Month: July 2007

Closer
by Dover Bitch

Revisiting Digby’s post on the Lieberman Amendment, some Senators are explaining themselves and it looks like they’ve lost the thread, too. Here’s Sen. Russ Feingold explaining why he voted for the amendment:

While I don’t agree with Senator Lieberman when it comes to Iraq, his amendment having to do with Iran offered yesterday was not controversial because it basically just required a report on Iran’s role in Iraq and any responses by the US government.

I’m stunned by this response, and not just because it’s from Feingold. Apparently, the addition of this clause has convinced senators like Harry Reid that the bill is benign:

(d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of Armed Forces against Iran.

I just don’t see how anybody who’s been paying attention can come to that conclusion. First of all, consider the source:

“I think we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. Host Bob Schieffer followed-up: “Let’s just stop right there. Because I think you probably made some news here, Senator Lieberman. You’re saying that if the Iranians don’t let up, that the United States should take military action?” “I am,” Lieberman responded.

Lieberman added that “if there’s any hope” of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, “we can’t just talk to them. … We’ve got to use our force and to me that would include taking military action.”

That was a month ago. While the extent of Lieberman’s dementia on this issue is something altogether different than the text of this amendment and its legal implications, it would behoove anybody considering an amendment on this topic from this particular senator to be as skeptical as possible. A 97-0 vote doesn’t indicate much skepticism.

Lieberman’s motives don’t exist in a vacuum, either. It’s been clear for a long time that this administration is itching for a war with Iran. Josh Marshall wrote about the neocon fantasy of “spreading the chaos” way back in 2003. We know that the administration tried to get authorization to fight in Iran and Syria when the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq was approved.

We have been told by The Guardian that Bush essentially gave Tony Blair a chance to pull the United States into a war with Iran when 15 British sailors were captured last March.

We also heard from Sy Hersh that the administration has been manipulating language in order to avoid Congressional oversight into their actions involving Iran:

The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.

” ‘Force protection’ is the new buzzword,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon’s position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to congressional oversight. “The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran,” he said. “We need to have more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do everything we want.”

In normal times, you might wonder if this assertion were true because it might be hard to accept, at least automatically, that the White House would stoop to such a level. In this case, you actually have to wonder if this administration would even waste time coming up with any justification whatsoever for evading any perceived-to-be-legitimate restrictions on its authority.

Back to the Lieberman Amendment… If “force protection” is the name of the game, Congress has just, despite their attempts to de-fang the bill, handed the administration a list of Congressional “findings” that support whatever Bush and Cheney decide to do in Iran (and in secret). The findings themselves attribute the allegations of Iranian involvment to military representatives, but there shouldn’t be any doubt that the White House would argue that the Congress has accepted them through their acknowledgement.

Consider how the water-carriers for this administration have used the libelous “Additional Views” of three Republican senators to claim that the entire Senate concluded that Joe Wilson is a liar in the Select Intelligence Committee’s Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment on Iraq. Now, the White House has a 20-point list of reasons to justify anything Bush has already been doing without Congressional approval.

If that isn’t enough of a reason to have voted this amendment to oblivion, consider what Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February:

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Continues to be bogged down… Check. Iraqi failure to meet benchmarks… Check. Accusations of Iranian responsibility… Check, thanks to this amendment.

Where does that leave us? Waiting for George Bush to report back to Congress about whether there are any Iranian “provocations” in Iraq. What do you expect to hear in the next report? What do you think will happen next?

Sen. Webb introduced a bill back in March that would have required Bush to come back to Congress for approval before using force in Iran. That bill never got out of committee. It was determined that it wasn’t “germane” to the toothless Iraq Supplemental Bill that passed in May. Congress has done nothing to assert its authority in lieu of that bill’s rejection.

Is it possible that 97 voting senators all want a war with Iran? Seems hard to believe, but in the absence of any serious opposition to expanding this war, what else could they be thinking?

Sensitive General

by digby

I was going to comment on Charles Krauthamer’s odd argument that we should stay in Iraq because it would insult General Petreus if we didn’t, but I’m too tired to deconstruct lunatics today. Fortunately, Thers at Whiskey Fire still has the energy:

He seems to be saying that it’s a good thing that after four years we’ve finally learned how to combat an insurgent enemy (Al Qaeda in Iraq) that wasn’t there when we invaded in the first place and that this means we don’t have to worry anymore about the whole civil war/ethnic conflict/complete fuckup of a central government stuff. Also, if we pulled out troops it would say bad things about General Petraeus and that’s totally not fair. No, seriously:

To cut off Petraeus’s plan just as it is beginning — the last surge troops arrived only last month — on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.

Christ knows these maniacs have come up with some odd arguments in their time, but “you can’t take your ball and go home because that might make the General cry” is one of the flat-out weirdest.

And that’s saying something.

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Huckleberry Has A Hissy Fit

by digby

I’m sure most of you have already seen the exchange between Jim Webb and Huckleberry Graham this morning on MTP, but if you haven’t give it a look. Huckleberry practically holds his breath until he turns blue, stomping his little feet, wringing his little white paper and basically getting completely hysterical on the subject of “the surge.” He looked like he’d just love to slap that crude boor Jim Webb right in his face.

He says he speaks for the soldiers but after his little performance this morning, I’m thinking the troops would prefer that he doesn’t ask and doesn’t tell and doesn’t talk on their behalf. Grace under pressure isn’t his strong suit.

Crooks and Liars has the vid, of course, and pieces of the transcript.

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Protecting The Village

by digby

Glenn Greenwald writes today about what in past years would be a jarring and dissonant newspaper editorial extolling the virtues of government secrecy — Fred Hiatt’s latest apologia for the Bush administration. It’s hard to believe that a newspaperman would think government secrecy is a good idea, if only our of self interest, but there you have it. In The Village, the press and the government have the same interest — The Village. The rest of us are on our own.

For instance, here’s a little story from Hiatt’s own paper that apparently doesn’t give him any pause:

An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIA scandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told Congress. Although the FBI told the board of a few hundred legal or rules violations by its own agents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the board did not identify which of them were indeed legal violations. This spring, it forwarded reports of violations in 2006, officials said. The President’s Intelligence Oversight Board — the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community — is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes “may be unlawful.” The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration. The FBI sent copies of its violation reports directly to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. But the board’s mandate was to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was doing its job. “It’s now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to have been needed the most,” said Anthony Harrington, who served as the board’s chairman for most of the Clinton administration. “The White House counsel’s office and the attorney general should have known and been concerned if they did not detect an active and effective IOB,” Harrington said. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., added: “It is deeply disturbing that this administration seems to spend so much of its energy and resources trying to find ways to ignore any check and balance on its authority and avoid accountability to Congress and the American public.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Friday that “the president expects every single person working in counterterrorism and intelligence strictly to follow the law — and if there are instances where that has not occurred, either intentionally or non-intentionally, he expects it promptly to be corrected.” She said the White House was relying on the presidentially appointed director of national intelligence to monitor problems. Through five previous administrations, members of the board — all civilians not employed by the government — have been privy to some of America’s most secret intelligence operations and have served as a private watchdog against unpublicized abuses. The subjects of their investigations and the resulting reports are nearly all classified. The Bush administration first appointed board members in 2003. Since then, the CIA and the National Security Agency have been caught up in controversy over interrogation tactics at secret prisons, the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture, and domestic wiretapping not reviewed by federal courts. Until recently, the board had not told the attorney general about any wrongdoing. “The Attorney General has no record of receiving reports from the IOB regarding intelligence activities alleged to be potentially unlawful or contrary to Executive Order or Presidential directive,” the Justice Department told the House Judiciary Committee in a May 9 letter. White House officials said the board began forwarding reports of problems shortly thereafter. White House officials declined to discuss the board’s interactions with President Bush, and said its members could not be interviewed for this report. President Gerald R. Ford created the board in the mid-1970s after the Church Committee identified numerous abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. President Ronald Reagan made the board permanent with an executive order in 1981 and gave it the mission to identify legal violations. Harrington said that under President Clinton, the board sent reports of legal violations by intelligence agencies promptly to the attorney general. Officials said it concluded that the administration showed poor judgment in supporting Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, and it complained about the CIA’s policy of employing known torturers or killers as informants in Latin America. Perino said that during the first two years of the Bush administration, a career intelligence officer at the White House collected and reviewed reports in which the FBI and other intelligence agencies self-disclosed violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards.

Well ok, then. As long as they assure us that they followed all the rules, that’s all I need to know.

Hiatt apparently thinks this kind of thing is just fine. And while it’s very nice that they actually published the story, I have to wonder why the Washington Post thinks it’s ok for the white house to instruct them that the members of this board could not be interviewed. Certainly, one would think this unusual order would be in the lede, not perfunctorily noted in the body of the article. I’m unaware of any precedent for the white house directing a newspaper not to interview certain people and I’m not sure why any newspaper would simply note it as if it were a common order that they don’t find unusual. The article certainly does not indicate that the reporter tried to interview the board members anyway and they refused, which would be the obvious response. It’s not like he didn’t know who they are. After all, the article names them.

Evidently, this is another of the new Village edicts — the president tells the press and the congress whom they may or may not speak to. If he withholds his permission, then that’s that. And it looks as though the press and the congress are inclined to go along, which one would normally think is counter to their own interests. But it isn’t. Their interests are in keeping the Village secure, not in keeping our democracy secure. So naturally they are more worried about outsiders trashing the place than they are about insiders trashing the constitution.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

SIFF-ting Through Celluloid-Part 5

By Dennis Hartley

Well, this is going to be the wrap party for my series on highlights from the Seattle International Film Festival (please don’t tell me I’m now expected to suffer through “Evan Almighty” and its ilk!)

This week, we’ll examine a pair of films that offer two different perspectives on the business we call “show”-from the inside looking out, and from the outside looking in.

First up, we’ll take a look at “The Life of Reilly”, a new performance film featuring a veritable tour de force of masterful showmanship from a very unlikely source-Charles Nelson Reilly. Yes, I’m referring to THAT Charles Nelson Reilly, instantly recognizable by his flamboyant manner and propensity for delivering catty zingers, and best known for his ubiquitous presence on the talk show/game show circuit from the late 60s onward (Younger viewers may recognize him as a recurring character on the “X Files” and its spin off series “Millennium”.)

Reilly, who passed away in May of this year, once resignedly predicted that all of his obits would undoubtedly contain the phrase “game show fixture” somewhere in the lead sentence. Actually, it would surprise many people to learn that Reilly was in fact classically trained as a stage actor. It certainly surprised a group of college students once attending one of Reilly’s master acting classes, when they were unexpectedly treated to a lengthy but enthusiastically received performance piece (improvised on the spot), in response to the simple question “How did you become an actor?” The incident inspired Reilly’s autobiographical one man show “Save it for the Stage”. Reilly had officially ended the run before he was asked to perform it one final time (in 2004) for this film.

Reilly runs the theatrical gamut, segueing from hilarious anecdote to moving soliloquy without missing a beat. He begins with a series of wonderful vignettes about growing up in the Bronx. Reilly had a tragicomic family background tailor-made for a stage show (an overbearing mother, institutionalized father and a live-in aunt with a lobotomy) and he milks it for all its worth. His mother’s favorite admonishment, “Save it for the stage!” becomes the teenage Reilly’s secret mantra as he begins to gravitate toward the boards.

After a promising start in “Miss (Uta) Hagen’s $3 Tuesday afternoon acting class” in NYC in the early 50s (you won’t believe your ears as Reilly rattles off the names from the actual roll call), he hits a brick wall when he auditions for an NBC talent scout, only to be bluntly informed “They don’t let queers (sic) on television.” In a brilliant callback later in the play, Reilly gets the last laugh when he recalls poring over “TV Guide” every week at the peak of his ubiquity on the tube, and playing a game wherein he would count how many times his name would appear (including reruns). “I know I was once told I wasn’t allowed on TV,” he quips, “…but now I found myself thinking: Who do I fuck to get OFF?!” At once funny, moving, and inspiring, “The Life of Reilly” is a real winner.

Our second SIFF feature this week is the latest offering from writer-director Tom DeCillo, “Delirious”. (Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy night.)

DiCillo returns to the same sharply observed, navel-gazing territory he explored in his previous films “The Real Blonde” and “Living in Oblivion“, namely, pointed meditations on the personal and artistic angst that performers (and all those who take succor from their celebrity) must suffer as they busily claw their way to fame and fortune.

DeCillo regular Steve Buscemi portrays the peevish Les Galantine, a bottom feeding paparazzi who fancies himself as the heir apparent to Richard Avedon. We are introduced to Les in a scene that strongly recalls Martin Scorcese’s introduction of the desperate and needy autograph hounds in The King Of Comedy; a group of photographers hurl insults and elbows at each other as they jostle for position waiting for a glimpse of the ridiculously named K’Harma Leeds (Alison Lohman), a wispy pop diva. We observe as Les establishes himself as the alpha parasite, shoving his way to the front of the swarm.

Also on hand is an aspiring actor turned homeless bum named Toby Grace (oy, the names of these characters!) portrayed with wide-eyed, angelic, erm, grace by Michael Pitt. Quite by accident, Toby literally stumbles into affording Les the money shot of the diva as she steals out a side door. Toby subsequently ingratiates himself into an overnight stay on Les’ couch, and, with the opportunistic instinct of a street person, proceeds to convince the initially suspicious photographer that he needs an “assistant” to help him get more of those page one tabloid photos (a job he will gladly fill in exchange for room and board).

To avoid spoilers, let’s just say serendipity (and a tremendous suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer) eventually lands the homeless Toby into a plum role in a hot new TV series, and a star is born, greatly complicating his friendship with the now embittered and still-struggling Les, who feels Toby is “his” discovery (Pitt is basically reprising the same “All About Eve” type character he portrayed in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch “.)

DiCillo isn’t exactly breaking new ground either, but he executes it with his patented blend of darkly comic cynicism tempered by a vibe of magical realism; it is a uniquely identifiable style of modern fable-telling that has made me a fan of the director’s work.

Buscemi is at his “lovable weasel” best here, and the strong supporting cast includes the always dependable indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan (Who?! If you saw him, you would say “Oh yeah-THAT guy!”) and a surprisingly great turn from Gina Gershon, who displays a real flair for vicious comedy as a cutthroat agent (sort of a female version of Ari Gold from HBO’s “Entourage”.) Also look for Elvis Costello, playing himself in a hilarious cameo. I wouldn’t call this DeCillo’s best film (that would be “Living in Oblivion“, with “Box of Moonlight” running a close second, IMHO), but fans of backstage tales will definitely get some jollies out of it. “Delirious” is scheduled to open wide August 15.

One more recommended Tom DiCillo film: Johnny Suede.

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Happy Blogiversary

by digby

No not this one. Apparently, this is the tenth anniversary of “the blog” and the Wall Street Journal asked a bunch of people what it all means. Luckily, they also interviewed some actual bloggers, including our gal Jane Hamsher:

During the ’90s, railing at the TV set was the isometric sport of the silent majority. Progressive political junkies watched in isolation as the Washington Post prominently printed one Whitewater story after another as if they originated on tablets of stone rather than the fax machines of Arkansas political operatives. Many people felt like they were the only ones who scratched their heads in wonder that it all made no sense, recoiling in horror as a slick PR operation rapidly escalated from the realm of lazy, spoon-fed journalism to the constitutional mockery of the Clinton impeachment.

That isolation ended with the advent of the progressive blogosphere, which acts as a virtual water cooler for those who not only want to rail at the TV set, they want the TV set to listen. Probably nothing better contrasts the pre- and postblogospheric worlds than the Whitewater and CIA leak stories. In one, the endless repetition of meaningless gibberish was allowed to take root and become conventional wisdom. In the other, despite the constant reiteration of abject fantasies like “no underlying crime was committed,” the public seemed to realize that it’s not okay to perjure yourself in front of a grand jury and obstruct justice on behalf of your boss. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was allowed to try his case in court before GOP spinmeisters could try it in the press, and a recent Gallup poll shows that 66% of the country thinks Bush should’ve left Scooter alone to do his time.

That message wasn’t carried by the beltway Brahmins of the MSM, the media elite who transcend party loyalties and embrace Libby as one of their own. They collectively bristled at the thought that Scooter (and no doubt themselves) should be subject to the verdict of some “ignorant jury” (as Ann Coulter likes to call them). No, that message was carried by bloggers and their readers, the thousands of people who collectively pored over the story’s coverage, serving as institutional memory and holding media outlets to account when the politics of access journalism threaten to obscure the truth.

At a time when government is in desperate need of oversight and the Fourth Estate has become uncomfortably close with those they are tasked with covering, the progressive blogosphere is a place where erstwhile Howard Beales coalesce to fill the gap. They come together to challenge the virulent Rovian notion that no law is so sacred, no tenet of national security so vital it can’t be flouted in the pursuit of political gain. Scooter and other hermetically sealed beltway denizens may think he’s a hero, but the rest of the country realizes he’s nothing better than a garden variety crook.

It ain’t perfect, but it’s progress.

Yep.

For something completely different read the unintentionally funny entry by Tom Wolfe who rails on and on about rumors and Wikipedia, (apparently thinking it has something to do with blogs) because the entry on him featured something untrue. Then he winds up with this:

Favorite blogs: Mr. Wolfe, “weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless ‘information,'” says he no longer reads blogs.

Poor dear.

And thanks for the kudos, Jane. All those WSJ readers are going to love my blog!

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Losing The Thread

by digby

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting less than usual the last few days and the fact is that I’ve been quite busy. So busy, in fact, that I seem to have lost the thread of what’s going on in Washington. Perhaps some of you can help me find it.

First, as I wondered earlier in the week, is there some reason that the Democrats didn’t force the Republicans to actually filibuster the Webb legislation the old fashioned way and force them to publicly justify why they don’t think the troops in Iraq should be allowed to spend some time at home before being redeployed? I still can’t figure that one out — it seemed like a no-brainer to me. Let Huckelberry Graham and Holy Joe explain why the president’s prerogatives are more important than the troops and their families. I still don’t get it.

But then this took place and I’m completely confused. Here’s RJ Eskow in Huffington Post:

The amendment sounds reasonable enough on its face. (Text is here.) It asks for bimonthly reports from the military regarding “external support or direction provided to anti-coalition forces by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran or its agents … the strategy and ambitions in Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and …. any counter-strategy or efforts by the United States Government to counter the activities of agents of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Iraq.” It was a shrewdly worded document. Any Democrat who voted against it would have opened him- or herself up to accusations that of being afraid to face the facts about Iranian involvement in Iraq. And we know that Iran is involved in Iraq in certain ways. After all, it’s been invited there – by the very government our troops are sacrificing themselves to defend. In fact, the Iraqi government is so close to its Shi’ite neighbor that it quickly invited it to open an embassy in Baghdad. Predictably, the Lieberman measure passed 97-0. But it’s not the reporting requirements themselves that are dangerous – it’s the amendment’s language. It lists a hodgepodge of undocumented and inflammatory accusations before stating that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable and unacceptable act of hostility against the United States by the foreign government in question.” These are words that invite an act of war against Iran, even in the absence of clear evidence of involvement. The amendment doesn’t just ask for intelligence on Iranian activity. It requires ongoing reports on proactive U.S. efforts against alleged Iranian efforts, placing political pressure on our military to become more active against Iran. Word in Washington is that top military leaders are resisting an attack on Iran, saying we lack the resources. This is a great way to lean on the generals to change their minds.

I cannot believe that the Democrats voted for this en masses on the merits. It had to be a deal of some sort, or some kind of assurance from the powers that be or something that I’m just not getting. I’m usually pretty good at figuring out the kabuki of these inexplicable legislative actions but in this case, I’m stumped.

It makes no sense at all for the Democrats to empower this administration in any way, shape or form to do anything with respect to Iran. Nada. It certainly doesn’t make political sense — nobody in the country wants war with Iran and nobody will suffer at the polls for failing to sign off on the president and Lieberman’s crazy schemes. The idea that Democrats need to be scared of seeming soft on Iran is ludicrous. And even if it did, all they had to do was scuttle the amendment anyway —they didn’t have to call for a vote. I just can’t find any political benefit to this at all, and tons of serious, substantive risk.

(It’s possible that their little friend Lieberman is blackmailing them, but if that’s the case they should just turn the Senate over to the Republicans, return their pay to the taxpayers and go home. Let the war with Iran commence without their compliance.)

On the substance, it’s just plain nuts. If they think they can depend on the military to hold Bush and Cheney back, I hope they talked to the air force, because the flyboys have to be chomping at the bit to get in on the action. There have been few medals and promotions for them in the GWOT so far — they sure could use a good bombing campaign. (And if the Dems believed any assurances from Bush, they should be the ones who are impeached.)

Like I said, I’ve been busy and so perhaps didn’t catch all the nuance. But between the flummoxed Dem response to the Bush officials’ three stooges-style committee testimony and defiance of subpoenas, to the inability to force the Republicans to take responsibility for their obstruction to this sloppy wet kiss-up to Joe Lieberman, I don’t understand what the hell is going on with the congress at all.

Seriously, do they really think that these lawless Republicans are going to comply with some quaint rules or live up to their “word”? That they will see the light and come over from the dark side? The GOP is looking down the barrel of an electoral defeat so extreme they may never recover. The party is falling apart under the leadership of a misfit and a certified lunatic and more than a quarter century of political philosophy has just been proven to be complete rubbish. They are cornered animals.

And anyway, the Republican Party has not acted with restraint for more than a decade, using whatever institutional power they had without regard to consequences, precedent or effect on the constitution — a partisan impeachment by a reckless Republican majority in the congress, a stolen election by a ruthless political machine in Florida in concert with a blatantly partisan Supreme Court majority — and now the lawless rule of the Republican executive branch under Bush and Cheney. The wholesale corruption and decadence of their rule should be more obvious to them than it is to us. There is not one political act of the last decade that should give anyone the least bit of assurance that the Republicans are acting in good faith.

This isn’t really about Bush and it isn’t really about Cheney. It is about the malignant political aberration that calls itself the modern Republican Party.

I don’t know what kind of “strategy” the Democrats think is in play when they sign off on a bizarre statement about Iran that opens up all kinds of avenues for the president to start another war, but they are engaging in a very dangerous game. Arming the Republicans with any excuse to shoot the moon right now is political malpractice. On their best days, the Republicans are reckless and delusional. Now that they’re desperate, anything could happen. Why did the Dems just hand them a loaded gun? I don’t get it.

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Weakest Link
by Dover Bitch

The news about toothpaste made of antifreeze and dumplings made of cardboard have gotten quite a bit of attention on television lately (quite rightly). But odds are, the television you’re watching was also imported. And on top of that, there’s a pretty good chance the shows you enjoy first aired somewhere else. For example, The Office or American Idol, both of which originated in England.

The United States is also bringing in quite a few movies from other parts of the world. Last year’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Departed was based on a film called Mou gaan dou. I can’t tell you how upset I am that a remake is in the works of what is possibly my favorite film of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru.

Don’t worry, I’m not taking over Dennis Hartley’s fantastic Saturday Night At The Movies. (He’ll be here tomorrow.) It’s just that I was visiting Steve Clemons’ Washington Note and saw the show America absolutely must import from England:

The BBC has a must-listen show on radio tomorrow titled Called to Account (times noted further below) offering a theatrical version of Tony Blair’s indictment for Iraq War-related crimes. This may inspire many on this side of the Atlantic pond to think about various strategies to hold America’s current political leadership accountable for duplicity and mismanagement of America’s national security portfolio — and particularly for the Iraq War.

Democracy has become a term derided in much of the world today because for many beleaguered peoples it has come to mean Western duplicity, uneven standards between the mighty and the weak, an excuse for invasion and occupation, a code word for regime change, or obsessive focus on ballots rather than healthy civil society institutions like courts and a free media that help to keep power accountable.

If ‘Democracy’ is ever going to shed its bad name, accountability must be one of its fundamental pillars in any genuine system of checks and balances. There should be a price paid for serious errors by national leaders — and an even higher price paid by those who wield power with impunity and who lie to their publics in so-called democracies.

Sounds like a good idea to me. If Congress won’t hold Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. accountable, let Hollywood do it. They can do a better job scripting an indictment than any Senate or House committee. As compelling as C-Span has been since November 2006, the lack of coordination in these hearings is incredibly frustrating.

Who would you cast for the prosecution? It doesn’t have to be an actor. Fred Thompson can try to defend his friends if he wants, though.

Religious Concerns

by digby

The liberal religio-political industrial complex strikes again, spinning a new poll to reflect that religious Americans are just plain disgusted with Democrats because we hate them for their faith. Which would mean that the 85% of Americans who say they are religios hate Democrats. It’s a miracle we ever get elected to anything.

Amy Sullivan starts out her new article in TIME this way:

The hoary joke that a “religious Democrat” is more of an oxymoron than “jumbo shrimp” couldn’t be more wrong in this election cycle, in which it’s the Democrats who are talking comfortably about faith while their Republican counterparts dodge the subject. Even so, as the results of a new TIME poll show, the conventional wisdom about the two political parties and religion may be so ingrained that no amount of evidence to the contrary can change perceptions. That may very well help Republicans in 2008 despite their various religion issues. And it may also mean that most Democrats, with one important exception, will have to try twice as hard to reach faith-minded voters.

As Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy report in this week’s TIME cover story, the three Democratic frontrunners are leading a fundamental shift in how their party thinks about religious Americans, which includes the first party-wide effort to target and court Catholic and evangelical voters. Republicans, meanwhile, have been lining up to receive the seal of approval from Pat Robertson and James Dobson. But at the same time, Mitt Romney has gone to great lengths to avoid talking about his Mormonism, John McCain’s religious advisors quit his campaign in disgust, and when the AP inquired as to what church Rudy Giuliani attended, the former mayor essentially told them to mind their own business.

In spite of all that, according to the new TIME poll, only 15% of registered voters believe that Hillary Clinton is “strongly religious,” compared to 22% for John Edwards and 24% for Barack Obama. Perhaps more problematic for Clinton is the fact that nearly one-quarter of respondents (24%) say they know she is “not religious” — that’s almost twice the nearest candidate, Rudy Giuliani (13%).

Boy, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? It looks like we are going to lose again, dammit.

Sullivan interprets the poll results to mean that more people think Obama is religious because the Democrats have always “outsourced” their religion to the negroes. Maybe she’s right. But Sullivan seems to think this means that Obama is going to get a lot of red state Republicans to vote for him. I’m not kidding. She honestly believes that because Obama is a religious guy that Republicans will vote for a black liberal from Illinois and bring home those red state electoral votes. All roads lead to church, trumping every other signifier.

But unfortunately, Sullivan was forced to add this little qualifier at the very end:

Finally, the poll found that Americans have strong views about religion and politics in the era of George W. Bush. In May 2004, half (49%) of American voters said President Bush’s faith made him a strong leader while only 36% said it made him too closed-minded. Today, voters have reversed their opinion about the role of Bush’s faith: 50% now say it makes him too closed-minded and 34% say it makes him a strong leader. Similarly, while in 2004, only 27% said that Bush’s use of faith did more to divide the country rather than unite it, today, 43% feel that way.

There is evidence of that division in the poll. By a two-to-one margin (62% to 29%), Republicans say a president should use his or her faith to guide presidential decisions. By contrast, Democrats reject this idea by a similar two-to-one margin (58% to 32%). In the same way, while three-quarters of Democrats say the president should not use his or her own interpretation of the Bible to make public decisions, Republicans are about evenly split (46% to 43%) on this. And while the overwhelming majority of Republican voters (71%) agree that religious values should serve as a guide to what political leaders do in office, 56% of Democrats disagree with this.

It remains to be seen whether Democratic voters would feel differently about any of these issues if one of their candidates took back the White House in 2008. It could be that respondents find it difficult to separate their general views on the questions from their opinions about Bush and religion. But it’s also possible that the last seven have indeed fundamentally shifted the way many Americans think about religion and politics. The answer to that key question is something the Democratic frontrunners will be working to figure out.

Well, that sheds some new light on things, now doesn’t it? In fact, it pretty much invalidates Sullivan’s entire thesis. She insists that the Democrats are going to have trouble winning unless they can appeal to religious voters when the poll she’s citing actually says that people are dramatically turning away from these explicitly religious appeals. She then scrambles to show that this is a partisan divide, but the fact is that party ID is dramatically shifting as well, not to mention that even some Republicans are clearly getting sick of this preaching as leadership model.

It’s always been quite obvious that religion isn’t going to buy Democrats any conservative votes.(See Cal Thomas — you can’t win with these people.) And anyone who isn’t a staunch conservative has a zillion reasons to vote for the Democrats on other highly visible, important issues that have little to do with religion in any direct way. There is simply no evidence that anyone other than rightwingers will refuse to vote for Democrats in 2008 because they aren’t religious enough. Indeed, the evidence actually points the other way.

The Democratic candidates are welcome to discuss their religion beliefs and use them in their campaigns. I’m sure there are many people who are interested in hearing what they have to say about it and how their religion informs their judgment. None of us heathen SP’s have ever said otherwise. But I would really appreciate it if the liberal religio-politico industrial complex would stop trying to skew the political playing field with misleading analyses of what the electorate really wants. They may think they are being clever, but when they write things like this we know exactly what they are talking about:

Democrats, with one important exception, will have to try twice as hard to reach faith-minded voters.

Since it doesn’t seem to make any difference how much they talk about their religion or spend time in church or anything else, what could they possibly do to prove that they are really, truly, god-fearing religious people? Why, they could adopt socially conservative policies!

That’s the real agenda. These people are not as concerned about Democrats winning, despite all the concern troll advice for the last decade or so, as much as they care about making the Democrats more socially conservative. Amy Sullivan just proved it again by writing a misleading article that assumes Democrats are going to lose because they aren’t religious enough — at a time when the country is sick and tired of their leaders’ using their religious views to justify policies that the majority don’t want enacted. And let’s just say that all this religion talk in politics doesn’t exactly have the same punch now that so many of the allegedly pious, evangelical Republicans have shown themselves to be lying perverts.

Again, I have no problem with Democrats talking about their religious views. But it will not buy them one Republican vote. The religious folk who vote GOP on the basis of religion are never going to vote for Democrats unless they become social conservatives. That’s the formula and that’s what the liberal religious lobby is really pushing. I just wish they’d be honest about it.

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Oh Sweet Jesus I Hate Joe Lieberman

by digby

Via Instaputz, we find that Holy Joe was interviewed by new bff Hugh Hewitt:

Look, the American military, working together with coalition forces including Iraqis, will never lose the war in Iraq. I just can’t stress that enough. … If America suffers a defeat in Iraq, it will be because the American people didn’t stick with it, didn’t have the will. And some people here in leadership positions politically were so much against it that they built up that public opposition, that a lot of it is framed by the media. I won’t say a lot of them lie, but the constant focus is on the suicide bombers. And I know that’s news, but you know, the suicide bombers are our enemy. They’re carrying out more dramatic acts because we’re on the move, and we’ve got them on the run. And incidentally, Hugh, they’re not only trying to kill Iraqis and Americans with the suicide bombs over there, they’re trying to kill American support for the war in Iraq.

You’ve got to love the very pious and orthodox Lieberman adopting the “stab in the back” in whole cloth. There’s a horrible, horrible irony there.

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