Month: November 2006

Just Doing What K-Lo Told Me To Do

by tristero

Kathyrn Jean Lopez has this to say about Borat wannabe Eric Keroack, about whom both Digby and I have been yakking about, as well as a lot of other people:

A Bush administration HHS nominee is getting grief for his involvement with a pregnancy center that believes: “that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.”

Passing out contraception without any deeper context or conversation is degrading and disrespectful — to men and women. Tell me I’m crazy.

No problem. You’re crazy.

Radical Quacks

by digby

I looked at tristero’s post yesterday about Bush’s stealth appointment of Dr. Eric Keroack and laughed nervously, but I had no idea how totally deranged Keroack really is.

Alternet has some slides from his Powerpoint presentation on the “depletion of Oxytocin” that supposedly afflicts women who have sex with too many different men. (Yes, this freak is going to be paid by you and me to spread this ridiculous swill.)

Hello?

Last June, Keroack was a featured speaker at the 10th Annual International Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City, where he provided his somewhat unorthodox insights into the role of hormones in relationship failure.

Oxytocin is a hormone whose actions are associated with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and maternal-infant bonding — and, according to Keroack, it’s the tie that binds in marriage, as well. People don’t fall in love, but into hormonal bondage. Therefore, the most important rationale for sexual abstinence isn’t faith-based at all, but purely physiological. Unfaithful men and promiscuous women are created by misuse of the “emotional glue” of attraction, an abuse leading to a “perpetual cycle of misery.”

In his presentation at the 10th Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City earlier this month, Dr. Eric Keroack … explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, “trust” encounters, and sexual intercourse. “It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression,” he said.

Forty percent of couples who live together break up before they marry and of the 60 percent that do marry, 40 percent of them divorce after 10 years. … So why do so many adults continue in a cycle of sex without a marriage commitment, cohabitation, and failed relationships? This perpetual cycle of misery is due largely to the role of oxytocin. The following is Dr. Keroack’s explanation of the cycle:

Emotional pain causes our bodies to produce an elevated level of endorphins which in turn lowers the level of oxytocin. Therefore, relationship failure leads to pain which leads to elevated endorphins which leads to lower oxytocin, the result of which is a lower ability to bond. Many in this increased state of emotional pain and lower oxytocin seek sex as a substitute for love, which inevitably leads to another failed relationship, and so on, the cycle continues.

There is hope for the weary brokenhearted, Dr. Keroack said, but it requires abstinence and plenty of time for healing.

Keroack’s fitting title for that novel presentation [PowerPoint link] was “If I Only Had a Brain.” In an unpublished article that has become an established text of the abstinence movement, he wrote, “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.” Keroack’s teaching on the role of “God’s ‘super-glue'” is accepted as irrefutable in an article titled Fornication and Oxytocin.

There’s more at the link.

This man is a hero in the forced childbirth movement and a card carrying member of the Christian Right. But he also represents another wing of the crackpot alchemy wing of the conservative movment (tristero’s personal bete noire) that really has to be marginalized if this country is to remain a first world nation.

David Kuo, whom I admire for his consistency of Christian belief, tried to make a case in his book that the Bush administration didn’t deliver for the Christianists. It may be true that they didn’t show private respect or funnel as much money as they promised to faith based programs, but they delivered big time with the appointment of unqualified nutjobs like this to taxpayer supported government positions.

Before the election I mentioned in passing this article in the New York Review of Books by Gary Wills that really should get more attention in light of this astonishing appointment. (tristero has a couple of issues with it that are worth noting.) It is called “A Country Ruled By Faith” and really needs to be read by all these people who insist that theocracy is not on the table:

It is common knowledge that the Republican White House and Congress let “K Street” lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation, and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance, and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the extensive network of religious right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals’ resentments under previous presidents, including Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were now being addressed.

The head of the White House Office of Personnel was Kay Coles James, a former dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University and a former vice-president of Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council,[2] the conservative Christian lobbying group that had been set up as the Washington branch of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. She knew whom to put where, or knew the religious right people who knew. An evangelical was in charge of placing evangelicals throughout the bureaucracy. The head lobbyist for the Family Research Council boasted that “a lot of FRC people are in place” in the administration.[3] The evangelicals knew which positions could affect their agenda, whom to replace, and whom they wanted appointed. This was true for the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and Health and Human Services—agencies that would rule on or administer matters dear to the evangelical causes.[4]

The piece goes on to examine in detail the thoroughness with which Bush appointed radical religious right operatives to the government in all departments. The executive branch has become a patronage operation for the Christian Right and it is as destructive in its way as anything the Bush administration did. (And any attempt to unwind it will be greeted with cried of religious discrimination.)

This is obviously the deal that any Republican will have to make with the religious right in order to gain their favor. John McCain may not run as a Christian Conservative but he’s already made pilgrimages to Bob Jones and Jerry Falwell and he will have to promise them something for their support. He can agree to appoint their judges, of course. That is a first principle. But if they want to keep their most important, cohesive voting block happy they need to keep them fed. This is how they will do it. It’s largely under the radar but over time it will be felt in ways we cannot imagine.

The Christian Right is the most authoritarian faction of an already authoritarian movement. The polls from this last election show that they did not politically demobilize — even when confronted with such rank hypocrisy as Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. (I used to joke that it would take finding Republicans in bed with young boys to get the Christian Right to step back, but I overestimated them.) They are the most radical force in the Republican party and despite what Dobson and others threaten every couple of years, they aren’t going anywhere.

These people ARE the modern Republican party and nobody, not John McCain, not Mitt Romney, not Rudy Giuliani, can do a thing about it. For the forseeable future, every Republican president is going to be owned by these people and Americans will be paying for them to drag this country away from progress and enlightenment and into the cramped, primitive world of superstition and voodoo they are now calling “science.”

The only way to keep Christianist radicalism out of your bedroom, your hospital room, your classroom and your wallet is to elect a Democratic president.

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Pelosi

by tristero

Pelosi on Huffington Post:

This morning, I visited our brave men and women at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center. It is a place of prayers, of honor, of respect, and reflection. And I left there more committed than ever to bringing the war to an end.

I told my colleagues yesterday that the biggest ethical issue facing our country for the past three and a half years is the war in Iraq. This unnecessary pre-emptive war has come at great cost. Nearly 2,900 of our brave troops have lost their lives and more than 21,000 more have suffered lasting wounds. Since the war began, Congress has appropriated more than $350 billion, and the United States has suffered devastating damage to our reputation in the eyes of the world.

The notion that the war is an ethical issue is an important one. It ties the mindset of a party that would appoint a Mark Foley to the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children or an Eric Keroack to oversee Title X funding to the kind of mentality that would wage an immoral, insane war.

And quite rightly, Pelosi understands that the prosecution of this war, the continued American involvement in the carnage of a civil war, the utterly pointless deaths, the gut-wrenching lack of positive alternatives as long as Bush is in office, the madness of American exceptionalism and pretensions to military/economic empire, the unspeakable corruption and cronyism, and the torture … Without a doubt, the Bush/Iraq war is the pre-eminent moral issue facing the country right now and the foreseeable future.

Let’s hope that she and her caucus continue to have the courage to speak up and more importantly, act, on their principles.

Speaking Of Zombies

by digby

We’ve recently been informed that Kissinger has been wandering around the white house like the ghost of Christmas in Cambodia. Until last week the Ford administration was ably represented by the Don and Dick Comedy hour. The Second Coming of Jimmah “Divahn the willowthevoters” Baker more than makes up for the previous shunning of Daddy’s boys. But it turns out that with the Iraq Study Group we not only have retread Robert Gates, we also have Ronnie Raygun’s top legal consigliere from his earliest days in California politics, former Attorney General Ed Meese, who is emerging from the primordial conservative slime he went back to after Ronnie left office.

St. Ronnie has taken on all too bright a glow lately, even among liberals who witnessed the atrocity of his administration, because his keepers ran a fairly efficient white house and he didn’t speak like a 6 year old in public (usually.) But it’s important to remember just what a bunch of flaming idiots they all were too, lest someone gets it in his head that those Ronniezombies are somehow superior to any other movement conservative.

In this months issue, Wil S. Hylton of GQ conducts a revealing interview with Meese, one of the popularizers of the wingnut constitutional theory called “original intent” and an inspiration for the “unitary executive.”

Okay, let’s talk about executive power. Do you think it poses a legal problem when the president conducts wiretaps on foreign nationals without a FISA review?

Well, there is no wiretapping of foreign nationals without FISA warrants. There have been interceptions of international communications, but that’s totally different. It’s a very limited category: Number one, they have to be international calls, and number two, they have to be to people who are connected with terrorists.

But doesn’t it require a court to determine whether someone is connected with terrorists?

No, it doesn’t in this case. Courts are not required.

How do you know someone is a terrorist unless they have been found guilty by a court?

Because they are members of Al Qaeda.[oy — ed]

You’re saying that the president can intercept a phone call between any American citizen and anyone overseas.

Providing that it is connected with terrorism.

But it seems circular: You start intercepting calls because the person is a terrorist, and yet the reason you’re intercepting the calls is to find out whether or not they’re a terrorist.

No, no, no. There are key words being used in the communication itself. So you have a combination of, number one, a terrorist on the international end, and key words that lead them to believe it is a terrorist conversation.

How do we know they’re using key words before we start intercepting their calls?

There’s a lot more technical stuff to this, much of which is classified. But it is limited to people known or suspected to be terrorists, and the communications themselves are indicative of that.

Fascinating, isn’t it? It’s a disease that’s not just confined to the Junior Codpiece or the Gingrich crew. They’re all like this.

This man was the Attorney General of the United States and he is trying to pass off fourth grade “I know you are but what am I” logic. Warrants aren’t required to determine whether there is probable cause to believe someone is a terrorist because we are only listening in on the calls of terrorists.

It is obvious that they have some reason for not wanting to submit these names (even after the fact) to the FISA court for a review. They must know that it is clearly illegal or unconstitutional or they would comply. The FISA court is secret, after all. (Yet Ed Meese apparently knows all about this. Why is that? I thought this was such a top secret program that they wanted to hang the entire NY Times editorial staff for treason. What could it possibly have to do with the Iraq Study Group?)

Anyway, Ed goes on:

Let’s move to the Geneva Conventions. A lot of people are concerned that terrorism suspects don’t have any kind of habeas corpus.

In order to be covered by the Geneva Convention, you have to fulfill certain requirements. Number one, you have to be in uniform. Number two, you have to be part of a military unit subject to military discipline. Number three, you have to be engaged in combat with other military units and not primarily striking at civilians. So there are a number of criteria in the Geneva Convention that are not met by everyone on the battlefield. Then there’s another category of people going back to the Revolutionary War—people who were in those days called spies. If they were not in uniform, they were subject to being summarily executed.

You mean they were executed without even a military tribunal?

I think there were some. Also, a “tribunal” could be a military commander ordering the hanging. I think that’s what happened to some of them.

You’re advocating summary execution.

Well, yeah, that happens in the military. Illegal combatants are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

So we call them “illegal combatants,” without using any legal basis to determine whether they’re illegal or not.

Well, we do. We have military tribunals.

But not always, apparently.

My understanding is that illegal combatants are subject to military tribunals. But in any event, they have been captured on the field of battle, and anyone captured on the field of battle is either one of these two categories. And both categories can be detained until the end of hostilities.

When we talk about being detained until the war is over, we’re talking about a war that could go on for half a century.

Absolutely.

Doesn’t detaining someone that long compete with some of the values in the Constitution?

No, it doesn’t.

We value a speedy trial, as a culture. That’s why we put it in the Constitution.
We value a speedy trial for criminals. But a person who’s been apprehended and captured on the field of battle, that status itself identifies them as either a prisoner of war or an illegal combatant.

Unless they live there.

Well, how many people do you have standing around the field of battle?

It depends the battle. Certainly it’s possible.

And of course, that’s why the president has applied the military tribunals. So that people have the ability, if they claim their innocence, to demonstrate it. But the reason why you detain the people is that you don’t want them going back and taking up arms against our soldiers.

Shouldn’t we extend them the right to a public trial for that purpose?

Why would we? Why would you do that to somebody who’s not entitled to it under any law? Why would we extend the laws to people who are trying to kill Americans?

It seems to me that it goes back to original intent.

No, it doesn’t.

Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” not “all Americans.” He said that men are “endowed by their Creator” with these rights, not endowed by “the Constitution.”

But that doesn’t have to do with enemy soldiers.

Well, when I read the Declaration of Independence, I don’t think he’s talking about exclusively American rights. He’s talking about rights that he believes are natural, God-given rights, which had been denied under George III.

They are.

And he’s saying that anybody who tries to keep those rights from a human being is committing a crime against God.

Absolutely, and they believed that.

So if we don’t respect those human rights…

We do give criminals those rights. We just don’t give them to enemy soldiers who are engaged in battle against the United States.

Isn’t that just a semantic difference? These are human beings, and we’re talking about human rights.

The human rights that you’re protecting are the rights of innocent civilians to be free from having enemies try to kill them. The Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to criminals and enemies.

Sure it does. The Fourth Amendment applies to criminals. The Fifth Amendment applies to criminals.

They apply to criminals in this country. People who are in this country, but not to people who are killing Americans.

A great number of criminals in this country are killing Americans. They still have a right to a speedy public trial.

All right. But under our laws, they are not available to those who are either prisoners of war or who are enemy combatants. They are not available to persons who are outside this country, who are killing Americans.

Again, this man was the Attorney General of the United States. He is credited with popularizing the constitutional theory of original intent, which is the admitted judicial philosophy of three members of the United States Supreme Court. And it’s clear that he’s a complete nitwit. Even the Powerline boys or Pamela Atlas could come up with a better argument that that. Really — it’s an embarrassment.

The fact is that Ed Meese has never been anything more than a rightwing political thug going all the way back to the days when he advised Ronnie to crack heads in Berkeley. That he is now an intellectual giant in wingnut legal circles is a testament to just how bankrupt wingnut legal theory really is.

If you don’t believe that he is nothing more than a Tom DeLay style hatchet man, here’s Ed himself to prove it:

Finally, I wanted to touch on partisan rancor in Washington these days. Do you think it’s getting worse?

Oh yeah. I think so. Very definitely.

How would the founding fathers feel about that?

Well, I think they’d be disappointed. Part of the problem today is that you have a very mean-spirited Democratic minority. President Bush has continually tried to refrain from direct personal attacks on leaders of the opposition party. He’s offered the hand of friendship to them, he’s tried to be cooperative, and unfortunately you seem to have leadership on the other side that has been unduly combative and mean-spirited. I can’t think of a situation when the Republicans have ever called the president a liar.

The Republicans certainly called President Clinton a liar.

They said that he lied. But to just say he is a liar, and some of the other vicious attacks on the president—I don’t think we’ve ever had as vicious attacks on a president as we’ve had currently.

Do you think the Democratic resistance to President Bush is greater than the Republican resistance to President Clinton?

Oh, I think so. The Republicans, when they were with Clinton, were very constructive.

There weren’t exactly warm feelings.

Well, I don’t know that there weren’t warm feelings. The Republicans passed virtually all of his judges. They confirmed two of the most liberal candidates that were ever proposed for the Supreme Court. So I think that they were very cooperative with Clinton.

This is the quality of thinking among the “honor and integrity” “grown-ups” for whom everyone in DC circles is still so nostalgic. I frankly don’t see anything in that last comment that wouldn’t have been perfectly natural coming out of Mary Matalin’s or Rush Limbaugh’s gaping gobs. He’s a sub-standard intellect from a bankrupt political movement who worked for a genial dunce and is now being called in to rescue an arrogant idiot. He is, in other words, the best and the brightest the Republican party has to offer.

Do read the whole interview. Those excerpts are just the tip of the ice-berg.

Update: Here’s a great example of what happens when Ed Meese or someone like him says “trust us.”

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Anyone Got Info On Dr. Eric Keroack?

by tristero

In a comment to my earlier post on the Borat clone Dr. Eric Keroack, Entlord wrote:

Amazing that there is so little biographical information on the gentleman. The AMA Find a Doctor site doesn’t recognize him and a Google search only turns up that he is an OB/GYN and has been one for 20 years. No information on his CV, his education, his training or anything else except for an unpublished “study” cited in Christianity Today proving showing teenaged girls sonograms of the fetus prevents abortions.

That’s just about all I’ve found, too, except more ugly quotes and incredibly stupid slide shows. And while doing that googling, I noticed several posts from doctors and biologists who are so astounded at the stupidity of his unpublished paper on oxytocin they can’t belief this guy is a doctor.

Sooooo…. is he? Anyone know his background? Where he went to med school? Where he got his certifications, etc. etc?

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter NotThatMo, we now have the following info. Other commenters have begun to find out other things about his affiliations and professional qualifications.

License Status: Active
License Issue Date: 8/5/1987
Accepting New Patients: Yes
Accepts Medicaid: Yes
Primary Work Setting: Private Office
Business Address: REMOVED
Phone: REMOVED
Insurance Plans Accepted: None Reported
Hospital Affiliations: North Shore Medical Center – Salem Hospital (Courtesy)
Union Hospital (Active)

Medical School: Tufts University School of Medicine
Graduation Date: 1986
Post Graduate Training: NEWTON-WELLESLEY HOSPITAL (1/1/1986-1/1/1987)
BAYSTATE MEDICAL CENTER (1/1/1989-1/1/1993)

TV Democracy

by digby

Christy at FDL posted this amazing TDS moment of zen featuring Laura Ingraham saying that because millions of Americans enjoy watching Jack Bauer of “24” it means we have had a national referendum on whether Americans support the beating of terrorism suspects.

This is a very interesting development. It would seem that Ingraham is saying that popular culture can be used as a proper guage of what Americans truly believe. Certainly Ingraham’s allies on the right don’t seem to share her view:

On the heels of the demise of NBC’s “Book of Daniel” – which many Christians saw as an affront to their faith and actively opposed – ABC’s popular “Desperate Housewives” program has become the latest target of a media watchdog organization that will sponsor a boycott of the show’s advertisers.

OneMillionMoms.com, which is affiliated with the American Family Association, calls “Desperate Housewives” “one of the most vulgar and tasteless programs on television.”

[…]

“ABC says the show is watched by 15 million people each week. That means that 265 million don’t watch the show but still end up paying for it by the products they buy,” he said.

Wildmon says he doesn’t buy the argument that people who don’t like a particular show should simply turn off their TV.

“Will they also tell us that if we don’t like drunk drivers on the highway to stay off the highway? Sure we can turn the TV off. But why should we have to do that? Why do our children need to be exposed to such trash? Why do the networks keep putting out trash and more trash?”

Wow. These conservatives are confusing. According to Laura Ingraham a program’s popularity proves that the American people are endorsing the behavior they see on them. By her logic the public endorsed mob violence because they watched “The Sopranos” and love indiscriminate killing because they watch violent video games. (And by Wildman’s logic, watching TV is like driving a car … or something.)

All liberals ever said was that adults had a right to watch whatever they choose, on the assumption that they are mature and intelligent enough to separate fact from fiction. We thought the V-Chip was the proper course of action so that parents would have tools to monitor their kids’ viewing habits. The Ingraham Republicans, however, think the viewing habits of Americans should determine public policy and that has me a little bit worried. I mean, I’m all for popular culture sorting itself out without any interference from the government, but it never occurred to me that the problem might be that government would take its cues from popular culture.

I’m not actually kidding about this. They held seminars on “24” at The Heritage Foundation. Featuring Rush Limbaugh and Michael Chertoff. Together. (Be sure to check out all the pics. )

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: …In reflecting a little bit about the popularity of the show “24” — and it is popular, and there are a number of senior political and military officials around the country who are fans, and I won’t identify them, because they may not want me to do that (laughter) I was trying to analyze why it’s caught such public attention. Obviously, it’s a very well-made and very well-acted show, and very exciting. And the premise of a 24-hour period is a novel and, I think, very intriguing premise. But I thought that there was one element of the shows that at least I found very thought-provoking, and I suspect, from talking to people, others do as well.

Typically, in the course of the show, although in a very condensed time period, the actors and the characters are presented with very difficult choices — choices about whether to take drastic and even violent action against a threat, and weighing that against the consequence of not taking the action and the destruction that might otherwise ensue.

In simple terms, whether it’s the president in the show or Jack Bauer or the other characters, they’re always trying to make the best choice with a series of bad options, where there is no clear magic bullet to solve the problem, and you have to weigh the costs and benefits of a series of unpalatable alternatives. And I think people are attracted to that because, frankly, it reflects real life. That is what we do every day. That is what we do in the government, that’s what we do in private life when we evaluate risks. We recognize that there isn’t necessarily a magic bullet that’s going to solve the problem easily and without a cost, and that sometimes acting on very imperfect information and running the risk of making a serious mistake, we still have to make a decision because not to make a decision is the worst of all outcomes.

And so I think when people watch the show, it provokes a lot of thinking about what would you do if you were faced with this set of unpalatable alternatives, and what do you do when you make a choice and it turns out to be a mistake because there was something you didn’t know. I think that, the lesson there, I think is an important one we need to take to heart. It’s very easy in hindsight to go back after a decision and inspect it and examine why the decision should have been taken in the other direction. But when you are in the middle of the event, as the characters in “24” are, with very imperfect information and with very little time to make a decision, and with the consequences very high on a wrong decision, you have to be willing to make a decision recognizing that there is a risk of mistake.

(Are we surprised that this is the guy who screwed up the Katrina response? Jesus.)

Chertoff is basically saying that sometimes we might get a little bit overzealous, if you know what I mean, but that’s just because we don’t have all the information we need. It’s hard to make good decisions under stress and well, you know, you can’t make an omlette without breaking a few legs. “24” teaches Americans about that and the government is grateful.

He’s not the only highly influential GOP fan, though:

RUSH: I asked Mary Matalin, by the way, on this trip to Afghanistan, we were watching this, and I asked her — she worked for Vice President Cheney at the time — I said, “Do we have anything like this?”

SURNOW: (Laughter.)

RUSH: She said, “Not that I know of.” What about the possibility of government officials — back to the scholars — government officials watching this program (we know they do) can they get ideas, creative ideas on dealing with these problems from this show, or are they strictly fans, do you think?

[…]

Speaking just as an American citizen, you mentioned the operation in Canada. This is why the show has an impact on people. We have a political party trying to shut down the program that enabled that operation in Canada to be a success. It’s being called “domestic spying,” when it’s not. These guys put the same kind of conflict in the program. Jack Bauer, who never fails, always is the target of the government, somebody, being put in jail. It’s amazing how close it is. I’m not trying to say that “24” replicates life or influences things. It’s clearly an entertainment program. But people who watch this love it because it is pro-good guy; it does show a way in which these things can happen. Howard, how conscious are you when you write an episode or a story line, of real-life events? How recently do you try to incorporate, or is it all made up in your head and if it happens to coincide with reality, it’s coincidence?

Sigh. That they all watch the show and think it is real in some way is bad enough. That they also believe it reflects a national referendum on the use of violent interrogation and torture techniques because it loosely tracks possible real life events and makes people “understand” how difficult it can be to make decisions under stress is just plain pathetic.

(Read the whole transcript to see the rather astonished military and Hollywood types try to explain the difference between fact and fiction to these zombies. Aye yay yay.)

Update: I missed this juicy item on C&L earlier. Pat Leahy may ask the DOJ to investigate Ingraham for her little phone jamming gambit on electon day.

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Having Too Much Fun

by digby

Matt Yglesias observes something that I hadn’t seen before. And it’s very disturbing:

What it comes down to is that, somewhat perversely, the “more open” primary system — as opposed to old-school smoke filled rooms — has in many ways made webs of connections more rather than less important. Power has been taken out of the hands of a small group of geographically dispersed elites who, acting out of self-interest, might choose to elevate a relatively obscure figure in the interests of securing victory and placed less in the hands of a broad mass of people than in the hands of a small geographically concentrated elite that controls the channels of mass communications — i.e., the Washington political press. This elite, lacking an actual stake in the outcome, can afford to let self-interest essentially dictate a policy of laziness. Hence, we may be doomed to an endless cycle of Senators (who DC political reporters already cover), governors from Virginia and Maryland (whose exploits are detailed in the Metro section of The Washington Post), and scions of famous families.

This is one of the best explanations for what has seemed to be the very shallow bench of viable potential presidential candidates. The press corps is picking them. Oy vey.

Oh, and here’s a follow-up to my post from last night about all the “fun” reporters are having. From the National Journal:

Media people are feverish. They’ve discovered an exotic new life-form, the missing link, the elusive “walking fish” that just might be the key to existence itself. Known as The Democrat, this fascinating beast has been the subject lately of countless earnest, hopeful news stories.

[…]

The hive is buzzing because a Democratic Congress is better for journalism. What!?? you say. Journalists really prefer Democrats? Yes, but not for the reasons you’ve heard — covert pinkoism and so on.

Obviously, a divided government is full of the tensions that produce headlines. But a Democratic Congress is also anthropologically different from a Republican Congress — messier, louder, looser-lipped, more colorful, newsier, and, for the media class’s purposes, more fun:

1. Running wild. Generally speaking, Republicans have an executive temperament; they like order and control. Democrats, in contrast, are legislative beasts. They thrive in chaotic, do-your-own-thing environments like Congress — except when the other guys are running the place. Under the Republican majority, the Democrats always had a glowering, tamped-down look. The sandbox was being run by hall monitors! Now they can be their wild-child selves again. Running Congress brings out the best (creative chaos) and the worst (destructive chaos) in Democrats. Both are catnip for journalists.

2. Infighting. As National Journal’s Thomas B. Edsall has pointed out, the current generation of Democratic leaders grew up during the middle decades of the 20th century with the assumption that their party would control the Hill forever. To get ahead, they didn’t need to beat the GOP so much as beat one another within the institutions they dominated. Even today, they often seem more interested in warring among themselves than against the other party. It’s happy talk and hugs right now, but just wait a few months. The intrigue and skullduggery of the contest for House majority leader was a taste of the cannibalism to come.

3. Who am I? While Republicans seem to know basically who they are and what their purpose is, modern Democrats are filled with doubt. They are the Hamlets of politics, unsure whether to act — or how. Even what to call themselves is an issue. Where most Republicans seem comfortable with the “conservative” label, many Democrats run from the “L” word. Are they progressives? Populists? Some appear to change identities daily. Remember the Kerry-Edwards campaign? Life under the Democrats is a nonstop identity crisis, and as Shakespeare knew, there is no better story line.

4. Tough love. Journalists are more aggressive under Democratic rule. This doesn’t jibe with the stereotype of reporters as liberals, but it’s the stereotype that winds up undermining itself. When Democrats are in power, there’s a huge incentive for reporters not to appear too sympathetic and thereby confirm the old liberal-bias charge. Thus, despite the friendly coverage we’re seeing in this honeymoon period, the Democratic restoration will eventually produce tougher coverage than we saw of the GOP Congress, as media outlets strive to prove that they aren’t soft on the Democrats.

5. Duck soup. Democrats are always on the edge of comedy. There’s a madcap, Marx Brothers quality to this party. Remember the Dean Scream? Kerry’s goof about education and the war was another classic flub, a pratfall tinged with darkness. Was he trying to destroy himself? You laugh, you cry, and sometimes it feels like you’re staring straight into the abyss.

Just two weeks ago, journalism was looking so sad and dreary. Let the party begin!

What can I say? This is what we are dealing with and there’s no getting around it. These are not serious people, they are immature fools. And apparently, they are proud of it.

We have had a president for the last six years who is so stupid he can barely eat and breathe and who has single handedly destroyed more than 50 years of American leadership in the world. The American people have spoken loudly and clearly and have elected a new congress to provide some checks and balances to his reign of incompetence and executive power-mongering. They did not elect Democrats to provide the puerile putzes of the DC press corps with entertainment.

If these blindered fools can’t see how many real stories are now potentially theirs for the taking, they should get out of the business. This could be the most fertile time for investigative reporting since Watergate — Republicans are talking out of school for the first time in six long years. And the Democrats have the investigative tools to get to information that’s been hidden. It should be great moment for DC journalism if DC journalism actually existed. Instead we are already back in the truthiness and fake news business, which they do very badly (particularly since we now have professional comedians who do truthiness and fake news far more entertainingly than these witless bores could ever hope to.)

The shallow cliches in that article are not just lighthearted good times. They illustrate the narrative that cost Al Gore an election and motivated an eight year media withchunt against President Clinton. But it’s no joke, which events of the last six years should have pounded home to every person who works in the journalism business. This sophomoric approach to covering politics was largely responsible for the empowerment of the most destructive political leadership in American history.

And apparently they haven’t learned a damned thing.

Update: Rick Perlstein wrote about the Pundit Primary sometime back.

It has long been a truism that Democrats pay way too much attention to elite opinion. Gore was criticized heavily for it. I think I always assumed, however, that the pundits and the press corps had a specific agenda for their choices. It never occurred to me before that it was sheer laziness and shallowness that led them to their choices:

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Bush Hires Latest Sacha Baron Cohen Character

by tristero

Y’gotta hand it to Sacha Baron Cohen. He really is as brilliant and daring a comic as everyone says he is. Fresh off the spectacular success of “Borat,” Cohen posed as an utterly deranged abstinence-only rightwinger and managed, apparently, to get himself hired by the Bush administration to oversee the only federal program that oversees family planning!

I haven’t laughed so hard since I saw “Borat” last week. It seems according to “Dr. Eric Keroack,” that when women have sex with too many men, they deplete their oxytocin:

People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.

It’s amazing, and extremely funny, that he was able to fool anyone. Look at that moustache! Look at that hairline! It’s so obviously fake. And then the totally bogus name, a blatant homage to a famous Monty Python – who always looked great in a skirt – and the great Beat author, Jack Kerouac. As if all that wasn’t enough of a give-away, oxytocin? Isn’t that something like the stuff Limbaugh abused? That should have set off alarm bells right away.

Kudos, Sacha! You haven’t lost your touch. That such an obvious fake could get himself hired by the Bush administration really goes to show how utterly clueless they are. And how good you, Sacha, are at slipping into these preposterous characters.

Oh. Omigod. Wait a minute…

Clinton Rules Redux

by digby

Man are these catty little MSNBC snots enjoying their full-on Demo bitch fest. They are partying like it’s 1999. Norah O’Donnell, Lawrence O’Donnell, Mary Ann Akers and some other person I don’t know have just spent half an hour discussing the fact that Nancy Pelosi ruined her own honeymoon and now it is really quesionable whether she can lead. Meanwhile, the dirty netroots and Howard Dean must have done something wrong because James Carville is hanging out all the Democratic dirty laundry (while his wife cackles with glee, no doubt) and he wouldn’t do that unless there was something to it.

After a thorough discussion of how hapless the Democratic nerds have already proven to be, Mary Ann Akers whispers that reporters all over town are “loving” this story. It’s so much fun! All the kidz squealed like schoolgirls at prospect of the merciless going-over they are preparing to give these totalbigfatlosers. (“We’re so not being mean or anything cuz they like totally deserve it cuz they just don’t get it, ok?”)

The spite girls are back in town. It isn’t so much a matter of substance. You can argue that talking about the majority leader race is worthwhile and that it says something about Pelosi’s leadership style. The Carville sideswipe at Dean is interesting. That’s not the problem. It’s that the patented 90’s style smug, juvenile, derisive Kewl Kidz tone is once again ooozing through everything they say. (I could have sworn I heard the “Friends” theme song in the backround.)

It’s as if all these unpleasant events of the last six years never happened and we are back in the days of endless cable bitch-fests filled with snickering about unauthorized blow jobs and earth tones and “grown-ups” who eat PB&J’s and travel with their favorite pillies.

I knew it would happen in one form or another. (We caught a glimpse of it with the John Kerry apology treatment.) The DC press corps hates having to criticize Republicans. Republicans make them feel all icky and call them liberals (which they so, like, aren’t!) I confess, however, that I’m a little bit awed by how smoothly they have transitioned back into their assigned roles. I thought there might be a moment or two of cognitive dissonance as they went from grim and serious reports about terrorism and war to shallow personality politics and tabloid character assassination. I assumed they would at least wait until the presidential campaign took off to contrast the manly Republican Alpha with the loser Omega Dem, but I guess I didn’t realize how much they’ve missed their fast times at DC High.

They were certainly enjoying themselves tonight. Rolling their eyes and laughing and even snorting a time or two at the completely absurd sight of Democrats in power. I expected to see Yoohoo spray out of Norah’s nose at one point. It was just so, like, awesomely super-fun!

It’s worth noting that the last time the House turned over, in 1994, Tom Delay beat Newt Gingrich’s handpicked choice for majority leader and somehow the whole town didn’t interpret that as Newtie’s waterloo. As a matter of fact, the press was giving him such wet slurpy blowjobs they could hardly come up for air.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was given five months before TIME put him on the cover as the Incredible Shrinking President saying this:

“While the staff can be blamed for some of the confusion, even his closest advisers insist that Clinton is a big part of the problem. ‘A lot of it can’t be laid at anyone’s doorstep but his own,’ said one last week. Democratic Party elders admit to being stunned by Clinton’s judgment lately. Having his $200 haircut and allowing a Hollywood producer to work out of a White House office and then intervene on behalf of friends to win White House air-charter business have done serious damage to his public standing. ‘The best politician the Democratic Party has turned up in a long time turns out to have a tin ear,’ said a longtime friend. ‘He has squandered his moral authority with a lot of this stuff. It leads people to say, “This man isn’t really a populist; he is a phony, a fraud.” And though this perception is completely wrong in substance, it is enormously damaging and has to be dealt with. He has to regain the moral authority to call people to sacrifice.’…If he fails to adjust quickly, he will confirm the widespread belief that the biggest problem with the Clinton presidency is Clinton himself.”

There are no honeymoons for Democrats. Remember that. And “moral authority” is about haircuts and Hollywood, not torture and illegal wars. It is not merely a fight against the Republicans or a fight over politics and policy. It is a non-stop battle with the press to cover events with seriousness and responsiblity. For some reason, when Democrats are in power the press corps immediately goes from being merely shallow to insufferable, sophomoric assholes.

The 2006 election was nine days ago and this is what CNN had on their screen today:

These are Clinton rules, folks. Get used to it.

H/T to Media Matters for the screen grab.

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Quick On The Taser

by digby

I have written before about the abusive use of tasers by police in this country. (Talk Left has written much more about this, including discussions of the lawsuits filed against the (Bernie Kerick owned)taser company by police officers themselves for maiming them in their training — and more than 70 reports of death.)

Here’s the latest installment in what is becoming a depressingly commonplace occurence in this country. Excruciating pain is now commonly accepted as a proper way for the police to bend people to their will. It’s often used against the mentally ill who populate our streets and is increasingly used in cases of civil disobedience. It’s not even particularly controversial.

Police insist that it is a great tool to keep them from having to use lethal force. As you can see by this horrific film (via Americablog) it is more commonly used to force compliance and exert absolute authority. In this film you see the police first tasering the college student because he’s yelling at them and then tasering him again on the ground because he refuses to properly respond to an order to stand up.

The thought behind this seems to be that because tasing (usually) doesn’t leave any severe marks or lasting damage, it’s alright for the police to use this tool to inflict terrible pain on people who are slow or refuse to cooperate. In this case, you can see that this was purely a matter of swaying this person to their will, not a matter of protecting themselves or others. There were a whole bunch of police present and dozens of witnesses. They could have dragged the suspect out.

Here’s the story of his “crime.”

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell “get off me,” repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.

Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of power,” while he struggled with the officers.

As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said “stop fighting us.” The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.

Taser abuse is out of control. Cops are using it to “subdue” people who are not carrying weapons and present no threat. While I understand it is a useful tool in the law enforcement arsenal, police are not supposed to be in the business of meting out punishment nor are they supposed to use excruciating (even if shortlived) pain to make suspects comply with their orders unless they have absolutely no other choice.

I’ve seen dozens of these videos and it makes me feel nauseated each time I see someone lying on the ground after being tasered while police threaten them with further pain if they refuse to comply. Inevitably these people are disoriented and confused and angry and shocked yet when they fail to properly respond, the police calmly taser them until they do. It’s the coldest application of pain I’ve ever seen.

Update: More here from In These Times.

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