue either side has a monopoly on but it does seem to be louder on one side than the other at the moment. Again, feel free to correct me.

Ok. Let’s go over this again, shall we? Let us stipulate that the left blogosphere is a bunch of shrieking freaks who have completely lost our marbles. We are rude, crude and out of control. But louder than the other side? Because of some blogswarms? If only.

For the last twenty years we have had your rightwing radio, your rightwing TV, your rightwing publishing, your rightwing speakers bureaus and your rightwing magazines and your rightwing pulpits. Then you have your imbalanced panels on news shows, your intermarried politicos and journalists and your faux liberal punditocrisy. Yet, our little blogswarms have the entire journalistic establishment all atwitter, wondering what has happened to the discourse?

The entire DC establishment went stark raving bonkers for eight years, followed by nearly five years of a kind of courtier sycophancy we haven’t seen since Louis XVI. I do not know the explanation for why this happened, although I have my suspicions. (The question brings out almost as many possibilities as “why did we invade Iraq?”) But it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. Now they decide that something’s gone wrong?

Are we “louder” now? Certainly. We were veritably silent before. But the entire rightwing media infrastructure still spews out its disgusting bile on a daily basis. perhaps the sound of it has become so familiar to those who live and work in Washington that they no longer hear it. To those of us in the “fever swamp” it is a little alarming. On 6/6/06, Ann Coulter will release her new book about liberals called “Godless.” This is on the heels of Ramesh Ponnuru’s new one called “The Party of Death.” Hannity’s last book was called “Deliver us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism”.

You see, the real difference between the Right blogoshpere and the Left is that the Left blogosphere is angry at the ideology and governance of the Republican party and the media who report on it. We believe the political press has been complicit where it has not been weak and we are taking our complaint directly to them, loudly and in no uncertain terms. It’s angry and vitriolic, but it’s political.

The right blogosphere, on the other hand, is no longer outraged at the Democratic party. They think they are clowns — they can barely get off a good Teddy Kennedy joke before nodding off. And except for the war correspondents whom they believe are cowardly and are refusing to report the good news in Iraq, the energy has gone out of their liberal media critique. But, make no mistake, they are still very, very angry — at rank and file Americans like me.

The gripe on the right side is that “liberals” literally shouldn’t exist. We are Godless, death-loving traitors whose very existence is a blight on the American way of life. They don’t hate our leadership. They hate us personally.

This post by Thomas Crown at RedState sums it up nicely, I think:

I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.

As the t-shirts say

The media sees only the Left these days because the Right has moved on to greener pastures.

.

Hitch on The Spit

by digby

Juan Cole takes Christopher Hitchens downtown and simultaneously writes the most stirring anti-Iran war polemic I’ve read. Hitchens, as usual these days, being both incoherent and dishonest, is evidently itching for another bite of the apple. Cole is having none of it.

.

It’s Not Rocket Science. Just Brain Surgery.

by tristero

Five years or so ago, I published an introductory textbook on intestinal tumors. Entitled “The Threatening Mass: The Case For Invasive GI Surgery, ” I came to the conclusion that only surgical removal of the tumor (no matter how small) stands a chance of working. A less “extreme” treatment – years of pointless, agonizing chemo – will only prolong the danger.

Furthermore, and this was a somewhat controversial assertion back then, I claimed that in all cases of GI cancer, not only must the malignancy be excised, but much of the colon must go as well. In other words, in many more situations than one might think, a colostomy – the notorious “Bag” – was a requirement to ensure long-term stability and health.

“The Threatening Mass” was a medical bestseller and I confess I made good money from it. I’ve spent the last few years making even better money guest-lecturing at medical schools. Even more gratifying – money isn’t everything, of course – surgeons throughout the country adopted my procedure and colostomies have proliferated.

True, there’s been a lot of recent apparent evidence that chemo often appears to work and that extensive GI surgery is counterindicated in many cases – in fact, there appeared to some readers that there was a lot of evidence before I published my book. As for colostomies, despite the fact that removal of most of the colon proved unnecessary in many cases (and psychologically devastating), I still feel confident that in the long run, this seeemingly “radical” expansion of the surgeon’s role in treating GI cancer will result in a preponderance of decisive cures. In truth, I can’t be held responsible for those who misunderstood what I wrote and perform operations hastily or without the specific preparations I prescribe.

In any event, flush from the success of “The Threatening Mass”, I’ve now decided to write an introductory textbook about brain surgery. It will be called “The Pondering Puzzle: The Conflict Between Cancer And Cerebellum.”

I’ll be describing the various kinds of malignant execrescences that can grow in the brain. I’ll discuss how they affect different areas, and what it means in terms of behavior – useful for emergency room diagnoses, to be sure. I’ll also be analysing the various surgical techniques involved and the latest research, both in considerable detail. I’ll talk with brain surgeons, study the advanced textbooks, and read the medical journals. I’ll make specific suggestions as to which surgery is best under specific conditions, complete with a chapter on all the different surgical instruments involved. And I’ll describe the various operations – the advantages and pitfalls – and lay out the possible outcomes.

At the end of my new textbook, I’ve decided to get a little personal for a change. I’m going to drop in a brief author’s note that’ll talk about how I did my research. Readers like to know that sort of thing, even if they’re slogging through a medical text.

I’ll explain that while I’ve been as scrupulous as possible in studying brain surgery, in fact I don’t have a background in oncology, let alone surgery. Not only have I never been in an operating room, I haven’t even tried to stitch up a bad cut. But not to worry: I have looked at dozens of videos of brain surgery and studied some with care. You see, while I have a rudimentary knowledge of medicine – of course, I know where the temporal lobe is, and how to find the hippocampus – I really can’t understand even the most general medical journals because I’ve never been to medical school. However, I assure you, I had well-trained doctors carefully explain to me the meaning of every article I discuss. Just as I did with my text on GI surgery.

Now, given the fact that I never troubled to learn to read the basic language of medicine -or wasted a perfectly fine afternoon by getting my hands bloody in an operating theater – you might think that I have no business writing two words about surgery, let alone two entire books on the subject. Books, I hasten to add, that are thought classics, cited constantly as justification for current protocols. But with all due respect, I disagree.

After all, if Kenneth Pollack is thought a scholar on the Middle East, then I must be considered an expert on brain surgery (and colostomies). At the very least, given how hard I’ve worked to make my knowledge of medicine appear credible, it’s only fitting that my opinion of what constitutes a proper approach to the elimination of cancerous tissue from the body be considered carefully by responsible leaders in the medical community.

And if you like, I’ll be happy to diagnose your own brain tumor. And, what the hell, I might as well do the operation myself. Y’gotta start somewhere, after all. And to make an omelet, you do have to break a few eggs.

(Hat tip to Atrios for the link.)

Convenient Conservatism

by digby

Both David Neiwert and Glenn Greenwald have written blockbuster posts about the foolish Shelby Steele’s stunning call today to divest ourselves of “white guilt” and bomb the hell out of the wogs.

Greenwald looks at the implications of the argument for the GWOT and checks in with the bigotsphere while Neiwert examines this idea in the context of the right’s new assumption the racism is dead — nothing to see here, move along citizen — even while a fairly large faction of Americans are fulminating daily about how the Mexican vermin are defecating in the streets.

The only thing I can add is that I’m not surprised, by either the racism or the embrace of all out war against the the newly “liberated” Iraqis. The conservative experiment is melting down. William F Buckley got what he always wanted and it turned out to be bullshit. We are finally seeing the facade of civilization crumble, leaving only the conservative id.

The argument here is that racism is dead so we needn’t worry about killing, deporting, marginalizing or demonizing “the other.” How convenient for the party that has been exploiting the southern strategy for forty years and finds itself nearly as unpopular as the disgraced president who first embraced it.

.