Month: June 2006

Bought And Paid For

by digby

Sebastian Mallaby and Paul Krugman both have columns today excoriating the Senate for what it’s about to do on behalf of useless parasites like Paris Hilton and Brandon Davis. It is infuriating that some Democrats are signing on to this bullshit.

Mallaby:

For most of the past century, the case for the estate tax was regarded as self-evident. People understood that government has to be paid for, and that it makes sense to raise part of the money from a tax on “fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits,” as Theodore Roosevelt put it. The United States is supposed to be a country that values individuals for their inherent worth, not for their inherited worth. The estate tax, like a cigarette tax or a carbon tax, is a tool for reducing a socially damaging phenomenon — the emergence of a hereditary upper class — as well as a way of raising money.

But now the House has voted to repeal the estate tax, and the Senate may do the same this week. Republicans are picking up support from renegade Democrats, such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Max Baucus of Montana. Several more may go over to the dark side if a “compromise” bill, which would achieve nearly everything that abolitionists dream of, is introduced in the Senate. President Bush, who has already muscled a temporary repeal of the estate tax into law, would be delighted to sign a bill making abolition permanent.

So much for the “populism” of these Red State hypocrites. There can be no reason for doing this other than to pay off contributors. If a Democrat from Nebraska can’t make the argument that he or she refuses to give tax breaks to movie stars then he or she needs to get into another line of business.

Krugman writes:

The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.

You may have heard tales of family farms and small businesses broken up to pay taxes, but those stories are pure propaganda without any basis in fact. In particular, advocates of estate tax repeal have never been able to provide a single real example of a family farm sold to pay estate taxes.

Nonetheless, the estate tax is up for a vote this week. First, Republicans will try to repeal the estate tax altogether. If that fails, they’ll offer a compromise that isn’t really a compromise, like a plan suggested by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, that would cost almost as much as full repeal, or a plan suggested by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is only slightly cheaper.

In each case, the crucial vote will be procedural: if 60 senators vote to close off debate, estate tax repeal or something close to it will surely pass. Any senator who votes for cloture but against estate tax repeal — which I’m told is what John McCain may do — is simply a hypocrite, trying to have it both ways.

But will the Senate vote for cloture? The answer depends on two groups of senators: Democrats like Mr. Baucus who habitually stake out “centrist” positions that give Republicans almost everything they want, and moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island who consistently cave in to their party’s right wing. Will these senators show more spine than they have in the past?

In the interest of stiffening those spines, let me remind senators that this isn’t just a fiscal issue, it’s also a moral issue. Congress has already declared that the budget deficit is serious enough to warrant depriving children of health care; how can it now say that it’s worth enlarging the deficit to give Paris Hilton a tax break?

I also think it’s important to not that an active duty Army captain with two years experience makes $38,656 a year. A private first class makes $15,282. God forbid that Paris should be asked to kick in a piece of her inheritance to pay the bills this country owes — bills which include those salaries. What’s this country ever done for her? (And anyway, the price of a mojito at Club Butter is just ridiculous these days.)

And, by the way, if John “I’m Teddy Roosevelt reincarnated” McCain does do some shenanigans with this vote, I think we should hire a skinny blond in huge sunglasses to follow him around blowing kisses and thanking him profusely. (It sounds like a job for the Billionaires.)

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Did They?

by digby

Atrios links to this from Evan Bayh:

Bayh calmly answered that “I wouldn’t cast the same vote today as I did then.” He noted that “the French believed that (there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), the Germans believed that, the Russians believed that, everybody believed he [Saddam Hussein] had weapons of mass destruction.”

Yes, we’ve heard that. Apparently, it’s supposed to excuse the fact that the administration ignored its own government, but whatever. This trope about France, Russia and Germany is dragged out with such frequency it’s become a matter of faith. But is it true?

I honestly don’t know. There are reports on the internet that France did not believe it. The Guardian published a story in the fall of 2002 featuring Pootie-Poot saying this:

Specifically targeting the CIA report, Putin said, “Fears are one thing, hard facts are another.” He goes on to say, “Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress.”

Putin, like everyone else, then endorsed sending the inspectors back in for obvious reasons — to prove the case one way or the other. But the only thing I’ve ever seen that indicated the French and the Germans had independent knowledge of what has turned out to be a non-existent arsenal, came from David Kay, who testified to that effect before congress. But I suspect that to the extent they might have said they believed it, it was because we told them we had evidence, not that they had independently verified it. I just have a sneaking suspicion that we would have heard what it was by now.

You’ll recall that the security council in the run up to the war was in a frenzy of activity trying to stop this stupid war. The resolution to allow inspectors back in was not based upon a set of facts that that everyone agreed to. It was based upon a desire to stop the US from plunging headlong into war. And the history of that rush to war shows this:

March 18 2003

The United States told UN arms inspectors to pack their bags and leave Iraq, with last-ditch talks at the United Nations Security Council looking unlikely to break a diplomatic deadlock amid unswerving French and Russian opposition to war.

The Security Council was set to meet in what US President George Bush said would be “a moment of truth for the world”, while the United States and Britain told their nationals to leave Kuwait immediately, with London warning of the threat of chemical and biological attack from neighbouring Iraq.

With war looking increasingly imminent – British commentators have spoken of a 24-hour pause for weapons inspectors, diplomats and others to leave Iraq before war begins – Security Council members China, Russia, France and Germany all appealed for Bush to give diplomacy more time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States would be making a mistake with the most serious consequences if it went to war without UN backing, in his first direct comments on the Iraq crisis for weeks, Interfax news agency reported.

[…]

Yesterday, he said, “is the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work”, adding that Saddam would have to disarm or would be disarmed by force.

Asked whether that meant the diplomatic window would now close for a vote on a draft UN resolution brought by the US, Britain and Spain that is widely seen as paving the way for war, he replied: “That’s what I’m saying.”

Baghdad responded that Washington and London had “drowned the world with lies”.

France, whose opposition to the resolution has led to a diplomatic deadlock at the UN, insisted it would veto the resolution, despite appeals from Mr Bush and Mr Blair for international unity.

“France cannot accept the resolution on the table that lays down an ultimatum,” Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told Europe 1 radio, reiterating a pledge by President Jacques Chirac to torpedo the motion.

Moscow added its opposition, saying there was “no chance” of the Security Council approving the resolution, Interfax reported.

“We do not believe that any new resolutions are necessary,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov.

In Beijing, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing insisted the issue should be solved through dialogue within the United Nations, while German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rejected the rush to war and said UN weapons inspections in Iraq were proving effective.

With Paris and Moscow lining up to veto the resolution, speculation rose that London and Washington would withdraw the text and launch strikes.

[…]

Mr Blair had given Paris until yesterday to change its mind, saying: “People have got to decide whether they are going to allow any second resolution (on Iraq) to have teeth, to make it clear that there is a real ultimatum in it.

“If their positions do not change … it is very difficult to see how you can move this diplomatic process forward,” he said. “This is the impasse.”

A government official said the ball was in France’s and Russia’s court: “It’s a decision for France and Russia whether they would sign up to an ultimatum.”

None of that proves that France, Germany and Russia believed that Iraq had WMD. But let’s not pretend that they had jumped on the bandwagon with our plans either. If they “knew” independently that Saddam had WMD, they certainly didn’t seem to think it required an invasion. You’d think that fact would have given Evan and his buds in the congress some pause at the time. You’d certainly think it would embarrass the shit out of them now.

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Punked

by digby

The excellent Steve Benen, pinch hitting over at Washington Monthly, highlights this rather stunning story from the LA Times in which we learn that the Army is eliminating the prohibition against “humiliating and degrading” treatment from the new edition of the field manual:

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military’s decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

Benen says:

I can’t help but wonder if Bush administration officials know or care about how this undermines our standing and credibility in the world. It’s simply breathtaking. As Kevin put it a while back, “It’s simply impossible to persuade the rest of the world that we’re the good guys as long as we persist in plainly repugnant behavior.”

The problem is that they, and I assume many in the pentagon, believe the exact opposite. They think that “being tough” and “sending the right message” will make the enemy put its tail between its legs and run for the hills. That’s the simple truth of it. And that idea is what’s permeated into the military ranks in Iraq and elsewhere. When Cheney said “take the gloves off” he meant it. And people believed it. And that led us directly to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and now the horror of Haditha.

Newsweek’s story on the subject this week doesn’t really shed any new light on the story, but it ends with one hell of a speculation:

MacGregor also faulted U.S. generals for not accompanying platoon and squad leaders as they patrolled—to better understand their environment and what they needed to survive in it. Had the generals done so, writes MacGregor, they would have known what a sergeant on patrol in Ramadi meant when he told a journalist, “You can have my job. It’s easy. You just have to drive around all day and wait for someone to bomb you. Thing is, you have to hate Arabs.”

Left to their own devices, grunts sometimes improvise. It is possible that Kilo Company was determined to “leave a calling card,” which is to say, to warn Haditha that IEDs would be met with heavy retribution. It’s an old and primitive counter-insurgency tactic. Long ago, the Romans used it against barbarians.

Romans and conservatives are very big on “sending messages.” They like to make examples of people; it’s one of their favorite authoritarian tactics. And executing children sends a hell of a message, no doubt about it. No gloves anywhere to be seen in that operation. The “humiliating and degrading” treatment at Abu Ghraib, the torture at Bagram and Gitmo and god knows where else, the kidnapping and renditions, and yes, the massacre of civilians including children, is not a matter of incompetence or misunderstanding or the fog of war. It’s the plan.

In this famous essay called “World War IV,” neocon king Norman Podhoretz spells it all out. The US has been soft for more than thirty years. Even St Ronnie doesn’t get a pass (for “cutting and running” after the barracks bombing in Lebanon.) We have invited this malevolent threat to attack us because we have been weak. After recounting American failures to “get tough” over the course of the last thirty years, he concludes:

The sheer audacity of what bin Laden went on to do on September 11 was unquestionably a product of his contempt for American power. Our persistent refusal for so long to use that power against him and his terrorist brethren—or to do so effectively whenever we tried—reinforced his conviction that we were a nation on the way down, destined to be defeated by the resurgence of the same Islamic militancy that had once conquered and converted large parts of the world by the sword.

As bin Laden saw it, thousands or even millions of his followers and sympathizers all over the Muslim world were willing, and even eager, to die a martyr’s death in the jihad, the holy war, against the “Great Satan,” as the Ayatollah Khomeini had called us. But, in bin Laden’s view, we in the West, and especially in America, were all so afraid to die that we lacked the will even to stand up for ourselves and defend our degenerate way of life.

Bin Laden was never reticent or coy in laying out this assessment of the United States. In an interview on CNN in 1997, he declared that “the myth of the superpower was destroyed not only in my mind but also in the minds of all Muslims” when the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan. That the Muslim fighters in Afghanistan would almost certainly have failed if not for the arms supplied to them by the United States did not seem to enter into the lesson he drew from the Soviet defeat. In fact, in an interview a year earlier he had belittled the United States as compared with the Soviet Union. “The Russian soldier is more courageous and patient than the U.S. soldier,” he said then. Hence, “Our battle with the United States is easy compared with the battles in which we engaged in Afghanistan.”

Becoming still more explicit, bin Laden wrote off the Americans as cowards. Had Reagan not taken to his heels in Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983? And had not Clinton done the same a decade later when only a few American Rangers were killed in Somalia, where they had been sent to participate in a “peacekeeping” mission? Bin Laden did not boast of this as one of his victories, but a State Department dossier charged that al Qaeda had trained the terrorists who ambushed the American servicemen. (The ugly story of what happened to us in Somalia was told in the film version of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down, which reportedly became Saddam Hussein’s favorite movie.)

Bin Laden summed it all up in a third interview he gave in 1998:

After leaving Afghanistan the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle thinking that the Americans were like the Russians. The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized, more than before, that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat.

Naturally, they believed him. He wouldn’t lie would he? So America simply had to respond to bin Laden’s trash talk by showing the world that we are one tough mofo of a superpower that would invade any country that looked at us sideways. Never mind that bin Laden was full of shit about everything and that 9/11 would only succeed if we did exactly what we ended up doing. Incensed by his taunts, the administration rose up like an angry giant and began to flail about incoherently. That’ll show him who’s boss.

And after everything that’s happened since, Bush still believes it. From March of 2006:

Ours is an enemy which has embraced an ideology — an ideology of hatred, an ideology that is totalitarian in nature: they decide if you can worship and how you worship; they decide whether or not your children can go to school; they decide this, they decide that. They stand exactly the opposite of the United States of America. They have expressed their tactics for the world to see. They believe that those of us living in democracies are weak, and flaccid. It’s just a matter of time, they believe, if they continue to exert pressure that we will retreat from the world. That’s what they want.

The vaunted neo-conservative intellectuals have a simplistic, shoolyard view of the world based on what appears to be a very simplistic, schoolyard psychology that very much appealed to the boy-man that had been installed in the white house when bin Laden struck on 9/11. What serendipity! It is this puerile psychological misfire that united them with the feverish one handed typists of the 101st keyboarders — all threats, no matter how small or insignificant at the time, must be met with crude brute force lest someone taunt you about your small cojones. The real threat is the appearance of weakness.

The interesting thing about this, of course, is that very few of these people have ever put any of that into practice in their own lives — this belief exists in an abstract realm of fantasy — a pageant to be performed by others. (When you read Podhoretz’s piece you can’t help but be struck by all the vainglorious pride he takes in the physical courage of others.) Yet they also need to maintain a sort of religious fiction about themselves as being purveyors of democracy and freedom — concepts that don’t ordinarily lend themselves to barbaric message sending.

And that is how we found ourselves invading and occupying (and killing and torturing) to prove we are good and they are evil. And it’s why with every failure, every misstep, every hypocrisy and war crime, this braindead macho policy makes America far more vulnerable today than we were on 9/11. This mistaken belief that bin Laden attacked us because he thought we were weak — has made us weak. Virtually the entire American political establishment got punked by Osama bin Laden’s trash talking and they still don’t get it. With every impotent “message” of toughness we send, the more we play into his hands.

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Laughin’ With Yo Homies

by digby

I write a lot about tribal identity, specifically conservative tribal identity, and I think it’s an issue we need to think about in order to understand how our politics really work. Mostly, I have felt throughout my adult life, since Reagan anyway, that I didn’t have much of a tribe, certainly not a political tribe. The left has been defined for so many years by the exaggerated cartoon image created by the wingnuts that it’s often been difficult to even admit you are a liberal, much less publicly identify and congregate with others explicitly on that basis. You’d pick an issue or a candidate, maybe. You’d speak in a sort of code. But you rarely gathered in one place as liberals or revel joyously in calling yourself one.

That’s changing. Last night I saw Laughing Liberally here in LA and I now think that for the first time in a long time people are willing to assume the mantle and be proud liberals for its own sake. This virtual bloggy thing of ours is translating into actual human interaction. And that means we can change our politics.

Granted, LA is a liberal town so it’s not shocking that you could gather an auditorium full of people for political comedy. But there was more to it than that. There was a celebratory vibe in the air — and a very nice feeling of explicit liberal solidarity based on our shared worldview.

A couple of observations:

Lieberman is tremendously unpopular but Dem bashing in general is not as popular as it used to be among liberals. We’re starting to take ownership of the party, I think. Good for us.

People are far more aware of the details of current political intrigue than I realized. I’m assuming this is because of the blogosphere and Air America (the LA station that carries it heavily promoted this event.) Also good for us.

If I have one request of the comedians on this tour, all of whom were great, it would be that they start thinking right now about some John McCain jokes. It’s never to early to start the political ridicule. Indeed, we need to get going on all the potential GOP candidates. The Republicans are probably funding an entire think tank study on how to ritually humiliate ours.

Laughing Liberally is great fun. I hope they are able to expand this tour and take it to some places where it liberals really need the laughs. But I have to say that I’m grateful to them for bringing it here and offering all of us Hollywood Libs (who, along with Boston and San Francisco, all the red state conservatives blame for the destruction of civilization as we know it) a chance to congregate and laugh our asses off about politics. Everybody needs to get together with their tribe once in a while, see each other face to face and share the same space. It feels good. We should do it more often.

Laughing Liberally will be at Yearly Kos in Vegas and then in Boston. Go see it if you can.

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Documentary Evidence

NB: The following was transcribed verbatim from an actual videotape found in the tape library of Heather Donahue, the noted documentary filmmaker. Hullabaloo regrets the occasionally coarse language, but we’ve decided to retain it so that the full extent of the unfortunate condition into which one of our regular correspondents seems to have sunk will become clear.

All too clear, alas.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

Tristero, s’up?

I’m feeling a little weird right now. I don’t feel so good.

What’s the matter? You drop that tab of Sunshine I know you’ve been bogartin’ since ’67? (laughs)

Har de har har. Here’s what got me so freaked. Barring some miraculous infusion of spine, character, and principle from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, tomorrow George W. Bush will once more heap enormous shame on my country.

Yup. Looks like he’s actually gonna get on tv and propose a constitutional ban on marriages because he doesn’t like the biology of the people getting married.

Doesn’t that strike you as completely, like utterly, in-fucking-sane????

No, tristero, it doesn’t. Oh, it’s not like I don’t support gay marriage or something. “Course I do, ‘course I do. Everyone does. I mean everyone, except Bush and those idiots. It’s just that there are entirely rational reasons why Bush is doing this.

What??? Don’t you get it? The day after tomorrow, Fred Phelps will be officially no longer half the kook that any member of Lamda will suddenly be. Sure Phelps’s is clearly clinically manic, no one likes him (at least not publicly) but don’t you see, his delusions are closer to the unambiguously expressed direction the president of the United States wants for America than anyone interested in providing gays with civil rights.

And don’t you see what’s gonna happen?? After tomorrow, it’s duck season on gays, lesbians, and the transgendered. People will die, people are gonna die! Good people will die, smart people, people who are loved, and who are raising great familes, all because tomorrow the president of the United States is gonna endorse writing into the Constitution, the Constitution! for crissakes, that gays, lesbians, and transgenders can’t legally marry. That is absolutely insane! Do you realize what would happen if they passed that abomination?

Okay, tristero, hold on, calm down, okay, calm do…

I can’t calm down! Look, you know the right just as well as I do. They’re unbelievably sneaky bastards. They pretend they’re anti-abortion, but they’re really anti-contraception, and that’s not even it – they’re really anti-sex except with a government license. But that’s not all of it, either. Look at Santorum, he thinks he can tell even a married couple how to fuck in their own bedroom. These people are flat out crazy perverts.

So y’gotta wonder, what are they hiding? What aren’t they talking about when it comes to this amendment? You think this is just about gays? Well yes it is, my God, the violence. And think how’d they suffer if this thing passed!

Dude, shut up! I’m trying t’ tell you…

No, wait, these people, these rightwingers oh, they got lotsa “biological criteria,” and not just gender fetishes, over what makes a proper marriage. This don’t stop with homosexuality.

A while back, Atrios caught the Washington Times expressing “concern” or “distress” over blacks and whites having sex. And you know about Bob Jones’ University notorious policy to prohibit “interracial” dating, like they’ll ever permit it even it’s no longer an official ban. Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people on the right, the very same folks deeply worried about women having sex with each other, who are also deeply concerned about the numerous cultural problems flowing from the spreading practice of “miscegenation.” After all, until quite recently, black/white marriages weren’t recognized everywhere in the US. So, there will be no reason why the US can’t revisit the reasoning behind the ban and extend the purview of the anti-marriage amendment.

But tristero, will you just shut u…

But that isn’t all. Many people seriously worried about gay marriage are also majorly upset about the moral issues around abortion. The question of the woman’s culpability is a wrenching one for them, and most of them won’t talk about what they really think about it. But other groups will. The “christian” Reconstructionists – some of the friendly folks behind intelligent design Creationism- theyll talk about it. A woman who has had an abortion is a murderer.

Should murderers in a Christian society be permitted to marry? Why? Marriage is a holy sacrament, y’know, it’s not just a fucking piece of paper giving you and your spouse legal rights. You befoul the sanctity of marriage when you permit murderers to marry! The question for these people is not whether a murderer should marry but whether a woman who murders her own child should be permitted to live. The Bible says you don’t suffer a witch to live. Ditto baby killers.

Okay, this isn’t funny anymore, you’re starting to seriously scare me. Let me explain…

Not yet. America is, as Dobson and his ilk are always so eager to remind us, a Christian country from the beginning. And Christian it must stay. No more Jewish/Christian marriages. Just as important, it’s becoming time to address the serious problems that Christians have with so-called Catholics…

And what about sluts and whores? Seriously, should non-virgin women marry? Other cultures have problems with that, why should the US condone second-rate marriages? The anti-marriage amendment gives us a chance at keeping marriage only between virgins.

Oh, crissakes, that’s silly, it could never happen in the US.

You’re right, it can’t, because we don’t have an anti-marriage amendment yet. That’s why it can’t happen here – it’s not because we’re “more sensible” people than the Afghans under the Taliban and wouldn’t permit it – we’re the most religious First World country in the world, y’know. It’s simply because legally it is impossible and that’s the only reason why it can’t happen here. But if there is an anti-marriage amendment, it can happen here and, if history is any guide, it will.

Okay, tristero, you done for now? Good! It’s time to get back to Planet Reality, my friend. Look, I am as worried as you are, but let’s just think about what’s actually gonna happen, not what could maybe happen. Everyone, but everyone agrees on this, that the chances of Congress passing a constitutional amendment that bans marriages are exactly zero. You’re hallucinating if you think this will lead to wholesale, violent oppression of the Jews. Oh, sorry, I meant, gays, just ignore the slip.

Are you serious?? That’s supposed to make me feel better? Has 5 years of Bush so warped your sense of the truly bizarre that you don’t see this as flat out surreal, as in Dali Persistence of Memory surreal? The fact that the amendment has no chance of passing, THAT’S supposed to make me feel that what’s gonna happen is LESS psychotic? What’s he doin it for then? Huh? That just makes it even more insane, not less. What the hell is going on? Has everyone lost their mind?

Tristero, you know very well what’s going on. Bush is proposing the anti-marriage amendment, even though he knows it won’t pass, simply to help elect Republicans in the fall.

Ahhh! My God, my head, my head! Did I hear that right. Are you telling me, let me get this straight…

Are you telling me, and this is not a joke, man, tell the truth, I’m starting to lose it big time here… You’re saying the reason Bush is gonna do his best to act like the Man From Fucking La Mancha tomorrow is because he desperately needs to make sure every modern-day witchburner and every American Nazi comes out and votes Republican in the fall elections or the party falls from power? I don’t believe I heard you say that.

Is that really what GOP power depends on, the white supremacists and religious fanatics? That can’t be, that just can’t be…this can’t be happenin…

Wait a minute…y’know, come to think of it, that’s it. This really is all too crazy to be real, y’know, mebbe, I really did eat that Sunshine after all, haven’t seen it in a while…

Yup, that’s it! I’m tripping! This is just a bad trip! None of it’s real, none of it, the anti-marriage amendment, and your crazy reasoning, why you’re just a hallucination, a hologram of my imagination. You’re gone, I can’t see you anymore! Oh, thank God.

(laughs with relief) A bad trip, just a verrrrrrrrrry bad trip. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s just a bad trip. It’s not gonna happen.

Whew! Now I can face tomorrow.

[VIDEO ENDS. TRANSCRIPT ENDS]

Here We Are Now. Entertain Us!

by tristero

As I was about to start writing this, I became distracted by the latest atrocity in the Bush/Iraq war, 21 people dying in an attack on a bus, including 12 high school students. It may seem pointless, perhaps to the point of being obscene, to focus instead on an extremely subtle issue of presentation and rhetoric and do so at extreme length. But I’m trying to understand how the US got taken over by such an incompetent band of extremists and I want to find ways to prevent them from retaining power. I have some sort of sensitivity to rhetorical devices and techniques, and since I think that is an important part of the answer and of the solution, I’ll go on and write what I intended to. For I know that if the far right continues to have influence far in excess either to their popular support or their woeful talent, today’s massacre, and our horror-filled reaction to it, will look like the good old days to our kids.

There’s a rather listless article by Elizabeth Drew about the bipartisan alarm over Bush’s signing statements in the current New York Review of Books – dull, because there is nothing added to the story, not that the story itself is anything other than infuriating and ominous (btw, Drew has written extremely well on Bush in the past; this one is an exception among the ones I’ve read). But a striking conjunction of quotes caught my interest towards the end of Drew’s essay:

People with very disparate political views, such as Grover Norquist and Dianne Feinstein, worry about the long-term implications of Bush’s power grab. Norquist said, “These are all the powers that you don’t want Hillary Clinton to have.” Feinstein says, “I think it’s very dangerous because other presidents will come along and this sets a precedent for them.” Therefore, she says, “it’s very important that Congress grapple with and make decisions about what our policies should be on torture, rendition, detainees, and wiretapping lest Bush’s claimed right to set the policies, or his policies themselves, become a precedent for future presidents.”

To cut directly to the point, this is a perfect illustration both of the problem with mainstream Democratic rhetoric, and the dangerous effectiveness of far-right Republican operatives. It’s almost as of they’re speaking two different dialects. I don’t wanna make two much of the dialect conceit, but it may be useful as a rule of thumb to start us off.

Norquist speaks what I’ll call TeeVee, the dialect we hear on television, not only on the news, but in nearly every commercial, every sitcom, the Simpsons, late night comedy shows, and so on. Like everything else you hear in TeeVee, Norquist’s statement is concise and all-but-exclusively monosyllabic: the vocabulary is more restricted than a 6 year-old’s. But that is noted not so much to disparage it as to describe it. Because Norquist’s statement is also crudely witty – it will certainly get an appreciative snort from many Hillary-bashers, a calculated kind of we’re-all-vulgar-together kind of wit. But there’s even more to it than that.

Norquist also uses, and to great effect, two levels of personalization, a prime feature of TeeVee dialect. First of all, the audience is directly addressed – “you” – and almost instinctively you – we – snap to attention. (“You deserve a break to today;” “You-you’re the one -” why, I bet you (heh) can make a whole career in advertising and pop music out of that word…)

And then Clinton’s name is mentioned, personalizing, embodying, and exemplifying the existential alarm triggered by “you don’t want.” Norquist doesn’t bother going into detail about what “all the powers you don’t want Hillary Clinton to have” could be. Why should he? After all, it’s patently obvious that he and his audience want Clinton to have no power at all. Nor is it necessary to go into any kind of detail about what’s the big deal if Clinton has “all the powers.” If someone even dares to ask such a question in an atmosphere so rhetorically slanted, it could easily be sloughed off with a snarky laugh and a snotty joke. For a long time in the MSM, Hillary Clinton has been thoroughly demonized past rational dispute; giving her, of all people, illegal wiretapping powers, is literally unthinkable.

But the personalization serves a much more specific set of purposes for Norquist than simply the present issue of deploring increased presidential power. It is, of course, a highly partisan statement. By implication through omission, Norquist tacitly endorses Bush’s desire to have all the powers. These are powers you don’t want Clinton to have but what about the present day or furture Republican president? Well, that’s easily deflected. It’s simply not the question. The question is what if these awesome powers fell into the hands of a Democrat and not just any Democrat but Hillary Clinton? (And let’s not forget that the Republicans, being the generous, giving souls that they are, have already nominated and selected Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2008, saving Democrats an enormous amount of bother deciding for themselves who they want.)

Existential alarm, demonization, personalization, simplification. It’s all there compacted, compressed, and finely tuned in the Norquist quote (there’s more, but that’s enough for now). And that’s TeeVee, the prime candidate, el numero uno (say it in English!) for the defining dialect of US English. It transcends the country’s regions, subcultures, religions, ethnic groups, and class. And political persuasions. Need examples? Look at tv commercials. Need less trivial examples? Look at the evening news, inevitably leading off a story on how Medicare’s drug policy affects a specific family (personalization). Look at how the choices for action and thought are automatically simplified, for which demonization really helps – invade Iraq or you will condone the actions of a monstrous monster!! Further examples?

Nah, you get the idea. Let’s turn to what Feinstein said. She’s not speaking TeeVee or any other dialect. Hell, she’s not even speaking. She’s just talking: no brain is engaged. Hers isn’t the language of persuasion. Nor is it evasive. It’s just rambling, boring, dull, and extremely unpleasant. It’s mediocrity arrogantly worrying over a moral principle – three serious taboos for native TeeVee speakers. Like us.

Consider her immediate resort to a strangled, masturbatory use of personalization. The first word is “I” and she “thinks it’s dangerous.” Yeah, big deal, that’s her (solo, egotistical) opinion, but Norquist speaks for our opinions. Worse, Feinstein sets up an instantly arrogant opposition and a hierarchy – I am the expert, you’re not, I think it’s dangerous, and you’re wrong if you don’t. In contrast, Norquist works the empathy angle – you think Hillary is dangerous.

Feinstein’s use of the first person also admits doubt where Norquist strictly limits doubt in an important way. Only Feinstein thinks it’s dangerous, and let’s face it, that’s just her opinion. But Norquist addresses us, a lot of us, and that many people really can’t be wrong. And for us to be wrong, that wouldn’t feel good, would it? Norquist knows we’re right. Feinstein just knows that she’s right.

Now, look – if you dare, it’s horrible, horrible – at Feinstein’s incoherent use of alliteration. Just thinking about it makes me wince.

Folks, really. If you’re gonna use “president” and “precedent” in the same sentence, you really need to be aware of it. And y’gotta do it with intent. Feinstein is just plain tone deaf. And the effect is revolting. Muffing her chance for a little clever verbal pizzazz, “precedent” becomes just an annoying big word – three whole syllables! – we really gotta struggle to parse. It merely intimidates, harking back to the arrogant “I” from whence she began. And then she repeats it at the end and it’s still not even close to funny, interesting, or illuminating.

Feinstein’s profound indifference to what she is saying – not the meaning, but the actual words and phrases she uses to convey meaning – is everywhere apparent throughout the quote. Yes, indeed, Bush certainly is a bumbling fool whenever he speaks, but even he rarely approaches the transcendent idiocy of calling on Congress to “grapple” with “our policies on torture.”

For crissakes, “grapple”?? Who knew that the legislatures took not only a tortuous route to making our laws, but a torturous one, too? Grapple, shee-it, let’s just use the rack.

And unlike Norquist, who compresses all the evil of the world into one Clinton, Feinstein makes the spectacular mistake of listing all of America’s sins. What on earth wash she thinking??? Y’know, I’ve read a lot about torture, rendition, detainees, and wiretapping since 2000. And every time I start to do so, I have to fight the desire to avoid hearing anymore about this stuff. It’s not fun, it’s a duty, espeically if my taxes are funding it, but don’t think for a second I want to hear about it. No one does (well, except maybe Don Rumsfeld, he’s so weird it just may set his putter straight, as the saying goes).

So If you’re gonna bring all these truly awful things up in this context, where it’s a side issue to the main one – the usurpation of powers by a power-mad executive – you better do it in such a fashion that we want to endure hearing about it. Otherwise, you’ll lose your audience. But for Feinstein, my God, these horrors actually become “our” horrors. Meaning not ony her and the Congress’s, but worse, yours and mine – policies. Wha? Diane, these are Bush’s policies, don’t tell me they’re ours!! I feel guilty enought already just having to pay for him, dig? And I’ve spoken out against them, marched, petioned, etc etc, from day one!

One last thing, no reason to prolong the agony but I can’t resist pointing out this flatulent rhetorical impropriety. Admit it: didn’t you just want to fucking hurl when you read “lest?” Oh, my! No scones for me, Major, I’m off to play the Grand Pee-a-know!.

I’m sorry, one last, last thing, and this is it. “lest[!] Bush’s claimed right to set the policies, or his policies themselves.” What is this, the Marx Brothers crazy legal contract skit? Can we just skip the sanity clause and watch the stateroom scene again? Please?

The point should be obvious but let’s spell it out anyway. Nobody’s saying to imitate Norquist’s style. The guy’s crazy and obnoxious and his style – irrationally hostile and obsessively nasty down to the microlevel – reflects that. But dear friends, you gotta have some rhetorical style. And unfortunately, even top Democratic politicians like Feinstein simply don’t.

Look, we all know what Feinstein is trying to say, at least in part – “Bush is acting like a tinpot tyrannical dictator. for which the only precedent among American presidents is the disgraced and disgraceful Richard Nixon. And there is no reason for this president to set such an awful precedent for America’s future leaders.”

The thing is: that is what she has to say, only better. Because she’s goddamm right. But her rhetorical incompetence tells us we’re gonna learn nothing if we listen to her, and we’re not gonna have fun, either. One or the other, preferably both – that’s TeeVee. That’s not just Teen Spirit anymore, dear Mr. Cobain. That’s America.

[Update: Slightly revised after initial posting.]

Puppies

by digby

There are a bunch of posts today on the subject of media narrative that are very much worth reading as a series. I’m going to link them all below.

This discussion about media narratives is incredibly important. We must not forget that a great many people are infected with these media storylines (although according to this fascinating analysis by Stirling Newberry, they are less infected than we think.) But there is one group that is almost completely controlled by it and that’s the political establishment. The blogosphere and other forms of alternative media provide some other voices, but in the main, the beltway’s relationship to the people is almost entirely constructed by the media narrative. And it’s killing Democrats.

I’m going to excerpt a little piece from each of these pieces:

Jamison Foser from Media Matters:

The recent media treatment of Sen. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they’re in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men’s own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they’d have gotten better press coverage. That’s naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in. To illustrate this, we look back over the last dozen or so years.

This is very important. It is an American impulse to recoil from losers, but it’s a Democratic weakness that they consistently belittle and degrade their politicians for the sins of the media. Foser’s long post takes you on a trip through time that should convince anyone that there is more at work here than congenitally bad candidates. From Howard Dean to John Murtha to Hillary Clinton to Al Gore and everything in between, there is no such thing as a “normal” Democrat in the eyes of the political media.

Peter Daou, on the WaPo’s revisiting today of Bush’s manly certitude. Steve Benon on the same. Christy too.

Stirling Newberry on the two narrative streams, public and private.

TBOGG on the press’s reluctance to call Republicans liars.

He excerpts this incredible paragraph from Eric Boehlert’s incredible new book Lapdogs:

The MSM’s unique brand of journalism, unveiled just for Bush, represented precisely the kind of clubby, get-along reporting that would have been roundly mocked by journalists themselves just a few years earlier. During the Clinton years, the D.C. newsroom sin was to be seen as soft on Democrats — “a Clinton apologist” — and journalists went to extraordinary lengths to prove their mettle by staying up late chasing Whitewater rumors and trying to prove the White House gave away weapons secrets to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions. The phrase “double standard” barely begins to describe the titanic shift that occurred in how Bush and his Republican administration were covered by the suddenly timorous press corps. It’s hard to believe the Bush-era slumbering press was the same one that a decade earlier shifted into overdrive when bogus allegations flew that President Clinton caused commercial airplanes to back up at Los Angeles International Airport while he received a $200 haircut from a celebrity stylist aboard Air Force One in 1993. Federal Aviation Administration records later showed no such delays occurred, but that didn’t stop the Washington Post from referencing the silly incident fifty-plus times in less than thirty days, treating the hoax as a serious political story. (The Post staff managed to squeeze in nearly one hundred Clinton haircut references during the 1993 calendar year.) Then again, just four months into his first term, the Post published a lengthy, mocking feature on Clinton’s soft approval ratings. (“The Failed Clinton Presidency. It has a certain ring to it.”) Yet in 2005 when Bush’s job approval rating plunged into the 30s, the Post refused to print the phrase “failed presidency” to describe Bush’s second term. To do so would simply invite conservative scorn; something the newsroom seemed to go to extraordinarily lengths to avoid.

After reading all of that the question is — how do we fix this?

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Horse’s Mouth

Is George W. Bush’s comic book advisor Karl Zinsmeister padding his resume? Say it ain’t so.

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The Mood of The Country

by digby

I read this series of posts over on TPM and got really depressed. A number of readers wrote in to either agree with or criticize Josh for taking the New Yorker to task for perpetuating the same old creaky political narrative that we’ve been hearing for the last 25 years.

This one, in particular, made me feel very, very tired:

I was holding back, but dude?!?

“The vast majority of Democrats totally understand that Dems running in reddish states can’t have stereotypically liberal positions on hot-button social and cultural issues. I think everybody gets that.”

No, no, no. THEY DON’T GET THAT AT ALL.

“Reddish”? Dems don’t get that notion even when it comes to blood red states.

Come on. If Dems got it, the party would have never nominated Kerry, and Hillary would be consigned to the oblivion of a Senate committee chairmanship, at best.

In fact, I’m trying to conjure up any factual basis for thinking that the majority of Dems get that, let alone a “vast majority.”

I lived in Louisiana when Dukakis ran. I lived in Missouri when Kerry (his fricking lt. gov.!) ran. They were jokes. Not just unelectable. Jokes. Howard Dean? Another joke. Hillary? God help us.

Do you have any idea how demoralizing it is having these folks wrecking the top of the ballot again and again? It not just that those of us in red states have to endure GOP presidencies, just like you blue staters. But we get the shit kicked out of us up and down the ballot. It’s a disaster.

You tell me how it is that Dems managed to nominate two Massachusetts liberals for president during the greatest conservative movement in this country since–I don’t know–prohibition? It sure ain’t because a vast majority decided to accommodate the mood of the country.

With those two nominations as bookends to the last 18 years, I don’t think the problem is that reporters like Goldberg keep repeating the same old tired cliches. So long as the Dems keep living those tired old cliches, you’d have to become a novelist to write a different storyline. Don’t shoot the messenger.

I have heard this shit as long as I can remember. And yet, when moderate centrist southerner Bill Clinton was elected (with a mere plurality in both elections) — and was tortured endlessly by the right wing — I didn’t hear any let-up of the narrative or get any sense that the red states were appeased. Indeed, Clinton was widely portrayed as being the poster boy for alleged blue state values. His crime was that he was a Democrat, period. His southern twang couldn’t save him. And it didn’t save Jimmy Carter either, who was a pillar of moral rectitude. It’s always something.

There is no winning if we continue to play this game. And red state Democrats who have bought into this frame need to step back and consider the fact that this conservative era only exists in electoral politics. In every other way, this is one of the most liberal eras in history. Between the changes in marriage and women’s rights alone, society is undergoing a massive shift. The conservative era he refers to is a piddly ass backlash against forces that are far stronger than anything Judge Roy Moore and James Dobson have put forth. And the agenda that has been enacted under this conservative GOP era has had almost nothing to do with any of those social issues — it’s a radical economic agenda that has hurt working people of all “cultures.”

I’ve lived in both red and blue states for extended periods and frankly, never actually saw much of a difference; in my experience people are pretty much the same everywhere. But I respect the right to love your tribe and there are areas of the country in which regional identity is of paramount importance. It’s part of being human.

That is why I’m getting sick to death of hearing this crap from people like Marshall’s correspondent above. I’m not exactly feeling the same kind of love in return. It’s not enough that I have enthusiastically voted for Carter, Clinton and Gore, all conservative southern Democrats to one degree or another, or that I would have backed Edwards, Clark or any other red state Dem in the last one. (Kerry won the southern Democratic primaries too, btw. He wasn’t just annointed by a bunch of clueless latte sipping San Francisco fags. This guy needs to consult his fellow Democrats and ask why they did that.)

(In all my posts on this subject, this is, of course, the point where I dig out an obligatory excerpt of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech from an earlier post of mine and recycle it once more.) I think that until we grapple with the fact that this is the real nub of the problem we will get nowhere.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

So too, today, we must ask the question, “what will satisfy them?” Will it be to ban gay marriage? Outlaw abortion? Destroy the public schools? Institute mandatory prayer? Deport all non-English speakers?

I don’t think so. It certainly will not be enough to nominate a conservative, born again southern Democrat. We did that. His name was Jimmy Carter. Here’s what they are still doing to him even 25 years later. We nominated a son of the “New South,” modern, moderate and pro-business. They impeached his ass.

No, what must happen is that Democrats everywhere must place themselves avowedly with the most conservative red states in every way. They must openly reject their own tribal identity (whatever that may be) and become them. Nothing less will do.

“The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of [liberalism], before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.”

We are not going to win conservative red states simply by respecting the culture. There is no evidence that it will work. Carter almost lost to the guy who pardoned Nixon. Clinton never won a majority. Gore came the closest and they just cranked up the GOP machine in Florida and DC and stole it from him. A quirk of the constitution, the electoral college, forged in compromise over this very issue, means that this is going to be with us as long as we don’t confront it head-on and stop thinking that we can appease this faction simply with pork rinds and country music. Republicans like Bush Sr. can do that because the GOP is the tribe’s official party. Democrats can’t. If we are to win some conservative red states we must find a persuasive argument and argue it. Short of a major catastrophe, I don’t know if it will work. But it’s obvious to me that these style points don’t mean shit when it comes from a Dem. The red state cultural conservative insists that everyone, everywhere agrees with him.

But we aren’t cultural conservatives! We can nominate nothing but born-again good old boys and girls for the rest of my life and that’s ok with me. But we cannot be all things to all people. I will never be “avowedly with” red state cultural conservatism. It’s on the wrong side of history and always has been. I can’t become it. I don’t believe in it. If I did, I would be a Republican.

I concluded that stale Lincoln post of mine with this:

Lincoln concluded the speech at the Cooper Union with this and I think it’s relevant today to those of us who believe that our side is, as Lincoln thought then, the side of enlightened, moral progress:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

This fight for the soul of America has been going on since the very beginning and it isn’t over yet. We can take heart in the fact that in every great battle thus far, the forces of equality and moral progress have won the day. It’s never been easy.

Marshall’s emailer says that the Democrats have been fools for not “accomodating the mood of the country.” I say that’s bullshit. The “mood of the country” is an extremely complex, ephemeral thing with many permutations, not all of them political. But if the the elite press and its GOP string pullers have decided that the political mood is conservative, the last thing I want to do is accomodate it. I want to change it.

Disclaimer: I am not talking about the vast majority of the 40+ of liberal red state voters. I feel nothing but solidarity with you, my friends, and I’m sorry that it’s hard for you to be associated with me. Perhaps together we can begin to change that.

And I use the “red state/blue state” signifier as a simple shorthand. I realize that on a block by block basis or whatever, that we are all just one big purple family. But if you look at the election results of the last few elections, you will see that there is a solid block of states that votes for the Republican party. And it is regionally distinct. That is a simple reality whether we like it or not.

Salon Looks At the Kennedy Voter Fraud Article

by tristero

Without letting Kenneth Blackwell off the hook for major league unethical partisan behavior, Farhad Manjoo examines key points of the Kennedy voter fraud article in Rolling Stone mentioned here. He goes into detail as to why he thinks Kennedy failed to make a convincing case that Ohio ’04 was stolen.

If you’re willing to read Manjoo’s article, I’d be curious to know what you folks think. It seems as if many of his points are quite valid regarding selective quoting of facts by Kennedy, etc.

Assuming Manjoo is, himself, quoting fairly, it doesn’t exonerate the ugly behavior of Blackwell, or call into question the crucial necessity of election reforms in the US. But it would mean that RFKjr has been less than honest in presenting all the facts and in the drawing of conclusions.

If that is the case, that RFKjr was wrong or seriously misleading, then naturally I will withdraw my assertion in the previous post that Ohio ’04 was stolen. Manjoo’s objections to Kennedy seem substantive and require a response from those who are knowlegeable about this issue at a granular level. Kennedy himself should respond, of course.

[UPDATE: Outside The Beltway , after initially posting a purely ad hominem attack on Kennedy, updated his post to include a highly detailed rebuttal of many of Kennedy’s points, including the problem with trusting exit polls, mentioned by Manjoo, et al. Again, either a substantive counter-response or an admission of error on Kennedy’s part really is appropriate. ]