Month: July 2007

The Prime Directive

by digby

Using the Justice Department to essentially rig the vote was an act of hubris that I think may have surprised even the most vocal critics of the Republican party. But this is thoroughly expected and not surprising in the least. Indeed, I would think it was the prime directive of the Bush DOJ:

Two years into a fraud investigation, veteran federal prosecutor David Maguire told colleagues he’d uncovered one of the biggest cases of his career.

Maguire described crimes “far worse” than those of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant that collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Among those in his sights: executives from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment empire overseen by billionaire Warren Buffett.

In May 2006, he felt strongly enough about his case that he prepared a draft indictment accusing executives from a Virginia insurer, Reciprocal of America, of concocting a series of secret deals to hide its losses from regulators. Although he didn’t name anyone from Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiary, he described the company as a participant in the scheme.

But Maguire never brought those charges.

Months after preparing the draft, he was removed as the lead prosecutor on the case and reassigned.

His replacement, a prosecutor who hadn’t been involved in the case until then, soon announced that the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, General Reinsurance, wouldn’t be indicted. By April of this year, the entire investigation, which the Justice Department once hailed as one of the largest insurance-fraud cases in the history of Virginia, had fizzled.

Guess why?

Internal documents that McClatchy Newspapers obtained show that Justice Department lawyers in Washington had become locked in an intense debate with Maguire over the case until he was removed from it.

The documents, together with court records and interviews, provide a rare look inside a corporate fraud case and the Justice Department’s deliberations on whether to pursue an indictment.

Five years after Enron collapsed and tough measures aimed at white-collar crime were enacted, federal officials struggled with questions of corporate accountability:

Who should be held responsible when fraud leads to a company’s demise? How far should federal prosecutors go in pursuing corporate suspects?

In the Reciprocal of America case, the fallout was clear. More than 80,000 lawyers, doctors and hospitals in 30 states lost their malpractice coverage. As they couldn’t expect new insurers to cover them for past cases, some who were sued have claimed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

As doctors and lawyers faced bankruptcy, the victims of malpractice feared they’d never get their due.

Even so, prosecutors had to be certain that their evidence of wider wrongdoing justified the financial damage that an indictment could cause to General Reinsurance.

After the Enron scandal provoked an aggressive Justice Department crackdown on corporate fraud, federal courts made it clear that the department had overstepped its authority in several high-profile cases. The pendulum appeared to be swinging back in favor of corporations.

I’ll bet you are shocked.

Read the whole thing. It’s a doozy and I expect it’s far from the only case. Keep in mind that of all the things the Bush administration has failed at doing, the one great success story has been servicing their corporate masters and ripping off the taxpayers. It’s what they do and they do it well.

* And by the way, this is another one of those great McClatchey stories that makes you realize just how little real investigative work comes out of the big papers (certain fine reporters excepted, of course.)

H/T to BB
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Obstruct This

by digby

Just in case peope are having trouble seeing who’s making it impossible to govern, here’s a nice little chart from McClatchey that illustrates it quite nicely:

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 “cloture” votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority’s right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they’ve fallen short 22 times so far this year. That’s largely why they haven’t been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

Here, we have Frank Luntz, spinning that in today’s Baltimore Sun

The Democrats blew into Washington in 2006 as a breath of fresh air in response to Republican scandal, Republican budget mismanagement and a Republican war. But in recent weeks, that freshness has turned stale. Despite majorities in both houses, Congress is seen as having failed to set tough ethics standards, failed to stop wasteful spending and failed to fix illegal immigration.

And those failures offer a glimmer of hope for the GOP.

How convenient:

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

[…]

Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who’s served in Congress since 1973, complained that “the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I’ve been here a long time. All modicum of courtesy is going out the window.”

Really? Remember this?

On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush’s judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.

“Fuck yourself,” said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Leahy’s spokesman, David Carle, yesterday confirmed the brief but fierce exchange. “The vice president seemed to be taking personally the criticism that Senator Leahy and others have leveled against Halliburton’s sole-source contracts in Iraq,” Carle said.

Yes, those nasty Democrats have really degraded the “comity” of the senate. Boo hoo hoo:

Republican Senate leader McConnell said Friday in a news conference that when he became minority leader, “it was not my goal to see us do nothing. I mean, you can always use the next election as a rationale for not doing anything. But as you all know, we’ve had a regularly scheduled election every two years since 1788, so there’s always an election right around the corner.”

“A divided government has frequently done important things: Social Security in the Reagan period, when (Democrat) Tip O’Neill was speaker; welfare reform when Bill Clinton was in the White House when there was a Republican Congress. There’s no particular reason why divided government can’t do important things. We haven’t yet, but it’s not too late.

“And I think clearly the way to accomplish things is in the political middle, and I would challenge our friends on the other side of the aisle to step up and take a chance on something big and important for our country.”

You know what Mitch? Go Cheney yourself. Hard.

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War is Hell

by digby

Surprise, surprise.

There is a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about this pseudonymously written article in TNR by a soldier in Iraq. He discusses the dehumanizing quality of war in some detail by recounting some revolting anecdotes about the behavior of some soldiers, including himself. It opens with this tale:

I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn’t really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor. The thing that stood out about her, though, wasn’t her strange uniform but the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head. She was always alone, and I never saw her talk to anyone. Members of my platoon had seen her before but had never really acknowledged her. Then, on one especially crowded day in the chow hall, she sat down next to us.

We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. After a minute or two of eating in silence, one of my friends stabbed his spoon violently into his pile of mashed potatoes and left it there.
“Man, I can’t eat like this,” he said.
“Like what?” I said. “Chow hall food getting to you?”
“No–with that fucking freak behind us!” he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth.
“Are you kidding? I think she’s fucking hot!” I blurted out.
“What?” said my friend, half-smiling.
“Yeah man,” I continued. “I love chicks that have been intimate–with IEDs. It really turns me on–melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses … .”
“You’re crazy, man!” my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue.
“In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.”
My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.

A lot of people, for a variety of reasons, think this story is untrue. And it may be. But it certainly doesn’t surprise me. I worked years ago on the Alaska Pipeline and was exposed, at a young age, to the misogynistic preening of certain men in such situations and I assume the hyper-testosteroned environment of war makes it even more acceptable and sadistic than what I lived with.* And that was a lot. (Of course it was 30 years ago, so perhaps there has been some consciousness raising since then.)if this story isn’t true in this instance, it almost assuredly is true in its essence. There is a certain type of person, particularly in these stimulating macho environments, who lose all social restraint and become barbaric jerks. And there are always a whole bunch of sycophants who join them, either for fear of being called a pussy or genuine attraction to such cruelty.

It actually reminded me a bit of our compassionate conservative president’s famous comments about dispensing the death penalty:

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. ‘Did you meet with any of them?’ I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. ‘No, I didn’t meet with any of them,’ he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. ‘I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’

‘What was her answer?’ I wonder.

‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’

I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush — because he immediately stops smirking.

Can you not see this person laughing himself silly at that “joke” about the disfigured woman? I can. And there are many more people like him than we should be comfortable with.

The TNR piece goes on to describe some sick corpse desecration, which doesn’t strike me as being unusual among the more psychotic types in war. Something similar was recounted in Anthony Swofford’s “Jarhead” about the first Gulf War. And I’ve seen pictures of WWII trophies that would turn your stomach.

The final anecdote in the piece is about a soldier who enjoys running over dogs with a Bradley vehicle. It’s thoroughly revolting, but again, there are certain types of people who are inclined to this sort of thing. Animal cruelty can be found in even the best of families:

We were terrible to animals,” recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.

“Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “Or we’d put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.”

President Bush seems to have grown out of that ugly habit and transferred his sadism exclusively to humans — he does seem to genuinely love his dogs and as far as I know he isn’t into any of that faux-hunting stuff that Cheney loves so much. But again, he would likely be leading the hysterical laughter at these antics. It’s his nature.

There are always some despicable sub-humans who fully embrace cruelty and sadism when they are given the opportunity. And there are always a number of people who will go along with them, either because they are of the same psychology or because they fear ostracism by the group. It’s fairly obvious Lord of the Flies stuff.

But there seems to be some idea in both left and right quarters that this can’t possibly be true, and even if it were, it doesn’t say anything about the troops as a whole. I don’t get this. Our military is occupying a country in the middle of a violent civil war. The soldiers in this occupation are being deployed over and over again to try to “win” something that isn’t even defined. To my way of thinking it’s a miracle that so many of them are able to keep it together at all. Of course, there are some crazed psychos among them and probably some serious psychological damage among a fair number of others. And because of the macho, group pressure and people like Bush and this author egging them on instead of showing mature leadership, there is little to curb this behavior other than some rather quaint appeals to honor and duty, which must be sounding rather hollow to a lot of them at this point.

Iraq is creating monsters everywhere, from terrorists, to extremists to damaged American soldiers who are so tired from repeated deployments that they are losing track of what is normal. It is a quagmire of a cock-up of a depraved and inexplicable invasion and nobody knows exactly why it started and nobody knows exactly how it will end. It makes me crazy just thinking about it.

Consider the percentage of the general psychopath population that joins the military and the more delicate psyches who get irreparably damaged by the experience. Then you add in the locker-room group leaders like Bush and the author, who are obviously sadistic by nature, and who egg them on in subtle and not so subtle ways, and you potentially have a fair percentage of damaged soldiers coming back into American society — and a complete unwillingness of that society to admit it.

I would guess that the vast majority of the troops are going to be affected in some way, but most of them will do ok with the help of friends and family and their own psychological strength. But there are going to be quite a few who are seriously screwed up and this society is going to pay a price for that. War is bad enough when the cause is clear and just. When it’s not, it creates a form of psychological violence that’s even worse.

It seems that the lessons of Vietnam were disappeared down the rabbit hole immediately upon Bush seizing office. But one of the lessons that we can still retrieve is the necessity of spending however much it takes to ensure that veterans get decent psychiatric care. Wars have always created massive numbers of psychological casualties, but that is no excuse to ignore them.

So far, it’s not looking good:

Yesterday, Missouri Senators Christopher (Kit) Bond and Claire McCaskill joined forces to sponsor an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 that would temporarily suspend the Pentagon’s use of Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13: “Separation Because of Personality Disorder” discharge for combat veterans, pending a thorough and comprehensive review of the current procedures and the establishment of an independent discharge review board. They were joined by additional co-sponsors Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray.

[…]

“Abuse of personality disorder discharges is inexcusable. This amendment will put a stop to these discharges until we can fix the system,” said Senator Bond. “The men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our freedom have earned a debt of gratitude from all Americans that we will never be able to pay in full. The very least we can do is take care of their battle wounds, whether physical or mental, and ensure they receive the treatment and benefits they deserve.”

The abuse of the 5-13 is especially insidious, because it is being used to deny combat veterans the benefits and care we owe them. A Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine discharged under Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13 stands to lose all benefits. They can not collect disability pay; even for life-altering injuries sustained in combat; nor are they entitled to medical care through the VA for those very combat injuries.

To me, the personality disorder is the kind displayed by towel-snapping cretins in leadership positions whose cruel, sadistic chit-chat feeds the truly psychologically damaged among them. But however you define it, it should not be used, period. All Iraq war vets should be entitled to as much psych counseling as they want. For free. Forever. For our sake as well as theirs.

Do we want people running around who think it’s funny to cruelly insult the weak or dress themselves up in corpses and run over dogs in the street and leave them untreated? Really? We have a man currently in the white house who could easily fit that profile and look at what he’s done.

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The Ivory Tower
by Dover Bitch

Washingtonian punditry has given us much to revile, but there are few examples more illustrative of what vexes me than this, from David Brooks:

As Mark says, there’s been this year-long momentum, but it has stopped or at least stalled for the time being. And I personally think the Senate will do nothing to change Iraq policy at least for another three or four months.

And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of Republicans who detest where the White House is are furious at Harry Reid. And a colleague of mine wrote a good piece today saying that partisan feeling, rancor in the Senate was already phenomenally high, but now it’s extra-phenomenally high. And over this issue, a lot of Republicans would like to peel off from the president, but they feel that Harry Reid is making it impossible. He’s taking this as an issue, forcing them to vote with the president for political reasons. So that’s stalled it on partisan grounds.

As Digby noted, the piece to which Brooks refers is likely that of Fred Hiatt.

The savants at the Washington Post have really had a banner month. David Ignatius wrote in 2006 that the media’s failures in the run up to the Iraq War were excusable, as “the media were victims of their own professionalism,” if you can believe that. He explained that “journalistic rules” prevented them from challenging the administration’s claims. They were simply powerless to “create a debate on [their] own.” The blame, therefore, should be pinned on the Democrats for not being critical enough.

Two weeks ago, however, Ignatius decided that the country would be better off if the Democrats and Republicans stopped disagreeing. “Political disharmony,” he wrote, is bad for America. So, even if Bush and Cheney are completely and dangerously wrong about something (imagine that), journalistic rules tell Ignatius not to question the president unless the Democrats do — and they shouldn’t, either.

That would leave it up to us, but David Broder followed Ignatius with a column explaining that any criticism the public might have should simply be ignored, again, for the good of the country. In other words, the view from the ivory tower at the Washington Post is that nobody should question the president. This president.

And now this nonsense from Hiatt, that Harry Reid has done a great injustice by forcing GOP senators to choose between they think is good for their party and what they believe is best for America.

Were an observant outsider to step into the ivory tower, in which all things are viewed solely in a political context, our visitor might ask a few questions. Wouldn’t doing what they believe is best for America also be good for their party? Did Bill Frist or Dennis Hastert ever once schedule votes for the benefit of the Democrats? Isn’t it strange that my colleagues in the ivory tower find it irresponsible for Reid to make the GOP vote on legislation that would actually accomplish something the American public wants, while they expressed little outrage when the GOP forced votes on resolutions that did nothing but say “hooray for our side” in an obvious effort to embarrass Democrats?

But with midterm elections less than five months away, House leaders — driven in part by dissenting voices in their party — decided that their members needed to confront the Iraq issue directly.

“I think all members are going to have to express themselves on this issue as the year goes on. There is no way of avoiding it,” Boehner said.

But Republicans wanted to air it out under the most favorable circumstances, debating over 10 hours a leadership-tailored resolution that would not be subject to amendment and would not face competing policy statements. By drafting a resolution that supported U.S. troops, emphasized triumphing over terrorism and called for victory in Iraq, GOP leaders had constructed a measure that was “hard not to support,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.).

After the vote, Republicans crowed that they had held ranks while highlighting Democratic division. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said, “We are pleased that 42 Democrats defied their leadership and stood with House Republicans to support both our troops and their mission to win the global war on terror.”

Those would all be obvious questions for an objective person, not full on cocktail weenies, to ask. But they would still represent the view from the ivory tower, where everything is a game and there are absolutely no consequences. In the real world, one might instead ask these questions of David Brooks and his colleagues:

How would delaying a vote in order to placate the Republicans be any different than “stalling it on partisan grounds?” How long should we stick with a failed policy just to allow the GOP senators time to feel comfortable about doing what’s right for America? How many soldiers should America tolerate sacrificing while GOP senate aides channel their inner-Frank Luntz and write a series of Friday press releases? 100? 200? 1,000?

How many limbs is it OK for our troops to lose while Mitch McConnell figures out how to save face? How many more terrorists should we be OK with breeding in Iraq? How many more billions of dollars should we be willing to spend?

How much deeper should we dig the hole we’re in before the Washington Post decides it’s no longer “irresponsible” for Harry Reid to make life awkward for Bush’s minions? The Republicans like to portray the Democrats as defeatists who believe the troops are dying for nothing. Now the GOP is actually asking soldiers to die so they don’t have to look bad on C-SPAN.

Here’s a tip for the pundits at the Washington Post: Nobody gives a crap if any senators are furious at Harry Reid. In the real world, people die when politicians play stupid games. They’re not pawns on a board. They’re people. These are what we call “consequences.”

Saturday Night At The Movies

In Dreams

By Dennis Hartley

It’s no secret amongst fans of intelligent, adult sci-fi that some of the best genre films these days aren’t originating from Hollywood, but rather from the masters of Japanese anime. Films like “Akira ” and “Ghost in the Shell” display a quality of writing and visual imagination that few “live action” productions (post “Blade Runner”) can touch.

One of the most adventurous anime directors is Satoshi Kon. In previous work like his incredibly dense and ambitious TV miniseries “Paranoia Agent”, and in several feature films, Kon has displayed a flair for coupling complex characterization with a neo-realistic visual style that tends to make me forget that I’m watching an “anime”. Most of Kon’s work up until this point has drawn on genres that one does not typically associate with anime: adult drama (“Tokyo Godfathers”), film noir (“Perfect Blue”), psychological thriller (“Paranoia Agent”) and character study (“Millennium Actress”).

Kon’s latest film, “Paprika” (currently in limited release) is actually the first of his animes that I would categorize as “sci-fi”… and it’s a doozy.

A team of scientists develops an interface device called the “DC mini” that facilitates the transference of dreams from one person to another. This “dream machine” is designed primarily for use by psychotherapists; it allows them to literally experience a patient’s dreams and take a closer look “under the hood”, if you will. In the wrong hands, however, this could potentially become a very dangerous tool.

As you have likely already guessed, “someone” has hacked into a “DC mini” and started to wreak havoc with people’s minds. One by one, members of the research team are driven to suicidal behavior after the dreams of patients are fed into their subconscious without their knowledge (much akin to someone slipping acid into the punch). Things get more complicated when these waking dreams begin taking sentient form and start spreading like a virus, forming a pervasive matrix that threatens to supplant “reality” (whew!). A homicide detective joins forces with one of the researchers, whose alter-ego, Paprika, is literally a “dream girl”, a sort of super-heroine of the subconscious.

“Mind blowing” doesn’t even begin to describe this Disney-on-acid/murder mystery/psychological sci fi-horror story. It is Kon’s most visually ambitious work to date, with stunning use of color and imagery (mark my words-this one has “future cult midnight movie” written all over it).

Kon raises some engaging philosophical points (aside from the hoary “what is reality?” debate). At one point, Paprika ponders: “Don’t you think dreams and the internet are similar? They are both areas where the repressed conscious vents.” I think Kon is positing that the dream state is the last “sacred place” left for humans; if technology encroaches we will lose our last true refuge. A must-see for anime and sci-fi fans.

While watching “Paprika”, I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite sci-fi “mind trip” films, “The Lathe of Heaven”. Adapted from Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, the film was produced for television by Thirteen/WNET in New York and originally aired nationally on PBS stations in 1979. A coveted and elusive cult favorite for years, it was reissued on DVD by Newvideo in 2000.

The story takes place in Portland Oregon, in a “near future” where the Earth has begun to suffer profound effects from global warming and worldwide pandemics run rampant (hmm, rather prescient, eh?) The film stars Bruce Davison as George Orr, a chronic insomniac who has become convinced that his nightly dreams are affecting reality. Depressed and sleep-deprived, he overdoses on medication and is forced by legal authorities to seek psychiatric help from Dr. William Haber (Kevin Conway), who specializes in experimental dream research.

When Dr. Haber realizes to his amazement that George is not delusional, and does in fact have the ability to literally change the world with his “affective dreams”, he begins to “suggest” reality-altering scenarios to his hypnotized patient. The good doctor’s motives are initially altruistic; but as George catches on that he is being used like a guinea pig, he rebels. A cat and mouse game of the subconscious ensues; every time Dr. Haber attempts to make his Utopian visions a reality, George finds a way to subvert the results.

The temptation to play God begins to consume Dr. Haber, and he begins to feverishly develop a technology that will allow him to make George’s participation superfluous. So begins a battle of wills between the two men that will determine the very fabric of reality.

This is an intelligent and compelling sci-fi fable with a lot of thoughtful subtext; it is certainly one of the best “made-for-TV” films ever produced, and highly recommended.

I probably should warn you that the picture quality and sound on the DVD is not quite up to today’s more demanding A/V equipment specs; apparently the master no longer exists, so the transfer was made from a 2” tape copy. Don’t let the low-tech special effects throw you, either (remember, this was made for public TV in 1979 on a relative shoestring). Substantively speaking, however, I’d wager that “The Lathe of Heaven” has much more to offer than any $200 million dollar special effects-laden George Lucas “prequel” one would care to name!

The Best of R.E.M.: Waking Life,The Science of Sleep, Dreamscape (1984),Brainstorm, The Cell, Until the End of the World, 2001 – A Space Odyssey , Solaris (1972), Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, Altered States, eXistenZ, Circuitry Man, Strange Days, Strange Days, Dark Days, Dark City , Siesta, Jacob’s Ladder, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, Naked Lunch, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The City of Lost Children, A Christmas Carol (1951), The Wizard of Oz , Fantasia , The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

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Appropriate For All Ages

by digby

Amanda Marcotte has written a great post answering my question yesterday about why the press is still so fascinated by the Clintons’ sex lives. It’s a very interesting deconstruction of the whole Clinton marriage phenomenon.

And I also enjoyed one of her commenter’s posts, in response to a complaint by another saying: “I’ve yet to meet anyone … who is moved, emotionally, by Mrs. Clinton.” The commenter shared this delightful anecdote:

My Dad’s had a thing for her since forever. It was annoying during Bill Clinton’s presidency as she was on TV so much and every time she appeared he’d shout: “There she is! That’s my girl!”

In retrospect, I’m kind of proud of him. Of all the unattainable women he could have developed a crush on he picked a brainy feminist who was –gasp–age appropriate!

Plus my mom never seemed to mind.

Hah.

For the record, and in response to the numerous readers who have let me know in no uncertain terms that over-60’s are as hot to trot as ever, let it be known that I am a huge proponent of good sex for people of all ages (beyond childhood, of course.) Major fan, here. I hope to be happily doing it in the wheel chair in the nursing home. My point, however, was that after famous people hit a certain age, the public tends to stop focusing so much on their sex appeal. I don’t happen to think that’s such a bad thing — life has all kinds of dimensions and sexuality is just one of them. (In fact, in politics, it’s pretty much irrelevant.) Bill and Hill are both attractive people and there has long been a fascination with their marriage. But I suspect that it’s only in Washington that people spend much time musing about whether the Bill of today is “being a good boy” or wondering whether Hillary has decided to get the Girls Gone Wild constituency by wearing a V-neck top in the middle of summer. That’s all I’m saying.

Now get back to schtupping, all of you.

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Not That Anyone Cares

by digby

… but I agree with Atrios on this. I certainly don’t speak for anyone but myself, but the reason I’m not endorsing a presidential candidate so far is simply because I don’t think it matters. I didn’t think it mattered in the last round either, even though I “endorsed” Wes Clark (and all 23 of my regular readers at the time were very impressed.) But I did it mostly because it was fun, not because I thought it would make any difference. I also thought Dean was great and I liked Edwards and had always believed Kerry was a good guy.

Some primaries feature an important rift in the party but this election just doesn’t feel that way to me. Despite the fact that there is a strong populist wave gathering energy in the grassroots that energy, so far, hasn’t manifested itself in a particular candidate. I may change my mind, but right now I’m more interested in watch-dogging the press, fending off the wingnuts and trying to keep all the candidates on the right track than in defending or attacking anyone in particular.

The truth is that I think primaries are vital and necessary. And I also hate them. It goes against my grain to be trashing someone repeatedly and then have to make nice when they get the nomination, which is how the system works. I accept this, and I honestly can’t think of a better way to air out all the differences, but it’s temperamentally difficult for me to get down and dirty in races where I actually like the opponents and may have to advocate for them in the end. It’s a personal weakness. (Good thing I’m not a politician, eh?)

At this point, the relief I’d feel if any of the Dems became president is so profound that I’m honestly not all that concerned about which one it is. I realize that many of you find that distasteful and believe that such rank partisanship is a denigration of our system and that I may very well be enabling a craven Democrat who will sell us down the river etc. But the priorities of all the candidates seem to basically be ok to me and hopefully we can continue to influence them on the issues, the rhetoric and the message, no matter who it is. My personal priority is for the Republicans to be thoroughly repudiated. (And we should not take that for granted. They are as good at campaigning as they are bad at governing. We are about to start playing on their playing field and it’s a mistake to underestimate them.)

As far as wanting to be on the “inside” as Bowers suggests is happening to the “short head” bloggers, well, I’m probably not in that elite high traffic group anyway, but if I were, I’m congenitally ill-suited to insiderism. I always have been. People are perfectly free to pitch me, and I’ll always be polite to my liberal brethren, but I’m just not much interested in that stuff. (Not that I don’t love a good dive bar, mind you.) I will certainly endorse the Democratic candidate when it comes to the general election, but at that point my interest is in winning and shaping the agenda — and fighting off Republicans, which I consider my solemn duty.

In the end, like Duncan, I have to ask how much it really matters if I “endorse” a candidate. It’s what you guys think that matters in presidential primaries and as far as I can tell you are all having no trouble picking your candidates without my direction. I only have one vote on this and I’ll happily abide by the will of the Democratic primary voters and march forward with the winners.

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Big Babies

Golly, I wonder what the village elders were talking about over martinis last week?

David Brooks:

As Mark says, there’s been this year-long momentum, but it has stopped or at least stalled for the time being. And I personally think the Senate will do nothing to change Iraq policy at least for another three or four months.

And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of Republicans who detest where the White House is are furious at Harry Reid. And a colleague of mine wrote a good piece today saying that partisan feeling, rancor in the Senate was already phenomenally high, but now it’s extra-phenomenally high. And over this issue, a lot of Republicans would like to peel off from the president, but they feel that Harry Reid is making it impossible. He’s taking this as an issue, forcing them to vote with the president for political reasons. So that’s stalled it on partisan grounds.

Fred Hiatt:

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid’s answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. “That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.

For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for.

Oh boo-fucking-hoo. When the Democrats dare to actually do something to clean up the Baby Party’s mess, like the indulgent country club parents they are in real life, the Elders blame the responsible adults for drawing the line instead of their out of control kids.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly nervous defending the war in Iraq, and Democrats more confident in their attempts to end it.

More than a year before the 2008 elections, it is a political role reversal that bodes ill for President Bush’s war strategy, not to mention his recent statement that Congress’ role should merely be “funding the troops.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, made that clear Friday when he dismissed any suggestion that it could be November before a verdict is possible on the effects of the administration’s current troop increase.

“September is the month we’re looking at,” he said unequivocally.

[…]

If Republicans struggling to regroup — with or without the president they have followed through four years of war — Democrats are on the march.

“Time and the American people are … on our side,” Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, said last week. The Nevada Democrat spoke in defeat, after Republicans — whatever their private misgivings — blocked a final vote on a troop withdrawal deadline.

Only four of 49 Republican senators defected in last week’s showdown. The group did not include Sens. John Warner of Virginia, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and other senior lawmakers who are seeking a change in course.

Many of the most nervous Republicans are seeking re-election in 2008, and it was a measure of the Democrats’ political confidence that Reid abruptly halted debate on the war once the troop withdrawal measure was scuttled.

Several officials said he did not want any of several Republican or bipartisan alternatives to come to a vote. His objective was to deny a political escape hatch to any GOP senator who would not support the Democratic withdrawal measure.

The playboy hoodlums hate it when the grown-ups make them straighten out, and their decadent parents always try to step in and pull strings to stop them. But as with so many other Republican establishment misreadings of the public mood, they have made the wrong call.

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The Lady Is A Tramp

by digby

Wow, this is serious. Hillary Clinton apparently almost did a hootchie-coo pole dance on the floor of the senate, shaking her luvly lady-lumps like there was no tomorrow. Why it’s a miracle the mensfolk could concentrate!

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

[…]

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding — being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable.

All this from a simple v-necked black shell and a pink blazer. Who knew that outfit was filled with so much meaning?

I happened to catch a little bit of that segment and I didn’t notice Hills hills at all. But then I’m not a pulitzer prize winning fashion reporter so maybe I just don’t have Robin Givahn’s highly developed boobage radar. Perhaps because I come from the land of la la, where ta-tas are highly visible in virtually every situation, I am just not attuned to the statements that breasts make in the nation’s capitol.

But I think what surprises me the most is the fact that Washington DC is still fascinated by Clintons’ sexuality at all. They are 60 year old’s, fergawdsake. I say this as a person of a certain age myself, so I don’t mean to imply that they are not sexual beings, but it seems odd to me that they still get this particular kind of attention. Big Bill has had a quadruple bypass and practically all he talks about these days is his low cholesterol diet. Hillary is the busiest woman in the world — she’s running for president. At this point in their long and accomplished lives, sex is, by far, the least interesting thing about them — as is true for most 60 year olds.

As it happens, they both look as good as they ever have in their lives (they do love campaigning) and they seem in robust good health and good spirits. Hillary, in particular, looks just great these days. But they are not sex-symbols (not even Bill, who is about ten years past his Kissingerian “power is an aphrodisiac” appeal.) So this ongoing obsession with the sexuality of Bill and Hillary Clinton has gone way beyond the mere sophomoric, tabloid obsessions of yesteryear and has morphed into some kind of kinky beltway fetish.

I do have to wonder why this important article was written by the fashion reporter rather than the political journalists who cover the campaign. It’s right up their alley. But I’m sure they are all tittering away in the newsroom over it nonetheless, erecting ever sillier narratives about the significance of Hillary’s shocking flashing episode on the senate floor. It’s tailor made for them.

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Trumped
by Dover Bitch

I see Ed Koch is, once again, sharing his views on the war:

I’m bailing out. I will no longer defend the policy of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq to assist the Iraqi central government in the ongoing civil war.

Well, hallelujah.

ThinkProgess noted that he attacked war critics a year ago:

There is something terribly wrong with people seeking to demean and weaken the president in war time, thereby strengthening our country’s enemies. As a result of the language and tactics of those opposed to our presence in Iraq, our enemies have been emboldened, believing the American public to be sharply divided on the war, and in fact at war with itself.

Sounds like a certain Senator from Connecticut.

I failed to find any apologies or concessions in his column today. I guess the war critics were wrong until this very moment. Personally, I don’t care about apologies from politicians very much, even less when it comes after thousands of unnecessary deaths, including America’s reputation. But Koch has a lot to apologize for. It’s not simply that he lashed out at people who were right all along. He willingly abandoned the principles he claimed to hold and did so, apparently now, for no reason at all.

Consider the meat of his column today (I’ll make no comment on the wisdom of the person upon whom Koch relies for support):

My voice is a modest one, so I would like to buttress my pro-withdrawal position with arguments put forth by the highly regarded New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In his July 11 column, he stated:

“But getting out has at least four advantages. First, no more Americans will be dying while refereeing a civil war. Second, the fear of an all-out civil war, as we do prepare to leave, may be the last best hope for getting the Iraqis to reach an eleventh-hour political agreement. Third, as the civil war in Iraq plays out, it could, painfully, force the realignment of communities on the ground that may create a more stable foundation upon which to build a federal settlement.

Fourth, we will restore our deterrence with Iran. Tehran will no longer be able to bleed us through its proxies in Iraq, and we will be much freer to hit Iran — should we ever need to — once we’re out. Moreover, Iran will by default inherit management of the mess in southern Iraq, which, in time, will be an enormous problem for Tehran.”

I agree with Friedman and repeat that I would support our troops remaining in Iraq if our allies were to join us. But they have made it clear they will not.

[…]

But my support for remaining in Iraq was conditioned on our allies joining us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, very few have done so. Instead, many of those same allies criticize us for staying in Iraq.

It was all about the allies, huh? Too bad the Democrats didn’t run a candidate who made an effort to bring America’s allies and regional interests together the centerpiece of his Iraq policy. A candidate who repeated things like this over and over during the debates and throughout the campaign:

I have a better plan for homeland security. I have a better plan to be able to fight the war on terror by strengthening our military, strengthening our intelligence, by going after the financing more authoritatively, by doing what we need to do to rebuild the alliances, by reaching out to the Muslim world, which the president has almost not done, and beginning to isolate the radical Islamic Muslims, not have them isolate the United States of America.

I know I can do a better job in Iraq. I have a plan to have a summit with all of the allies, something this president has not yet achieved, not yet been able to do to bring people to the table.

That would have been a perfect candidate for Koch.

But, no, Koch didn’t see or hear anything like that in 2004. Instead, he went to George Bush’s convention in New York and said this:

“I, too, disagree with the president on every major domestic issue from taxes to Social Security. Yet I believe those issues are trumped by the overriding need to defeat international terrorism, the biggest threat to our freedom.”

Trumped. Every major domestic issue trumped. What a bargain that was… A responsible, effective government dealt away for a failed foreign policy, broken military, catastrophic debt and the loss of respect around the world. Last October, Koch told Chris Matthews that Bush should be given credit for his courage. Now, Koch’s home town is disintegrating in an asbestos shower, symptoms of the diseased policies he swallowed out of fear. New Orleans has drowned and the warmonger from Connecticut he endorsed turned around and refused to do his job and investigate the failure .

Koch doesn’t just owe the war critics an apology, he owes everybody an apology.