Month: October 2006

A Man’s Gotta Make A Living

by digby

All this lying McCainiac finger-pointing about Clinton being at fault for North Korea having nukes is par for the course. That’s the GOP game — if it wasn’t Clinton it would have been Carter — or Truman — or Woodrow Wilson. It’s never their fault. Here’s Rich Lowry explaining it to us from their perspective:

The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “as the ink was drying.” The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.

I like Josh Marshalls pithy translation for those of us who live on planet Earth:

“Failure” =1994-2002 — Era of Clinton ‘Agreed Framework’: No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

“Success” = 2002-2006 — Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

But let’s take Lowry at his word that all the smart people knew that the agreed framework was bunk and that the eight years of a non-nuclear North Korea it bought were worthless. Why in the world was Donald Rumsfeld involved in building those light water reactors back in the 1990’s?

I understand that when this story came out back in 2003 the media were still in thrall to the Hunky Rummy, but what’s the excuse for not pursuing that question now? The only person besides Bush who still thinks he’s even sane is Midge Decter,and she never loved him for his mind anyway — it was his hot 72 year old bod and macho aggressiveness that turned her on. (That probably explains Bush’s infatuation with him too, come to think of it.)

May 12, 2003

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it’s surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What’s even more surprising about Rumsfeld’s silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.

[…]

FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he’s convinced that ABB’s chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. “This was a major thing for ABB,” the former director says, “and extensive political lobbying was done.”

The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked “to lobby in Washington” on ABB’s behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn’t provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB’s power-generation business until 1995, says he’s “pretty sure that at some point Don was involved,” since it was not unusual to seek help from board members “when we needed contacts with the U.S. government.” Other former top executives don’t recall Rumsfeld’s involvement.

Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for “regime change” in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did–or didn’t do–as an ABB director. There is no evidence that Rumsfeld, who took a keen interest in the company’s nuclear business and attended most board meetings, made his views about the project known to other ABB officials. He certainly never made them public, even though the deal was criticized by many people close to Rumsfeld, who said weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from light-water reactors. Paul Wolfowitz, James Lilley, and Richard Armitage, all Rumsfeld allies, are on record opposing the deal. So is former presidential candidate Bob Dole, for whom Rumsfeld served as campaign manager and chief defense advisor. And Henry Sokolski, whose think tank received funding from a foundation on whose board Rumsfeld sat, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the 1994 agreement.

I guess he must have felt that just because Clinton was conducting a “feckless, photo-op” foreign policy, as St. John McCain used to say, that was no reason he shouldn’t make a buck on it. He’s a Republican, after all.

Update: Dover Bitch points out the irony of the Republicans blaming Clinton and Carter (yes, they’ve blamed him too) for all things wrong in the universe while simultaneously decrying the notorious “blame America first” crowd. (They are always able to have it both ways, aren’t they?) She found this amazing little nugget from Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s famous 1984 speech on the subject:

“When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first.”

I suppose they can always fall back on their belief that Democrats aren’t “Real Americans” so it’s not inconsistent to them that they always blame America first themselves — and always have. (“Who lost the civil war?” “Who lost China?” “Who lost Vietnam?” “Who lost Iraq?”)In fact, their entire worldview is shaped by the idea that the enemy within, the treasonous Americans among them, are at fault for everything that’s gone wrong in the world. James Wolcott dismembers Dinesh D’Souza just today for claiming that Americans are to blame for islamic terrorism.

In fact, I suspect that if Republicans couldn’t blame America for every single thing that they believe has gone wrong in the world they would completely lose their moorings.

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What Americans Have Sacrificed In Bush’s “War On Terror”

by tristero

Many critics of the Bush administration have it wrong. They have repeatedly charged that while Bush has said the country is at war he has refused to call off the tax breaks for the rich or implement any measures that would require the American people to sacrifice.

Not true. In pursuit of war, he has instituted, and the American public through its apathy has gone along with, an extremely profound hardship. Bush has sacrificed American democracy:

In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s “dependency and trust,” he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity.

For nearly two years – from June 9, 2002 until March 2, 2004, when the Department of Defense permitted Mr. Padilla to have contact with his lawyers – Mr. Padilla was in complete isolation. Even after he was permitted contact with counsel, his conditions of confinement remained essentially the same.

He was kept in a unit comprising sixteen individual cells, eight on the upper level and eight on the lower level, where Mr. Padilla’s cell was located. No other cells in the unit were occupied. His cell was electronically monitored twenty-four hours a day, eliminating the need for a guard to patrol his unit. His only contact with another person was when a guard would deliver and retrieve trays of food and when the government desired to interrogate him.

His isolation, furthermore, was aggravated by the efforts of his captors to maintain complete sensory deprivation. His tiny cell – nine feet by seven feet – had no view to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window, however, it was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it was.

In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep. Mr. Padilla was not given a mattress until the tail end of his captivity. . . .

Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla’s interrogations would begin. Efforts to manipulate Mr. Padilla and break his will also took the form of the denial of the few benefits he possessed in his cell. . . .

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig.

He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Throughout most of the time Mr. Padilla was held captive in the Naval Brig he had no contact with the outside world. In March 2004, one year and eight months after arriving in the Naval Brig, Mr. Padilla was permitted his first contact with his attorneys. Even thereafter, although Mr. Padilla had access to counsel, and thereby some contact with the outside world, those visits were extremely limited and restricted. . . .

The deprivations, physical abuse, and other forms of inhumane treatment visited upon Mr. Padilla caused serious medical problems that were not adequately addressed. Apart from the psychological damage done to Mr. Padilla, there were numerous health problems brought on by the conditions of his captivity. Mr. Padilla frequently experienced cardiothoracic difficulties while sleeping, or attempting to fall asleep, including a heavy pressure on his chest and an inability to breath or move his body.

In one incident Mr. Padilla felt a burning sensation pulsing through his chest. He requested medical care but was given no relief. Toward the end of his captivity, Mr. Padilla experienced swelling and pressure in his chest and arms. He was administered an electrocardiogram, and given medication. . . . .

The cause of some of the medical problems experienced by Mr. Padilla is obvious. Being cramped in a tiny cell with little or no opportunity for recreation and enduring stress positions and shackling for hours caused great pain and discomfort. It is unclear, though, whether Mr. Padilla’s cardiothoracic problems were a symptom of the stress he endured in captivity, or a side effect from one of the drugs involuntarily induced into Mr. Padilla’s system in the Naval Brig. In either event, the strategically applied measures suffered by Mr. Padilla at the hands of the government caused him both physical and psychological pain and agony.

It is worth noting that throughout his captivity, none of the restrictive and inhumane conditions visited upon Mr. Padilla were brought on by his behavior or by any actions on his part. There were no incidents of Mr. Padilla violating any regulation of the Naval Brig or taking any aggressive action towards any of his captors. Mr. Padilla has always been peaceful and compliant with his captors. He was, and remains to the time of this filing, docile and resigned – a model detainee.

Mr. Padilla also wants to make clear that the deprivation described above did abate somewhat once counsel began negotiating with the officials of the Naval Brig for the improvements of his conditions. Toward the end of Mr. Padilla’s captivity in the Naval Brig he was provided reading materials and some other more humane treatment. However, despite some improvement in Mr. Padilla’s living conditions, the interrogations and torture continued even after the visits with counsel commenced.

In sum, many of the conditions Mr. Padilla experienced were inhumane and caused him great physical and psychological pain and anguish. Other deprivations experienced by Mr. Padilla, taken in isolation, are merely cruel and some, merely petty. However, it is important to recognize that all of the deprivations and assaults recounted above were employed in concert in a calculated manner to cause him maximum anguish.

It is also extremely important to note that the torturous acts visited upon Mr. Padilla were done over the course almost the entire three years and seven months of his captivity in the Naval Brig. For most of one thousand three hundred and seven days, Mr. Padilla was tortured by the United States government without cause or justification. Mr. Padilla’s treatment at the hands of the United States government is shocking to even the most hardened conscience, and such outrageous conduct on the part of the government divests it of jurisdiction, under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, to prosecute Mr. Padilla in the instant matter.

Now for the benefit of the cognitively damaged out there in the blogosphere, let me insert some boilerplate here to the effect that I have no idea what Padilla may or may not have done. That is an entirely separate issue. The issue here is illegal detention and torture of one its citizens by that citizen’s government. That kind of behavior by any state, for any reason, is inexcusable.

After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.

Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he – more importantly, what does the country – gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during “wartime.”

And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.

Well, now we know.

Sickening. Absolutely sickening.

[Edited slightly after initial posting.]

Dear God

by digby

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq’s government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated “excess deaths,” 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

There’s more:

Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body’s top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.

Reports from Iraq indicate that torture “is totally out of hand,” he said. “The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

Nowak added, “That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine.”

Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing “very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers.”

“You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed,” Nowak told reporters at the U.N.’s European headquarters.

“It’s not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you’ll find by private militias,” he said.

A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq’s Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in “honor killings” of women.

October 11, 2001

You know, I’m asked all the time — I’ll ask myself a question. How do I respond to — it’s an old trick — how do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am — like most Americans, I just can’t believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we’ve go to do a better job of making our case. We’ve got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don’t fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don’t hold any religion accountable. We’re fighting evil. And these murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand.

April 20, 2004

The people know where I stand. I mean, in terms of Iraq, I was very clear about what I believed. And, of course, I want to know why we haven’t found a weapon yet. But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. I don’t think anybody can — maybe people can argue that. I know the Iraqi people don’t believe that, that they’re better off with Saddam Hussein — would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.

May 5, 2004

Q Mr. President, critics are saying that by your action in Iraq actually invited al Qaeda and other terrorists to do business with you over there. Could you address that?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure. Do you remember September the 11th, 2001? Al Qaeda attacked the United States. They killed thousands of our citizens. I will never forget what they have done to us. They declared war on us. And the United States will pursue them. And so long as I’m the President, we will be determined, steadfast, and strong as we pursue those people who kill innocent lives because they hate freedom.

And, of course, al Qaeda looks for any excuse. But the truth of the matter is, they hate us, and they hate freedom, and they hate people who embrace freedom. And they’re willing to kill innocent Iraqis because Iraqis are willing to be free. Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. And we will help them rid Iraq of these killers.

The most powerful nation on earth, led by a fool who is led by a madman, unleashed hell on Iraq for no good reason. What have we done?

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St John The Anointed

by digby

I just love watching St. John McCain sticking it to the Democrats with everything he’s got after they spent the month of September anointing him as the premiere national leader on security and military affairs. This looks pretty stupid now, doesn’t it?

“When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “These military men are telling the president that in the war on terror you need to be both strong and smart, and it is about time he heeded their admonitions.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, “Instead of picking fights with Colin Powell, John McCain and other military experts, President Bush should change course, do what the American people expect, and finally give them the real security they deserve.”

What were they thinking? Now you have McCain out there talking total nonsense about North Korea and since he’s been portrayed not only as an expert, but as a highly moral and decent man whom everyone including the president should trust, the media and everyone else are raptly listening to his crazy utterances like a bunch of fangirls.

The problem is that he’s going to be an even worse problem than Bush in many ways as he emerges as a presidential contender. He’s just as much of a warmonger, and just as wrong about everything, but he’s got this phony bipartisan “credibility” that’s going to make the slam dunk run-up to the Iraq war look like a a serious foreign policy debate. Which Democrats are going to be able to summon the nerve to oppose the great McCain when he tells tells the country that in his “expert judgement,” we need to launch WWIII?

The country just can’t afford any more of these kooks running the government — and McCain is as kooky as any other Republican, possibly even more than most when it comes to national security. Unless the Democrats start yanking him off that pedestal soon, it’s going to get more and more difficult for them to do it.

For the real scoop on the North Korea situation, this article by Fred Kaplan remains the gold standard. Hint: Massive screw-up, and it wasn’t Clinton’s.

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Good Idea

by digby

It looks like the Republicans have a secret plan to end the war.

Take’s you back, doesn’t it?

C’mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together…

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Frozen Punditry

by digby

Jane Hamsher says I have a monkey named Chris Matthews on my back and I need serious help. Yes, my name is digby and I am a Hardball addict.

There’s a reason for it. Chris Matthews, to me, is the perfect embodiment of the delusional, millionaire DC courtier who thinks he is channeling the common man. The beltway is full of those guys apparently, but Tweety has a very special perch from which he dispenses all kinds of what he thinks are folksy observations about “Real Americans” but which are actually 50’s cartoon characters along the lines of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. He’s a fascinating case study in how the dysfunctional DC political media are completely immersed in rightwing bias and don’t even know it.

Here’s an exchange between Matthews and Howard Fineman today. Fineman runs down a list of various “deadly” poll ratings for Republicans in this week’s Newsweek poll:

Matthews: You didn’t give us the deadliest which is that Democrats are now trusted more on moral values

Fineman: I thought that was the next question

Matthews: (incredulous) I mean that is a stunning … the Democrats are the big city party, the tolerance party the … in many ways libertarian on social issues and moral issues and now they’re perceived to be more priestly, more honorable on moral questions … I guess that includes sexual questions … than the Republicans.

Fineman: In fairness to the Democratic … to everybody, that’s kind of a race to the bottom on that question, but it is a remarkable, it’s a turnaround. I think it’s about two or three months ago it was slightly in the Republicans’ favor, not overwhelmingly, because I think the accumulation, sort of the aura, of the money scandals on the hill, no one of which made a big impression, but overall they kind of did. The notion of government spending being out of control which, by the way, a lot of people view as a moral issue. The border’s not being protected …

Matthews: That’s something the Democrats don’t get and better damn get someday, which is, to Republicans having budget deficits is…

Fineman: it’s immoral.

Where do I begin? First, let’s take a look at Matthews’ incredulity that Democrats could possibly be considered more moral than Republicans. The definition of “moral values” is so vague that one could certainly call the Iraq war a matter of moral values and yet he seems to believe that the word applies only to sexual matters and that democrats are perceived to be less moral. (Indeed, he seems to think that tolerance itself is immoral, which would come as something of a surprise to Jesus Christ.) This idea about “moral values” is rightwing frame that goes completely unchallenged virtually all the time.

Fineman actually begins to spell out how the “moral values” issue might extend to corruption and greed and then makes the debatable point that government spending being out of control is also considered a “moral issue.” Let’s assume for the sake of argument that people do believe that. Why in the world would Chris Matthews then imperiously lecture the Democrats and say they’d “better damn get someday” that for Republicans having budget deficits is immoral?

O’Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush’s economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from “the corporate crowd,” a key constituency.

O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms. This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Are Matthews and Fineman so infused with GOP propaganda that after six years of Republican rule, the total consumption of a large budget surplus accumulated by a Democratic president, and now the biggest deficits in the nation’s history that they still believe that the Democrats are feckless with the economy while the Republicans are the good stewards? Still???

What does it take to shake these people out of their torpor? Cheney admitted it outright. The evidence is irrefutable. Republicans don’t give a damn about deficits except as a weapon with which to hit Democrats over the head when they are in the majority. Every time the GOP gets into power they loot the treasury like drunken pirates and run up huge debts for somebody else to pay. The record for the past 26 years is clear.

Democrats believe that budget deficits are sometimes necessary when an economy needs a boost or to fund long term projects that require borrowing money. It’s straight up Keynesian economics, nothing fancy. Otherwise, they believe in paying as you go. Republicans believe that deficits are “their due” and that “bridges to nowhere” are the spoils.

The 1994 revolution that gave Republicans control of the House produced a seismic shift in federal spending, moving tens of billions of dollars from Democratic to GOP districts, an Associated Press analysis shows.

Rather than pork-barrel projects for new GOP districts, the change was driven mostly by Republican policies that moved spending from poor rural and urban areas to the more affluent suburbs and GOP-leaning farm country, the computer analysis showed.

The result was an average of $612 million more in federal spending last year for congressional districts represented by Republicans than for those represented by Democrats, the analysis found. That translates into more business loans and farm subsidies, and fewer public housing grants and food stamps.

“There is an old adage,” said House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.). “To the victor goes the spoils.”

Yet, if Democrats ever gain control of the political system, guys like Matthews and Fineman will be out there tut-tutting and nit-picking, falling back on same the fetid, moldy slogans about Democratic “taxing and spending.” And I’m sure they’ll call them immoral even as they try to put the fiscal house back in order after the GOP criminal gang came through and destroyed the place. These deficits will not disappear like magic — and the punditocrisy will help the Republicans fight the necessary hard decisions every step of the way.

If the pundits can’t even get this one right, after all we’ve seen, then they are truly hopeless. Their knee-jerk criticism of Democrats under all circumstances is a major impediment to decent, competent governance and our democracy is in danger because of it. The Republicans would never have been able to get away with what they’ve done without the so-called liberal media regurgitating GOP platitudes and calling it analysis for the last six years. It’s only been in the face of such jarring cognitive dissonance as we’ve seen with Iraq and Katrina that that they’ve adjusted their robo-rhetoric at all.

If Democrats win in November, look for an immediate return to the standard critique of Democrats and an almost instant nostalgia for the “non-partisan” days of total GOP rule. They haven’t questioned their assumptions in decades and they aren’t going to start now.

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Faithful Republicans

by digby

It is taken as an article of faith (pardon the pun) that the evangelical base of the GOP is upset about this Foley scandal and will fail to turn up at the polls this November as a result. I wonder.

This article in the NY Times asks the question and finds that evangelicals don’t hold the Republican party responsible:

“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”

The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.

Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

[…]

But as far as culpability in the Foley case, Mr. Dunn said, House Republicans may benefit from the evangelical conception of sin. Where liberals tend to think of collective responsibility, conservative Christians focus on personal morality. “The conservative Christian audience or base has this acute moral lens through which they look at this, and it is very personal,” Mr. Dunn said. “This is Foley’s personal sin.”

To a person, those interviewed said that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois should resign if he knew of the most serious claims against Mr. Foley and failed to stop him. They said the degree of Mr. Hastert’s responsibility remained to be seen. Many said the issue had not changed their view of Congress because, in their opinion, it could not sink any lower.

But all also noted that the swift Democratic efforts to broaden the scandal to Mr. Hastert and other Republicans had added more than a whiff of partisanship to the stink of the scandal.

[…]

Brian Courtney, a Republican-leaning sales manager attending the concert, said the Foley affair had led to “the kind of mudslinging one would expect to see at an election time like this.” He added that he was paying closer attention to the “values and character” of the candidates, and that he would probably vote Republican again.

This is just anecdotal, but it rings true to me. These people have a faith based worldview and they have given over their faith to the Republican Party. And the Republican Party has found a way to have it both ways with these people — there is no “collective responsibility” for their party, but they are able to assign collective responsibility to Democrats, liberals and secularists for destroying the culture. It’s a good trick.

As for the election, a lot depends on the pastors and as far as I can tell, most of them are totally in the tank. Certainly the big ones are. And if this is any indication, the regular pastors are right where the GOP wants them:

David Thomas, a father taking his family to the concert, said that he, too, was leaning toward voting Republican and that the scandal only reinforced his conservative Christian convictions. “That is the problem we have in society,” Mr. Thomas said. “Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a ‘right’ to do whatever.”

In an interview on Friday, Pastor Anne Gimenez of the 15,000-member Rock Church here said the scandal “doesn’t change the issues we are voting on,” like abortion, public expression of religion and same-sex marriage.

The church has been actively registering parishioners and reminding them to vote. “Every Sunday already,” Ms. Gimenez said.

We can hope that the Christian Right finds this state of affairs just uncomfortable enough that they will be too busy to volunteer and forget to vote on election day. Those voices don’t give me a lot of hope that they will. Evangelicals are just as full of shit and able to rationalize the failure of their party as other Republicans are. They’ll do as they’re told.

If there is any group that may really abandon the GOP, I think it’s the suburban women, who are seeing a bunch of depraved middle aged politicians sending young men to Iraq to get killed for political reasons and looking the other way when young men are being preyed upon in the halls of congress — and suburban men, who are watching the out of control spending, the cronyism, the botched war and the loss of international prestige.

I’m basing this on nothing but my gut instincts so it’s about as meaningful as a ouija board, but I truly do have doubts that a group of people whose worldview is shaped by authoritarianism will abandon the party unless their leaders do. I see no evidence that the leaders of the Religious Right are ready to withdraw from worldly concerns.

Update: Here’s one reason why I don’t think the pastors are going to lead their flock away from politics:

In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.

[…]

As a result of these special breaks, religious organizations of all faiths stand in a position that American businesses — and the thousands of nonprofit groups without that “religious” label — can only envy. And the new breaks come at a time when many religious organizations are expanding into activities — from day care centers to funeral homes, from ice cream parlors to fitness clubs, from bookstores to broadcasters — that compete with these same businesses and nonprofit organizations.

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SOS

by digby

One of the things we all must be thinking about (if not talking about) as we go into the mid-term elections is whether the voting machines, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, are going to thwart an honest outcome. There is no doubt that in the last two presidential elections, the state voting apparatuses in Ohio and Florida made the difference between Democrats winning or losing. The former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who is now considered a laughing stock and an embarrassment, was the person (supposedly) who made several key decisions about deadlines and statutory interpretation that ran out the clock on the Florida recount. The decisions about voting machines and voter roll purges are made by secretaries of state, across the country. These important decisions being in the hands of Republican hacks like Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell is a real problem.

If you don’t know jack about the Secretary of State race in your state, check out this handy web-site that will tell you what you need to know. Pass it on to your friends. It’s just possible that the office of Secretary of State (or other elections officials) may be the best political donation and the most important vote you cast this year.

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The PoMo President

by digby

Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington’s legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.

Here’s how he put it a couple of years ago:

“After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, ‘Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,’” says Woodward.

“And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

It would, of course, be preferable for him to avoid facing a Democratic congress but even then, he probably assumes he can hold them off long enough for him to leave office — at which point the debate will be about “ending the partisanship” and that will be that. The thing that moves most powerful leaders as they see the end of their reign, their place in history, is irrelevant to this man.

His mind is so immature, and he is so extremely irresponsible, that he truly doesn’t seem to understand the ramifications of his actions. His words indicate that he sees “history” as the ultimate get out of jail free card. (“I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma.”) Perhaps he truly does believe that he’s God’s instrument who has no real will of his own and therefore no culpability — or maybe he’s just a nihilist at heart. Whatever his reasons, he seems to have adopted a shallow PoMo-style philosophy that everything is debatable down through time so it doesn’t matter what he does. Missing the point as usual, he hears the old Keynes phrase, “in the long run we’ll all be dead” and finds solace in it.

Maybe Lynn Cheney should have a chat with him about this. After all, she wrote a book on the subject:

TWQ: Tell us about what you call the attack on truth in our schools and colleges?

CHENEY: That was really the underlying topic of my last book, Telling the Truth. It’s postmodernism, the notion that there is no such thing as truth. There’s only your version of events and my version and Charles’ version and Harry’s version, and the one that prevails will be that of whoever is the most powerful. This seems to fly in the face of the way scholarship has proceeded for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Uh huh.

“How can a democracy hope to choose its leaders wisely,” Lynne Cheney asked in her 1996 book [Telling The Truth], “if time and again what their campaigns offer us are artful fictions?”

The simplest way to understand Republicans is to use the quick rule of thumb that whatever they criticize Democrats for is what they are doing. Lynn Cheney and other rightwing “intellectuals” created an entire industry devoted to attacking Democrats for moral and epistemic relativism. It became an article of faith that liberals had no values and believed in nothing — an image that sticks to us like flypaper, even today. Yet nobody has practiced relativism more successfully than the modern Republican party. The Republican President of the United States believes that truth is fungible and history is debated like a highway bill on the floor of the senate — so it doesn’t really matter what he does. It’s a clever way to rationalize ignorance, incompetence and failure but it’s an extremely dangerous way for the most powerful nation on earth to conduct itself.

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The October Surprise

by tristero

Well! Rove certainly had me fooled, that’s for sure. I had no idea that the secret weapon Republicans were planning to deploy against Democrats was one made in North Korea. But there it is.

Get it? A nuclear North Korea requires an American party in power that is completely serious about national and international security. And up until around the start of the Foley scandal,* most Americans thought that was the Republican party.

Surprise, Karl. Ain’t gonna work this time. [UPDATE: Am I suggesting that US intelligence had advance warning from, say, this summer, that a NoKo nuke test was imminent? Yes, I think that is more than plausible and that the Republicans were counting on the alarm that would create in the US to accrue to their benefit. Can I prove it and would I be willing to admit I was wrong if it turned out that the nuke test took the US by surprise? No. Yes.]

Josh Marshall has a pretty good take on how hard it will be, post Foley, for most Americans to escape the obvious conclusion that NoKo was a monumental Republican/Bush fuckup :

Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But [Bush] wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.

So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.

Indeed, from the moment of the initial cave, the White House began acting as though North Korea was already a nuclear power (something that was then not at all clear) to obscure the fact that the White House had chosen to twiddle its thumbs and look the other way as North Korea became a nuclear power. Like in Bush in Iraq and Hastert and Foley, the problem was left to smolder in cover-up and denial. Until now.

Hawks and Bush sycophants will claim that North Korea is an outlaw regime. And no one should romanticize or ignore the fact that it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world with a history of belligerence, terrorist bombing, missile proliferation and a lot else. They’ll also claim that the North Koreans were breaking the spirit if not the letter of the 1994 agreement by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program. And that’s probably true too.

But facts are stubborn things.

The bomb-grade plutonium that was on ice from 1994 to 2002 is now actual bombs. Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Basically, I think Josh has it exactly right here. But I can’t help thinking – and this is not snark, ladies, gentlemen and Republicans, this is serious – that Marshall’s being overly optimistic. Let’s read that last bit again:

Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Not for the Bush administration.

Oh, I know Josh is talking about “any policy towards Korea’s nuke ambitions” but it doesn’t matter. Wherever you turn with Bush, it is always difficult to imagine a worse result from any of their policies. But they always seem to surprise us and manage ever more catastrophic outcomes.

Could anyone imagine that the Bush administration policy towards natural disaster would be so inept they would fail to respond with even minimal effectiveness to Katrina? Or that a US president would be so focused on bogus threats he’d receive a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US” and not put the entire country on high alert? Could anyone imagine a worse solution for the millions of patients that would benefit from stem-cell-based treatments than for the United States to cripple research with a policy that bans federal funds for new stem cell lines? Or a worse politics for an American democracy than pandering to the most ignorant constituency in the country – the true believers in the Dobsons, the Falwells, and the Robertsons? A constituency so fucking dumb that when their preachers tell them the most dangerous issue facing the country is two guys who love each other, they actually believe it, then propose and pass laws that advocate bigotry and hate? Could anyone possibly imagine an ideology so idiotic that it actually takes seriously the likes of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Ahmad Chalabi, Paul Bremer, or Richard Cheney?

It is a simple fact that the most creative people in the world are the incompetent. They find unique ways of making life hell which are far, far beyond anything the rest of us can imagine. And so, the kind of fiascos that Joshua Micah Marshall – and you, and I – find difficult ever to imagine are a piece of cake for George W. Bush to create.

If Josh really thinks this spectacular screwup on North Korea is the worst result imaginable from a Bush policy towards NoKo (or anything else), I’d like to remind him that Bush has 833 days left to generate far worse ones.** And I for one am certain that Bush and Co. can, and will.

* It truly is remarkable how often American politics is mediated by things like sex scandals which are far from central to the actual concerns of the time. If there hasn’t yet been one, there’s a doctoral thesis or two to be written on the subject.

**According to my Bush Countdown Keychain, a birthday gift from my daughter.