Month: February 2007

Sorry for the light posting. Blogger was bloggered.

Culture War Surrender

by digby

Lawrence Kudlow has apparently written some stupid rehash of every Clinton scandal that is, as they all were, completely full of shit. Media Matters has set the record straight here if you want the details.

But really. The country (with the exception of professional Clenis stalker, Chris Matthews) has left this stuff far behind. They know that the taxpayers spent more than $70 million and came up with exactly zilch on every single one of those charges. They know that the press went inexplicably mad for a period and they have moved on, even if the Republicans are hitching their pathetic wagons to limp hopes of a reprise of interest in Clinton’s personal life. After the Starr Report, we found out far more than anyone ever wanted to know about that, and yet Bill Clinton had a 60% approval rating when he left office and remains incredibly popular today.

But here’s a bit of a puzzle:

In the Republican race, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who recently made clear his intentions to seek the presidency, has expanded his lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Giuliani holds a 2 to 1 advantage over McCain among Republicans, according to the poll, more than tripling his margin of a month ago.

The principal reason was a shift among white evangelical Protestants, who now clearly favor Giuliani over McCain.

Odd, don’t you think, considering these people are the ones who were so horrified by Bill Clinton’s affair. Evidently, this is just fine and dandy, however:

“It would be one thing if Giuliani could say, ‘I’m a strong social conservative in my private life’, but he can’t even say that,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, a conservative commentator and author of The Party of Death, an attack on social liberalism. “It’s not just the fact of his multiple marriages, it is the way the Hanover marriage melted down. It was operatic.”

When Giuliani met Hanover on a blind date in the early 1980s, his first marriage to Regina, his second cousin, was already over. Hanover, who went on to appear in the television series Ally McBeal, was a glamorous soulmate who seemed to enjoy the spotlight as much as he did.

They had two children, Andrew, 21, and Caroline, 17, but in 1996 Hanover stopped calling herself by his last name and a year later Vanity Fair magazine said that he was having an “intimate relationship” with a senior member of his staff.

In 2000, without telling Hanover first, Giuliani announced at a press conference that he was separating from her. She retaliated by accusing him of being unfaithful with the employee, but he was already with Nathan.

Maggie Gallagher, a family values campaigner, was outraged by Giuliani’s “scummy” performance, accusing him of making Bill Clinton “look good as a husband and father”.

New Yorkers learnt during the divorce case that their cancer- afflicted mayor was temporarily impotent and Hanover demanded a huge settlement, including £760 a month to care for Goalie, the family’s golden retriever.

Felder struck back, accusing Hanover of being an “uncaring mother” who was “howling like a stuck pig”.

In the end Giuliani, who was beginning to earn big consultancy fees after September 11, agreed to a settlement of $6.8m to avoid the full horror of a court case.

Hanover has married Ed Oster, her university sweetheart, and written a book, My Boyfriend’s Back, about rekindling an old romance. Even if she stays mum, there is enough in the public domain to rattle conservatives. Yet however vicious the personal attacks on Giuliani, they are unlikely to dent his reputation for competence. He did, after all, handle the September 11 attacks while bunking with gay friends in the midst of an affair and a divorce battle.

The Freepers are more concerned about the marriage to the second cousin than the adultery, divorce and cross-dressing, which I find surprising. They seem like the types to be quite tolerant of in-breeding.

I agree that he didn’t fall apart on 9/11 the way George W. Bush did (although his overall competence on that day has been highly overrated.) And I can’t help but happy that his newfound conservative evangelical fans aren’t offended that their favorite politician isn’t afraid to be himself.

But let’s be honest here. Lawrence Kudlow and Chris Matthews can drool and grunt all they want about Bill Clinton’s phantom mistress, but if Rudy Giuliani becomes the GOP nominee it means the culture wars are as fake as William Shatner’s hair. Once people realize that, perhaps we can stop talking about how so many people are allegedly against choice, gay rights and other progressive values in this country. Clearly, they don’t care much about any of that, nor do they care about Lieberman’s nonsense about setting a good example for the children. The Christian Right supporting Rudy Giuliani proves that the culture war is nothing but a GOP scam and we can stop obsessively worrying about offending these people with our godless, fancy-pants, big-city ways.

Good for Rudy Giuliani for(inadvertantly) pulling back the curtain on this hoax.

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Evergreen Slime

by digby

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the media’s narrative about the Democratic Party — a narrative I would have thought would have gone out of fashion by now, but which appears to have reached classic, evergreen status:

I know this is all boring, arcane history now, but it’s important to note that we are seeing similar stuff happening already with respect to various “deals” that are being reported in the press about Harry Reid and John Edwards. So far they are thin, nonsensical “exposes” written by one man, John Solomon, formerly of the AP and now of the Washington Post. Solomon is known to be a lazy reporter who happily takes “tips” from the wingnut noise machine and faithfully regurgitates them. He holds a very important position at the paper that was second only to the Times in its eagerness to swallow Ken Starr’s spin whole.

We are also seeing some similar reporting begin to emerge on Obama, much of it generated by hometown political rivals, just as we saw in the Clinton years. Today the LA Times implies that Obama is exaggerating his activist past. A couple of weeks ago we saw a truly egregiously misleading report on a deal he made to buy some land from a supporter.

These are patented Whitewater-style “smell test” stories. They are based on complicated details that make the casual reader’s eyes glaze over and about which the subject has to issue long confusing explanations in return. They feature colorful and unsavory political characters in some way. They often happened in the past and they tend to be written in such a way as to say that even if they aren’t illegal they “look bad.” The underlying theme is hypocrisy because the subjects are portrayed as making a dishonest buck while pretending to represent the average working man. Oh, and they always feature a Democrat. Republicans are not subject to such scrutiny because a craven, opportunistic Republican isn’t “news.” (Neat trick huh?)

No single story will bring down a candidate because they have no substance to them. It’s the combined effect they are looking for to build a sense overall sleaziness: “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”

We have another one from Solomon today. It is a thrilling expose in which it’s revealed that Hillary Clinton failed to report a charitable foundation on her Senate disclosure forms.

It discusses the foundation in some depth and discloses that many people have them. They are, apparently, a common tax break for wealthy people who give to charity. But we know there just must be more to it than that. There are lots of very spicy little tid-bits in the article, like this one:

Private family foundations vary in amounts they give away each year. The Clintons have given away a quarter of their money. The family foundation of record producer David Geffen, by comparison, has been giving away most of what it takes in — roughly $1 million a year — leaving it with a balance of $400,000 at the end of 2005.

Do you meant to tell me that those cheap assed Clintons are refusing to give all the money away while that nice billionaire David Geffen does? What are they doing with all that money? Is that why they tried to hide it by having its address in Chappaqua?

The smaller family foundation lists as its address a post office box in Chappaqua, N.Y., where the Clintons live. Hillary Clinton is listed as secretary and treasurer, Bill Clinton as president and the couple’s daughter, Chelsea, as a director. None takes any compensation.

And to which cronies and crooks are they laundering or funneling their ill-gotten gains? Oh my, this looks very suspicious:

One Arkansas recipient was the Diane Blair Foundation. Diane Blair is the late wife of James Blair, the businessman who helped Hillary Clinton with controversial commodities trades in the late 1970s that netted her about $100,000. There are two foundations in Diane Blair’s name. One is a private family charity; the other funds a center for the study of Southern politics at the University of Arkansas.

The Clintons’ tax form indicates the money went to the private charity, but James Blair said in an interview yesterday that the Clintons “miscoded” the entry. The check actually went to the university fund, he said.

Oh boy. Clinton is giving money to charitable foundations run by the man who helped her net $100,000 almost 30 years ago in a nefarious commodities trade that the entire press corps and even an independent counsel investigation were never able to nail down. But we know she’s a crook anyway, right? She “miscoded” something saying it went to the private charity when it actually went to the University. Or did it?

I think we need another independent counsel investigation to determine why they “miscoded” the entry. let no stone go unturned. It’s true there’s no reason on its face to suspect anything but that makes no difference. The questions is why is Hillary Clinton donating to these “charities” in the first place? It doesn’t pass the smell test.

And this, of course, is more proof of the cover-up:

“She was Hillary’s closest friend,” Blair said of his wife, who died in June 2000.

And even worse than the clearly suspicious “miscoding”, they are obviously supporting terrorists:

At least three beneficiaries were from the Middle East,[My God!] where the former president worked to forge an elusive peace agreement during the 1990s. They include $50,000 to the King Hussein Foundation, named in honor of the late Jordanian king, who was a key player in Clinton peace talks; $50,000 to American Friends of Yitzhak Rabin, honoring the assassinated Israeli prime minister; and the American Friends of Peres Center, honoring former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.

Where there’s a smoking mushroom cloud there’s a terrorist sympathizer in my book.

As the article concludes:

Such omissions deprive the public of the right to scrutinize their political leaders’ financial dealings and identify possible conflicts of interest, the former chief of disclosure for the Federal Election Commission said.

I certainly concur.

But now that we’ve seen the full rundown of the Clinton Family Foundation, what exactly was the point of this article? The reporters outline donations to charities founded by Hillary’s best friend, her alma mater, some Arkansas Children’s programs, the tsunami fund, and some thoroughly respectable middle eastern charities. We found that wealthy people often have these charitable foundations and that some of them, including the Clintons, don’t spend every penny of the money each year. We also know that this foundation is run by a Senator and presidential candidate, her husband the ex-president of the United States and that their highly accomplished daughter is a director, which would be a dream masthead on any charity in the United States.

There is no evidence that they cheated on their income taxes or that this foundation has contributed to anything that could even remotely be construed as a conflict of interest or even slightly hypocritical. Indeed, after all this investigation, there is not even the slightest hint of irregularity in the foundation and certainly no illegality, merely that she failed to report this on her disclosure form. had she reported it, it would have reveald exactly nothing of interest to anyone.

So,why all the breathless hinting around about some unnamed nefarious deed? It’s the classic bogus Whitewater narrative that never actually turns up anything but makes the country think that there just must be “something” there or the media wouldn’t report it. We saw a very similar report recently on John Edwards from the same reporter and even the WaPo‘s limp ombudsman thought it was questionable and said “accurate stories can be misleading.” It appears the editors have no intention of reining Solomon in.

One final thought: if the press had applied the Clinton Rules to George W. Bush’s strangely enriching-for-him-and-losing-for-others oil business schemes during what turned out to be the closest election in history, we might not be saddled with this godforsaken presidency today. But they didn’t. Why do you suppose that is?

Update: And then there’s this egregious piece of garbage. Jayzuz.

My apologies for spelling Solomon’s name incorrectly. It has been corrected.

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It Wouldn’t Be Tuesday Without Another Bush Lie Exposed

by tristero

Now, cynical minds want to know, “What’s no special about Tuesday?”

And the answer is: Nothing.

And so it goes. It turns out much to the surprise of maybe one or two Bush dead-enders that the “Iran is making those nasty explosively formed penetrators are killing our soldiers” story so breathlessly hyped a couple weeks ago is, how do I put this, either a baldfaced lie or the delusions of a major league hysteric. Or both, duh.

Let me let you in on a little secret. Y’know the Bush administration? They’re bad news. Seriously bad news.

Bush-League Social Psychology

by tristero

Here we learn that narcissism among the young is increasing. Goodness Gracious, Great Balls Afire! This is serious!!!

But wait a minute, what exactly is a narcissist, after all?

[Jean] Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled _ and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

That descriptiion remind you of anyone? Someone who has demonstrated a pathological inability to show other than the most crocodilian of tears for wounded and dead soldiers, or poor people flooded out of their homes? Someone so thin-skinned and insecure, he cannot tolerate even the slightest disagreement and has difficulty taking responsibility for a single mistake?

Why yes, I can think of someone. And it also fits his vice-president, many of his advisers, his former Defense Secretary, and many of his political bedfellows, people with names like Donohue, DeLay, Dobson, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Rove.

Sounds to me like the “cohort” of middle-aged Americans has quite a few world-class narcissists already.

But this isn’t about politics. The kids, our precious children! They’re at risk!

And I’ll bet you can’t guess what’s causing all that increasingly toxic narcissism in this here America. Go ahead, take a wild stab in the dark:

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far…

Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.

“Permissiveness seems to be a component,” he said. “A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.”

Indeed. Goddamm permissive liberals. And what are the consequences of too much fucking – oh, sorry, a slip of the pixel, I mean, too much narcissism?

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

Hmm… Now where did I come across a similar list before? Oh, yeah, that Borat clone, Dr. Eric Keroack and the problems that stem from the depletion of vital bodily fluids:

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.”

For the benefit of those of you whose permissive youth has led to problems with your short-term memory, let me remind you that you are paying Dr. Eric Keroack’s salary. He’s the guy Bush put in charge of family planning but of course, he doesn’t believe in contraception. Just bodily fluid depletion.

Sounds to me like Dr. Keroack and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory doc should hook up. They could certainly waste plenty of taxpayer dollars – sorry, I meant conduct some very insightful federally-sponsored research.

Yessirree, liberal-generated narcissism is a very serious problem among the youth of America. And it’s growing! Oh, wait:

Some analysts have commended today’s young people for increased commitment to volunteer work…

Yet students, while acknowledging some legitimacy to such findings, don’t necessarily accept negative generalizations about their generation.

Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior, said she worked unpaid last summer helping resettle refugees and considers many of her peers to be civic-minded. But she is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.

“We’re encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way,” Kader said. “I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships.”

Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.

“People are worried about themselves _ but in the sense of where are they’re going to find a place in the world,” she said. “People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn’t mean they’re not concerned about the rest of the world.”

Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. “It would be more depressing if people answered, ‘No, I’m not special.'”

Huh? Well, no problemo. If the facts don’t fit, just make up reasons why the facts don’t matter:

But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon [community service among youth] skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications

I wonder, does Twenge have a Pressure To Do Community Service Inventory follow-up “instrument” for her NPI?

“A Bunch Of Old Tires Is Worth More Than Billy Ray”

by digby

I’m always so interested when I hear that racism is dead in this country. When you look around, you certainly don’t see the kind of institutional racism you saw when I was a kid. And young people today certainly do seem to be less racist than my generation — popular culture is an amazing multicultural amalgam.

But, I also know that there is a certain kind of racist bully in American culture who is always present. And there are a lot of them out there. And when they do express their hate, a whole bunch of other people either turn away or come crawling out of the woodwork to defend them — and that’s when society’s enduring bigotry comes right to the surface.

Here’s a harrowing story in the Texas Monthly about one of those cases where some bullies decided to have some fun — and a bucn of their friends and families either watched, turned away or defended them and in the process showed the great white underbelly of sickening American racism:

What the investigation unearthed was a story that no one in Linden wanted to believe: Billy Ray, who is mentally disabled, had been taken to a party, ridiculed, called racial slurs, knocked unconscious, and then dumped by the side of the road. Even the strangers who had come to his aid were not Good Samaritans but two of the perpetrators. Had the town’s white residents condemned what had happened to Billy Ray, the incident might have faded into memory; the crime pivoted on a single punch.

Instead, they closed ranks, and juries in both criminal trials that followed declined to give the defendants more than a slap on the wrist. Now Morris Dees, one of the nation’s preeminent civil rights lawyers, has taken up Billy Ray’s case, and Linden—a place most Texans have never heard of—will likely become the focus of national attention when the wrongful-injury lawsuit goes to trial this spring. Whether a new jury will see things differently depends on how Linden perceives its own role in this drama: as a community that must redeem itself or as a small town unfairly maligned by outsiders.

It was quite a party that night:

… When they looked to see who Wes had brought from town, they burst out laughing. One girl overheard twenty-year-old Colt Amox snicker, “Wes has a crazy ni**er with him.”

Wes would later say that he had never intended for Billy Ray to become the night’s entertainment, but from the moment they arrived, the joke was on Billy Ray.Wes introduced him to his friends, making up nonsensical names for them as he went. Colt was “Bolt,” while others were “C’mon,” “We-pee,” and “Casey Macaroni.” Guileless, Billy Ray nodded and told each of them, “You can just call me Bill.” Wes turned on some music and handed Billy Ray a beer, and soon he had Billy Ray dancing to Lil’ Kim’s “Magic Stick.” Wes passed an imaginary stick back and forth to him while the group looked on and laughed. When the fire began to fade, Wes had him unload wood from the bed of his truck, and the errand became a game to see how much firewood he could pile on as he raced to and from the pickup. “Come on, Billy Ray, you can get more than that!” people shouted. Someone suggested that he reach into the fire and pull out one of the burning logs, and as Billy Ray bent down to comply, Wes stopped him. “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

The teasing had started to make some people uneasy, and before long, more than half the group decided to go home. Erica Hudson, a freshman at Tyler Junior College, told Wes as she was leaving, “It’s not right.”

Corey Hicks, who had recently gotten off work at the jail, drove up as the party was thinning out. He lived with Wes’ sister, with whom he had two children. When Corey arrived, he turned to a heavy-lidded eighteen-year-old named Dallas Stone. “Why did Wes bring this stupid ni**er out here?” he asked.

Dallas shrugged. “For a joke,” he said.

Only six people remained at the party, including Billy Ray, and everyone was drinking heavily. As the night wore on, a pretty twenty-year-old student named Lacy Dorgan—the only woman left at the party—wandered off to throw up, and Wes followed her. The dome light inside her Mustang was on when she and Wes started having sex a few minutes later, and Corey watched them from a distance.

Bored and drunk, Corey, Colt, and Dallas nursed their beers while Billy Ray sat alone by the bonfire. Dallas would later claim that Corey said, “I wish someone would beat this ni**er up.”

They were caught and some people were outraged. Othere were not:

Linden residents who braved the media did little to burnish the town’s image when they tried to downplay the crime, talking about the “good boys” involved who had been remiss only in letting things get “out of hand” and who deserved “a slap on the wrist.” Wilford Penny told the Chicago Tribune one month after stepping down as Linden’s mayor that the incident had been “an unfortunate and senseless thing” but that “the black boy was somewhere he shouldn’t have been.”

The “boy” was 42 years old.

And yet, after Corey, Wes, Colt, and Dallas were each arrested and charged that October with aggravated assault (Lacy, who cooperated with investigators, was not charged), they were seen, by some, to be victims as well. “These boys’ names are ruined for life,” Corey’s mother, Martha Howell, later told one reporter. “And [Billy Ray] is better off today than he’s ever been in his life. He roamed the streets, the family never knew where he was. Now in the nursing home he’s got someone to take care of him.”

Barbara Bush would agree, no doubt. She said similar things about all those “black boys” living in the Houston astrodome after the Hurricane:

“…so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”

The DA put on a lousy case and the jury gave the men suspended sentences. (The judge stepped in and gave them a couple of months jail time):

When I met with the jury foreman, a warehouse manager named John Reed, he explained that some jurors had thought Billy Ray—who had taken the stand to give a few halting answers—had faked his symptoms and had practiced seeming slow and walking poorly. “As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s to blame,” Reed said. “Wes Owens shouldn’t have carried him out to that party, and Billy Ray should have known better than to go drink beer with a bunch of white boys.”

Now I realize that most people don’t think this way in their every day lives. But there remains a strong, undercurrent of such thinking among a larger number of people than most of us realize. It is hidden and covert most of the time these days. In fact, most people who think this way don’t think of themselves as racist. But when the chips are down, this is where the racist American lizard brain rises up to the surface and shows its ugly face.

African Americans say that racism still exists and whites across the political spectrum argue that it doesn’t. They say it’s either gone entirely (in the view of self-serving conservatives) or it’s really a matter of class not some deeply buried tribal hatred that will take many, many eons to completely work itself out. Even the fact that the prison system is obscenely overrepresented by African Americans isn’t even seen for what it is and is often excused as a result of poverty or education or some social pathology. It isn’t.

“The verdicts sent a message: ‘It’s okay to treat a black man that way,’” Lue said when I visited him last fall. He showed me a small item he had clipped from the Cass County Sun, which he had glued to a piece of loose-leaf paper for safekeeping, about a black man named Burks Mack, who had illegally dumped some tires near Old Dump Road. For his crime, Mack had received six months in the county jail. “The only way I can figure it, a bunch of old tires is worth more than Billy Ray,” he said.

H/T to reader M.O.
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Giggles

by digby

Following up on my post below:

Think Progress reports:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “looked awfully cozy nestled between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the Senate press gallery this month, talking up their counterproposal to Democratic legislation critical of President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq,” The Politico reports. “‘Reid doesn’t want to create holy hell in the Democratic blogger world,’ Graham said, speculating why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was refusing to allow votes on certain Republican amendments. The dig at Lieberman’s Internet nemeses hit his funny bone. The trio giggled in unison.“

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Dancing With The Leadership

by digby

Ok, so Joe Lieberman is threatening to bolt the party. Everybody’s talking about how he’s swinging his weight all over town:

… Lieberman has fought Democrats with the pluck of a third-grader in a dodge-ball tournament, advancing the view of him as a rogue ready to bolt the Democrats, where he caucuses, for the Republicans. And in a Politico interview last week, he once again refused to rule out the possibility.

He used that clout today. CongressDaily reports:

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Lieberman is making it clear he does not want Iraq-related amendments attached to a bill scheduled for floor action this week that would implement unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Democratic leaders seemed inclined today to hold off introducing Iraq-related amendments to the bill, possibly to avoid upsetting Lieberman and moving him closer to switching party affiliations, which would swing the Senate back to GOP control.

Think Progress adds:

One Democratic aide quoted by CongressDaily says it “depends on whether Republicans push to attach language supportive of President Bush’s so-called surge in U.S. troop strength in the most dangerous areas of Iraq. ‘The Democrats won’t [offer Iraq amendments] if Republicans don’t,‘ this aide said.” Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) say they have not decided how to proceed with the Iraq proposals.

And this is ostensibly because Joe Lieberman has all this power because he could cost the Democrats their majority. Oh dear!

Lieberman says leaving the Democratic Party is a “very remote possibility.” But even that slight ambiguity — and all his cross-aisle flirtation — has proved more than enough to position Lieberman as the Senate’s one-man tipping point. If he were to jump ship, the ensuing shift of power to Republicans would scramble the politics of the war in Iraq, undercut the Democrats’ national agenda and potentially weaken their hopes for the White House in 2008. Those stakes are high enough to give Lieberman leverage with both parties no matter how slim the chance of his crossing the aisle. Which means Senate leaders aren’t worrying only about whether Joe Lieberman will switch parties. They’re wondering what, if anything, he plans to do with the power that comes from keeping that possibility alive

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That Joe Lieberman is leading everyone around by the nose, isn’t he?

Except there one little detail that nobody seems to know about, even though it appeared in the Washington Post.

Republican leaders decided not to seek special language spelling out the terms of a transition in case of a power shift — say, if Johnson vacates his post and his state’s GOP governor appoints a Republican to replace him. Under that scenario, power would effectively shift to Republicans, because Cheney would provide the tiebreaking 51st vote. But for Republicans to take parliamentary control, the Senate would have to vote for new organizational rules, a move Democrats could filibuster.

A similar scenario unfolded in January 2001, when a 50-50 Senate convened. In 2001, Democrats demanded a “kick-out clause” in organizing negotiations that would automatically scrap agreements on committee ratios and funding levels and force new organizational rules. But Republicans decided this month against a confrontation that would come from demanding a similar clause.

“Nobody over here talked about that at all,” said Don Stewart, spokesman for McConnell.

Media Matters has more on this.

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m too cynical here, but I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Harry Reid and Chuck Shumer aren’t aware of all this. Which means that all this tip-toeing around Joe Lieberman is a very fancy kabuki dance. Which also means we really have to question whether they mean to pass any legislation at all.

I don’t know how you can read this any other way. We pesky anti-Iraq war liberals are happy to blame him for everything and so we aren’t looking at this closely enough. And Lieberman is likely very happy to play the independent maverick and doesn’t mind being the Democratic Martyr of Iraq.

But I have to say that I’m just a teensy bit disappointed in the Democrats. This is a war we’re talking about not some tax cut legislation. They don’t have to do anything that unctuous creep tells them to do. He is holding nothing over their heads and yet everyone is pretending that they are worried about appeasing Old Joe and so they can’t actually get anything done on Iraq.

You can’t help but wonder if Lieberman and the Senate Dems aren’t working the same side after all.

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That Other War

by digby

Does everyone know about the big Taliban offensive slated for the spring? Did you know that we needed to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan in anticipation of it?

Here’s an excerpt from The Situation Room today:

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE) HENRY (voice-over): In a surprise visit to Pakistan, Vice President Cheney put private pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on al Qaeda and Taliban militants. But in public, White House Spokesman Tony Snow struck a much more cautious tone.

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have not been saying it’s a tough message. What we’re saying is we’re having — the vice president is meeting with President Musharraf because we do understand the importance of — of making even greater progress against al Qaeda, against the Taliban.

HENRY: What’s really going on here is a delicate diplomatic dance. While Musharraf has helped the U.S. capture hundreds of terrorists in urban areas of Pakistan, he has been much less helpful in remote areas, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: It is simultaneously one of our best partners against terrorism and at the same time, to a degree, a safe haven against — a safe haven for terrorists.

HENRY: President Bush needs the cooperation of his Pakistani counterpart more than ever, after sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan in advance of an expected spring offensive by terrorists.

If this is true then the decision to surge in Iraq is even worse than we thought, particularly in light of this story today:

Just last week, the nation’s highest-ranking officer, Gen. Peter Pace, secretly upgraded to “significant” the risk the military faces this year in carrying out its full national security mission. He unwaveringly stated that the armed forces would succeed at any mission ordered by the president; the response would just be slower, less elegant, more dangerous.

[…]

“At the end of the day, strategy is the management of risk, whether personal or military strategy,” said Jeffrey D. McCausland, a retired Army colonel now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council in New York. “The question is, how much risk are we willing to live with? We are taking a significant amount of strategic risk today because, if you look at our ground forces, we have pulled almost everything out of the box already. So if a major problem arises somewhere else, what do we turn to?”

As a consequence, he said, the United States has lost much of its historic military flexibility. “We know that,” he said. “So do our adversaries. To some degree, Iran and North Korea can play this round of poker more boldly.”

I suspect that we are seeing the results of a Strangelove Strategy on the part of Crazy Cheney and the rest of the kooks in his cadre. They figure they can always use nukes if they have to. No options are off the table, after all.

This is dangerous leadership. The Iraq surge is a waste of time and effort, especially when Afghanistan, which truly does harbor terrorists, (particularly those who have been plotting against Great Britain) is being lost. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is rattling its limp sabres against Iran and putting aircraft carriers like sitting ducks in the middle of the strait of Hormuz just hoping that the government (or some deluded individual) miscalculates.

Cheney is in Pakistan exerting pressure on Musharraf, after the US has spent the last five years working as hard as it can to radicalize as many Muslims as possible. (It takes some real chutzpah to go over there and play the good cop now and try to blame the Democrats for wanting to pull the rug out from under him, but what else is new?) The fact is that if we hadn’t take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan we probably could have solved the problem without needing more than Pakistan’s tepid help. As it is, we are well and truly screwed. If we push too hard, Musharref goes down and the radicals may very well take over. If we don’t, al Qaeda runs around freely plotting their next attack.

I’m sure glad the grown-ups are in charge aren’t you?

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The stupid … It buuurns™

by digby

So I happen to see Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield studying the Schwarzenegger phenomenon since he made the penetrating observation today that Republicans and Democrats really should try to get along. They both marvelled at the tremendous response Schwarzenegger gets when he’s in public. Wolf commented that when he was in Las Vegas recently for a sporting event, Schwarzenegger turned up with Maria and “he was greeted like a rock star!”

Uhm no. He was greeted like a fucking movie star, which is what he is. The man was one of the highest grossing box office attractions in the world for a couple of decades and yet Blitzer and Greenfield seem to think the fact that the public gets excited in his presence has something to do with his politics. In fact, they think he’s a “star” because of his great skill at reaching across the aisle.

Here’s the exact exchange:

BLITZER: I saw him at the NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. He showed up with Maria Shriver. And I got to tell you, he was a rock star there. He was widely applauded. You have just come back. You have spent some time in California.

Is that the general reception he gets when he travels around the state?

GREENFIELD: Yes, it is, particularly after he was declared politically dead in 2005.

Right. Nobody wildly applauded him in public before 2005.

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Dogging Gitmo

by digby

I have been remiss in failing to highlight this series of interviews with lawyers and others who are involved with Guantanamo and other issues pertaining to the military commissions over at The Talking Dog. He’s talked to a variety of people who offer great insight into the miscarriage of justice and moral blight that is our system of military detentions in the Great GWOT. I recently read them all again as a piece and the big picture that emerges is just horrifying (scroll to the bottom of this post to see them all.)

Most recently he interviewed David Rose, the first journalist to pull the curtain back on Guantanamo in his early articles in Vanity Fair (from which I quoted liberally when they came out) and author of Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights.

The Talking Dog: Have you had a chance to return to Guantanamo since he publication of your book, Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights?

David Rose: I tried to go to Guantanamo last June (of 2006). I was all set to cover the first military commission trials, when the news broke of the suicides of three detainees. The Pentagon suddenly revoked my clearance. Then, as I was in Washington, I managed to get a new clearance, faxed to my hotel, and we arranged transport by a circuitous route on civilian aircraft via Miami and Kingston, Jamaica, but ultimately, the Defense Department refused to let me in at that time, and I have not been back.

The Talking Dog: Do you have a comment on why, to this day, American detention policy, whether at Guantanamo, Bagram, Kandahar, Iraq, or elsewhere, including the ghost prisons and rendition program, remain a much bigger issue in Europe and outside of the United States than they do inside of the United States?

David Rose: In all fairness, it has become a far bigger issue in the United States since I wrote the book. Of course, John Kerry did not mention this at all when he ran for President– not one mention of Guantanamo. Large numbers of Americans think it is just perfectly fine to hold people this way. They don’t see the broader issues– that Guantanamo and America’s treatment of detainees is virtually a recruiting sergeant for terrorists, and that the policy is misguided ethically and counterproductive in achieving the supposed goals of fighting terrorism.

It makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Rose is the guy who first profiled the man who was brought in to toughen up Guantanamo, the psychopathic artillery officer named Geoffrey Miller who they subsequently sent over to “Gitmo-ize” Abu Ghraib. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and praised as an “innovator” when he retired.

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