Ligeti
Gyorgy Ligeti died today after a long period of declining health. I’m at a complete loss for words, he was one of the great composers of our time but that doesn’t begin to describe him. More sometime later, maybe. Right now is a time to listen and listen and listen.
Fashionable Babbling
by digby
Following up tristero’s Dear Joe letter below, here’s Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution:
For years Peter “Pe-Nart” Beinart has attempted to speak in complete gibberish. And he’s gotten close—70% gibberish, 86% gibberish, 93% gibberish. But it’s only in a recent Q & A with Kevin Drum about Beinart’s book The Good Fight that he’s reached his goal of 100% (reg. req.):
Jihadism sits at the center of a series of globalization-related threats, including global warming, pandemics, and financial contagion, which are powered by globalization-related technologies, and all of which threaten the United States more than other countries.
This is outstanding work. The only way his point could be improved would be to put it like this:
Gerbil narcolepsy sofa-bed detritus squanders Bigfoot. Crapulent snurf machine? Crapulent snurf machine knob knobbler! Groucho lithe koala traipsing noreaster flange mucus. Mithril acne fluffernutter shamus fling-ding-a-ling-doo!
Seriously: in what sense can jihadism be said to “sit at the center” of global warming, pandemics, and financial contagion? In what possible way can these all be claimed to be greater threats to the U.S. than to other countries?
You may wonder, then, why Beinart’s saying something so blatantly absurd. The answer is that the “liberalism” he espouses is incoherent. The Cheney platform—Let’s Rule The World By Hate And Fear—at least has an undeniable internal logic. So too does a radical evaluation of U.S. foreign policy. They both tell coherent stories. But the mushy tale “I, Peter Beinart, will run the planet except I’ll be nice” simply doesn’t make sense. Thus he doesn’t have any alternative to saying preposterous things.
What’s this talk about incoherent gibberish? We’re at war! I know some say that terrorism isn’t responsible for global warming. I disagree. We’re fightin’ evil. Global warmin’ is evil and America is good. Like that bird flu thing. It’s anti-American. It harbors terrists. We’re gonna have tah bring it tah justice. Financial contagion? Unless we repeal the death tax the terrists will’ve won. Everybody knows that.
Thank the good lord for reasonable liberals like Peter Beinert, that’s all I can say. At least he understands that there has never been a threat like terrorism in the whole history of the world and unless we stop them, they are going to take over the planet and eat our children with a knife and fork! And that’s after they take all our money and give us sunburns with their secret global warming death ray.
What’s incoherent about that?
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Left Behind: Eternal Forces
by tristero
In the desperate and probably futile strategy to embarass the manufacturers into withdrawing this sick product from the market, I am happy to add to the free hype Atrios and troutfishing are providing for the soon-to-be-released Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Perhaps the imminent release under a well-known christianist brand name of a videogame in which people are either converted or killed will focus minds on what these people people are up to.
What is important to remember is that we’re not talking here about the insane Phelps marketing a cheap knockoff, someone the right is happy to disown. Nope, the perpetrators of Left Behind: Eternal Forces are part of the network of established goto guys for commentary on religion in the mainstream media, and the gang behind the anti-family Constitutional amendment, and so much other crap. These are among the people who talk to the leaders of the House, leaders of the Senate, and to the president of the United States on a regular basis. They are not outliers in terms of power. But the videogame makes it clear how fanatical they are. The so-called “Christian” Right is eliminationist, anti-American, intolerant, and far removed from the mainstream of religious belief in this country.
Equally important: There is nothing about the worldview of this videogame that cannot be found in the writings and speeches of political operatives like Dobson, LaHaye, Robertson, Falwell, Rushdoony, and others in their milieu (here’s a paean to intolerance co-authored by James Dobson’s son. ). The particular balance of extremist positions varies to some extent among all these people, but the overall thrust is clear: they advocate replacement of a democratic American republic with a theocracy (Christian Nation)and the conversion or elimination of all non-believers.* The craziest of them – eg Rushdoony – are not merely cynical dirtbags trying to snatch every last nickel they can from ignorant rubes. The worst of them actually believe this stuff. But here’s the rub: even the less worse are willing to listen to the worse, and prominent politicians today are are also listening.
It is the very same immoral scum who can’t decide whether or not to release an obscenity like Left Behind:Eternal Forces who are succeeding in passing laws to eliminate the right of the poor to receive decent medical care instead of a coat hanger. They are the same folks trying to ban the purchase of contraceptive devices and sex toys. These are the same people who would deny a child a safe, effective vaccination against cancer because it conflicts with their “beliefs.” These are the same people who are also the main funders and strategists backing “intelligent design” creationism. These are the same people trying to rewrite the American Constitution for the 21st century so it celebrates bigotry. Finally:
These are the people without whose support the Republican Party believes it would never win an election.
*Oh sure, it’s hard to find Dobson saying in public that come the revolution, let’s kill all the Jews, scientists, and atheists (I have no idea what he says in private). Occasionally, though sometimes one of them slips a little and lets loose a torrent of xenophobia, racism, and/or anti-semitism (remember Saint Billy Graham to Richard Nixon), or recommends the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as good history, yet still receives fawning coverage by the New York Times. Even so, just a little bit of digging turns up death threats and kill lists against doctors who don’t subscribe to extremist theology (see the so-called “Nuremberg Files.” Similar sites exist today, for example the one currently at http://forerunner.com/fyi/killer/index.html). A little more digging exposes discussions which hold a woman guilty of accessory to murder if she has an abortion, no punishment specified but the death penalty ominously hovers over the discussion (this ideo being so psychotic and cruel, it’s one the mainstreamers don’t mention too often, like banning rubbers). Tying this level of rhetoric directly to the famous extremists like Falwell or Dobson is all but impossible, but this is the milieu they inhabit. They know these guys, and they listen to them.
Dear Joe Klein
by tristero
In your effusively positive review of Peter Beinart’s latest typing, you write:
This is not to say Beinart has always been right. He supported the war in Iraq — for two reasons, he writes. He wanted to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, which was reasonable. He also hoped the American-led invasion might produce an admirable democratic government in Iraq, which was not. “On both counts, I was wrong,” he writes. “It is a grim irony that this book’s central argument is one I myself ignored when it was needed most.”
Beinart’s humility is charming, but unfair to himself. The argument at the heart of “The Good Fight” is a product of intellectual growth. It evolved as Beinart watched the disaster unfold in Iraq; it is the result of a rigorous search for principles that might guide the United States as it confronts the challenge of Islamist totalitarianism and the other viral threats of the Information Age.
I have a problem with this, Joe. Y’see, for this liberal, the public space is not first and foremost a sandbox for drooling kids. It’s a place for the intellectually grown. You seem to forget that people died to advance Beinart’s, Remnick’s, and Packer’s (to name just three) intellectual development. Thousands upon thousands of them.
Am I actually saying that Beinart, et al nurtured their intellectual growth in a soil they fertilized with countless litres of innocent human blood? Yes, Joe, that is exactly what I am saying. But this isn’t a bad horror film. They really were, despite all their pretenses to worldliness and wisdom, naive and stupid. And to this day, those who were neither cannot find regular purchase anywhere in the mainstream American discourse.
Being intellectually mature does not equal Bush-style mental sclerosis. Indeed, many of us have grown intellectually in the past five years. Krugman has changed dramatically, for example.
But here’s the thing: we were already intellectually mature to begin with. Beinart wasn’t. And based on the attitudes you describe in the review, he’s still in short pants. And if ever there was a time to hear from the grown-ups, that time is now.
Love,
tristero
Catblog Sunday
by digby
I don’t usually do catblogging, even though I am a cat person, because I take terrible pictures and others do a much better job of it than I would. But I can’t pass up this story.
Meet Jack:
Look what Jack did:
WEST MILFORD, N.J. – A black bear picked the wrong New Jersey yard for a jaunt earlier this week, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree — twice.
Jack, a 15-pound orange-and-white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, chasing small animals when he can, but his owners and neighbors say his latest escapade was surprising.
“We used to joke, ‘Jack’s on duty,’ never knowing he’d go after a bear,” cat owner Donna Dickey told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Friday’s newspapers.
Neighbor Suzanne Giovanetti first spotted Jack’s accomplishment after her husband saw a bear climb a tree on the edge of their northern New Jersey home’s back yard on Sunday. Giovanetti thought Jack was simply looking up at the bear, but soon realized the much larger animal was afraid of the hissing cat.
After about 15 minutes peering down at the cat from the tree, the bear descended and tried to run away, only to have Jack chase it up another tree.
At this point Dickey, who feared for her cat, called Jack back home and the bear scurried back to the woods.
“He doesn’t want anybody in his yard,” Dickey said.
They’re like that.
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Death Star Strategery
by digby
So Newtie’s getting serious about running. And he’s going to be running as the kinder, gentler, smarter GOP. I kid you not. Of course, he’s as insulting as ever:
When Americans look at the current roster of Republican and Democratic leaders, Gingrich said, they face an unappealing dilemma.
“We have a choice between those who are failing to deliver and those who are unthinkable,” he said, adding that he would put “even money” on the Democrats taking back the House this fall. “Neither party currently is where the country is.”
President Gingrich? Unthinkable, all right.
There’s a lot in this article to guffaw over and I’ll leave it up to you to enjoy it on your own. I have to mention this one little part though, because I’ve written extensively about this subject and Newtie and I honestly can’t believe he’s still pushing the idea. It should disqualify him (among many other things) from ever holding any office again:
Gingrich also questioned some of the administration’s tactics, noting that he had warned the White House privately in the fall of 2002 to put only a small force on the ground in Iraq and move quickly to install Iraqis in power. Given the current situation, however, he said the United States can take just one course of action in Iraq: “Grind it out.”
Newt was for the original Rumsfeld plan which was to put about 40,000 troops on the ground and install Ahmad Chalabi as the puppet president of Iraq. He is nuts on this RMA (revolution in military affairs) bullshit and always has been.
…their [old] answer has been to design campaign plans that are so massive – I mean the standard plan in Afghanistan was either Tomahawks or 5 divisions, and that’s why Rumsfeld was so important. Cause Rumsfeld sat down and said, “Well what if we do this other thing? You know, 3 guys on horseback, a B-2 overhead.” And it was a huge shock to the army. I mean, because it worked. Now I’ll tell you one guy who does agree and that’s Chuck Horner who ran the air campaign.
You can still find people out there who are warriors who came up during the Reagan years, all of whom will say flatly to the Secretary of Defense, “The right model is simultaneous, massive, immediate combined air and land forces, period.”
And there’s this:
Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack.
He said that Franks, an army general, “will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan.”“If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new,” he said in an interview.
This guy takes himself very seriously as a military historian and strategist. He also likes dinosaurs. In other words, he’s a twelve year old geek who wants to play with real soldiers. Like many wingnut “intellectuals” he seems to have some serious developmental problems.
Admittedly, I am no military strategist. But I read up on Rummy and Newtie’s RMA back in 2002, and while it is not entirely bullshit, this particular aspect of it certainly is, especially in the hands of people who simply refuse to accept reality. In Newtie’s little fantasy Iraq, perhaps using even fewer troops than we did could have worked. Here on planet earth, the results of sending in too few as it was are manifest and horrifying.
In this article at Antiwar.com called “Off With His Head” William S. Lind discusses the fallacy of Rumsfeldian “transformation:”
While Rumsfeldian “Transformation” represents change, it represents change in the wrong direction. Instead of attempting to move from the Second Generation to the Third (much less the Fourth), Transformation retains the Second Generation’s conception of war as putting firepower on targets while trying to replace people with technology. Its summa is the Death Star, where men and women in spiffy uniforms sit in air-conditioned comfort zapping enemies like bugs. It is a vision of future war that appeals to technocrats and lines industry pockets, but has no connection to reality. The combination of this vision of war with an equally unrealistic vision of strategic objectives has given us the defeat in Iraq. Again, Rumsfeld lies at the heart of both.
And his little dog Newt too, who served on the Defense Policy board with Richard Perle and the rest and advised Rummy every step of the way. Gingrich may not be the only one who refuses to see reality on this. But he’s one of the most flamoyantly “optimistic” about this transformation after our massive tactical and strategic blunder in Iraq. He still believes that we could have “taken” Iraq with a cell phone and a couple of special forces guys on camels. That is nothing short of delusional.
I doubt that he can win. He’s an iconic figure of loathing in American politics. (I think the Dickensian name alone disqualifies him.) But you never know. The American people elected Nixon twice.
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Committing Hara-Kiri For Your Emperor
by digby
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The former emergency management chief who quit amid widespread criticism over his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said he received an e-mail before his resignation stating President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism.
Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Friday that he received the e-mail five days before his resignation from a high-level White House official whom he declined to identify.
The e-mail stated that Bush was relieved that Brown — and not Bush or Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff — was bearing the brunt of the flak over the government’s handling of Katrina.
The September 2005 e-mail reads: “I did hear of one reference to you, at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. I wasn’t there, but I heard someone commented that the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, ‘I’d rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff.’ “
The sender adds, “Congratulations on doing a great job of diverting hostile fire away from the leader.”
[…]
Brown’s attorney, Andy Lester, who first wrote about the e-mail in the conservative weekly publication Human Events, said the White House was handling the situation in “a cowardly way.”
“What the White House was actually doing was taking some stories that got started in the media and pushing them and pushing them until everything got diverted to Mike,” Lester said. “Mike Brown was being made the scapegoat.”
I think the e-mailer is a guy named Joe Hagen, who Brown mentions every time he’s interviewed as being a good friend and a stand up guy.
It’s very likely that it’s true. After all, Bush has said similar things before:
During a trip to West Point on June 1, Bush pulled White aside for a private talk. “As long as they’re hitting you on Enron, they’re not hitting me,” said Bush, according to this Army official. “That’s your job. You’re the lightning rod for this administration.”
The Bushies are counting on being vindicated by history as Truman was. I don’t think so. This president is on record, more than once, saying that he expects his underlings to fall on their swords for him. It’s not exactly “the buck stops here.” History will properly record him as a coward, a dunce and a failure.
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YKOS Update
by digby
Skippy will be live blogging several panels today. Check him out from time to time. Right now he’s at the Building a Progressive Infrastructure panel.
And as I wrote yesterday, CSPAN is going live at noon. I’m not sure which programs they will cover, but it’s sure to be interesting.
Update: Properly chastised, I hereby amend the above to stipulate that I am talking about pacific daylight time. Here’s a link to the CSPAN schedule.
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PSA
Blogger says it’s about to go down again. At least they gave us notice. It might last for five minutes, or it might last for 5 hours, I don’t know. I just thought I’d let you know.
I think a bunch of people are watching a World Cup match at a pub across the street from me right now. It’s only 8:30 AM. Do you think they’ll serve me a pint?
sigh …
Coming To Jesus
by digby
WASHINGTON — For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.
He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.
But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.
Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state’s history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.
In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.
“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody.”
Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a “bad thing.” But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones “pushed the envelope” but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.
“Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business,” he said. “It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities.”
My, oh my. It’s amazing what happens to people when they run into trouble with the law, isn’t it? Talk about your moral clarity.
Now, we all know this has been true for a long time. The modern GOP plays the hardest of hardball. There are no limits. And if they weren’t such arrogant assholes, they could probably always get away with it because law enforcement tends to be conservative. These guys have pushed the limits so far, however, that the law just can’t ignore it any longer.
Hacker and Pierson’s “Off Center” discusses this polarization philosophy in terms of governance, making the case that the Republicans work hard to pass legislation on strict party lines in order to maintain the polarized atmosphere that benefits them so well come election time. And if they lose an election or two they can blame it on the other side — for being obstructionist or partisan. It’s very creative. And they have constructed quite the WATB argument to justify it:
DELAY: In preparing for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to reminisce about the good old days of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter, divisive partisan rancor that supposedly now weakens our democracy. Well, I can’t do that —
RUSH: Oh, right.
DELAY: Because partisanship, Mr. Speaker —
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — properly understood.
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — is not a symptom of democracy’s weakness but of its health and its strength, especially from the perspective of a political conservative.
RUSH: Damn A straight. He is so right; he may not even know how right he is. And partisanship has often been used as a criticism of the right by the left, and the way they want to say, “We gotta get rid of this partisanship.” If you get rid of your partisanship it means you become liberal; you agree with Democrats; you agree with the left, and he’s right. Every time one of these bigwigs leaves the House, they lament the, “Long lost days where camaraderie and getting along across the aisle, celebrating, going to barbecues, bar and so forth, after a session. Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan tipped a couple drinks every day after fighting like cats and dogs in the middle of the legislative process,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all that is a liberal’s lamenting the days when they ran the show. Here’s the second of our four bites.
DELAY: Liberalism, after all, whatever you may think of its merits is a political philosophy, and a proud one, with a great tradition in this country, with a voracious appetite for growth. In any place or any time, on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. More government, more taxation, more control over people’s lives and decisions and wallets. If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will. And for a long time around here, almost no one did. Indeed, the common lament over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more than a veiled complaint instead about the recent rise of political conservatism.
RUSH: Amen bro, number two. He’s nailed it. This is exactly right. When they talk about this partisanship, all they mean is that conservatives have too much power, too many conservatives in this place, too many people disagreeing with us, the libs say.
Gotta love ’em. Vicious partisanship is necessary to thwart the liberal monolith, but when liberals complain, it’s sour grapes because liberals have no power anymore.
One thing I think Dems haven’t discussed enough is that last paragraph in the New Hampshire phone jamming piece— how the Republicans have set up politics as a business. We’ve often noted that they have the wingnut welfare system through their phony “think” tanks and media outlets. And the K Street project is notorious. But there’s another factor involved that I hadn’t thought much about — all these satellite consulting firms that make money directly from the RNC — you know, the group that’s funded by millionaires and little old ladies on social security.
After Forbes lost, Raymond became executive director of the Republican Leadership Council. Around that time, he set up GOP Marketplace, which served as a middleman [my emphasis]for telemarketing services sought by Republican campaigns.
The firm was funded with a $246,000 loan from a group of elite Republicans. One of the investors was Raymond’s former boss, Barbour, who said at the time he was “convinced that GOP Marketplace will not only be a profitable business, but will also give Republicans an edge in the 2000 election.” Another investor was lobbyist Ed Rogers , who had served as executive assistant to former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu during the administration of George H.W. Bush.
The firm landed contracts worth nearly $2 million during the first two years, typically involving calls to determine where voters stood on issues and candidates. But it became involved in more aggressive tactics that drew the attention of federal prosecutors. The first sign of the questionable tactics was on Super Bowl Sunday in 2002. Raymond’s firm had been hired by the campaign of James Treffinger, a New Jersey Republican. Raymond’s company was asked to arrange phone calls that attacked one of Treffinger’s opponents on abortion without revealing that Treffinger was paying for the calls and to make those calls during the Super Bowl. “It was shenanigans,” Raymond said. “You put the call in at 6 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday,” which was designed to irk voters who didn’t want to be called away from the television. After complaints were raised, prosecutors interviewed Raymond about the matter, but he was not charged.
I suspect the Republicans aren’t the only ones who create lucrative “middleman” jobs for political consultants. But I’ve never heard of the Democrats doing this kind of “shenanigans” with the money, although it’s always possible. Nonetheless, it’s the GOP that has institutionalized this system and created a formidable national political machine out of it.
This next election is going to be a major test of this philosophy of polarization and the political machine that’s been carefully designed to capitalize on that. They are very, very good. They got sloppy up there in New Hampshire and left some fingerprints on their work, but that’s unusual. Generally, they are much smoother. And this next election is the ultimate challenge. They are dramatically unpopular. If they can pull it off, they will be political magicians. I have no reason to believe they won’t give it a good run.
Remember, Democrats are not only cowardly sissies who will give away the country to gay terrorists at the drop of a hat — they are hiring millions of illegal aliens to cast illegal votes. This is a known fact. They’ve been doing it for years, but they’ve really pumped up the operation this time because they are afraid the Republicans are going to deport all their voters. I swear it’s true. Rush told me. Somebody even called me on the phone and asked if I agreed with the Democrats doing that. I said no way.
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