Month: September 2007

Who Are The Radicals Again?

by digby

It has long been my contention that Rudy was playing a strongly racist primary campaign to try to signal to the base that he was one of them even though he doesn’t have social conservative credentials. In fact, I think the four front runners — none of whom are pure — have been skipping these debates with Hispanics and African Americans for that very reason. They have to signal their hatred a little bit more obviously than usual because they don’t have the right conservative bona-fides(except Thompson, who has other problems)to send code to the racist conservative neanderthals and be believed. They need to be direct. Especially Rudy, who is the fron trunner only by dint of his sadistic, bloodthirsty rhetoric with its not-very-subtle appeal to racism.
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It seems to be working out fine with the rank and file, but it may not turn out to be as easy to soothe the religious right pooh-bahs as I thought. I assumed they would toe the line. They threw their lot in with the Republicans a long time ago. But they seem to feel somewhat insulted that the Big Money Boyz have allowed a (comparatively) social liberal a chance at power purely for practical reasons.

Salon reports:

A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.

The meeting of about 50 leaders, including Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who called in by phone, took place at the Grand America Hotel during a gathering of the Council for National Policy, a powerful shadow group of mostly religious conservatives. James Clymer, the chairman of the U.S. Constitution Party, was also present at the meeting, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

“The conclusion was that if there is a pro-abortion nominee they will consider working with a third party,” said the person, who spoke to Salon on the condition of anonymity. The private meeting was not a part of the official CNP schedule, which is itself a closely held secret. “Dobson came in just for this meeting,” the person said.

The decision confirms the fears of many Republican Party officials, who have worried that a Giuliani nomination would irrevocably split the GOP in advance of the 2008 general election, given Giuliani’s relatively liberal stands on gay unions and abortion, as well as his rocky marital history. The private meeting was held Saturday afternoon, during a lull in the official CNP schedule. Earlier in the day, Vice President Dick Cheney had traveled to Utah to deliver a brief address to the larger CNP gathering. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also addressed the larger group.

The decision has also been reported in an unsigned article by WorldNetDaily, a conservative online news service. “Not only was there a consensus among activists to withhold support for the Republican nominee, there was even discussion about supporting the entry of a new candidate to challenge the frontrunners,” the article said. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, WorldNetDaily’s editor, Joseph Farah, attended the larger CNP gathering.

I’m certainly looking forward to all the stories about the Republicans being held hostage by their far right “activists” who stupidly refuse to compromise and are ruining their party’s chance for victory. I’m especially looking forward to the insightful piece in the NY Times that posits that the 60’s narrative that so animates the whole political establishment is now turned on its head: the war is unpopular with a vast (somewhat) silent majority, but the social radicalism and upheaval that fueled the Republican rise back in the day is now all on the conservative side.

You tell me which party should have more to fear that its base is alienating the American people? Which party really needs to be running from the “crazies” of its base and which one’s “crazies” are actually average Americans from all walks of life whose most radical proposal is to ensure that all Americans have access to a doctor?

Sadly, you will never hear this from the mainstream press since the radical clerics of the CNP are members in good standing of the Village. They don’t have long hair and they don’t take drugs and they aren’t the crazed anti-war Move-On hippies who are destroying American society. Of course, those hippies are a figment of the fevered imaginations of the Villagers, but that hasn’t stopped their dutiful stenographers from writing the narrative of this election as if the activist base of the Democratic party were all dropping acid in the Haight like it was the Summer of Love.

Meanwhile, they ignore the crazed radical religious right which is threatening a third party run against the most conservative Republican party in history and blandly portray a bunch of bloodthirsty billionaire war profiteers as “outsiders” and “activists.”

Update: For those who think you have caught me being naive and foolish once again, please re-read the post and you’ll notice that I didn’t say that the radical religious right was going to actually break off or that they wouldn’t make some sort of a deal. I actually think they are applying political power in a pretty effective way.

My point is that a significant conservative constituency is actually threatening to run a third party candidate if they don’t get their way and yet all we ever hear about is how the Democrats are being led down the path to perdition by the Move-On hippies who are pushing them to respond to the large majority of Americans who want the US to begin withdrawing from Iraq.

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Meet The Villagers

by digby

From the “you can’t make this stuff up” files:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, what about a World Series Yankees and Cubs?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, you know, I’ve worried about that because I think, given the Cubs’ record, which of course I, I hope it happens, but it could very well be a sign of the coming apocalypse were that to ever occur. It would be so out of history that you’d have the Cubs vs. the Yankees, then I’d be really in trouble. But I…

MR. RUSSERT: But who would you be for?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I would probably have to alternate sides.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Well, the Cubs are in the playoffs, David.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: Cubs, Yankees. You going to seat—sit behind each dugout?

MR. GREGORY: You can’t have it all. In the sports world, you can’t have it all.

MR. BUCHANAN: But, Tim…

MR. GREGORY: That reeks of calculation, which is a potential downside for her.

MR. BUCHANAN: The term “Nixonian” comes to mind on that response.

MR. RUSSERT: How so?

MR. BUCHANAN: In the good sense of the word.

MR. RUSSERT: How so, Pat?

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I mean, which—“on the one hand, on the other.”

MR. SMILEY: That sounds like Romney is what it sounded like.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Dan Balz, it’s been tough getting these candidates to, to one, one, talk to the press and take real positions. They want to hide out in the Internet, they want to hide out on their blogs, they want to put out prefab commercials and brochures. But when you say to them, “Where are you on Social Security? How are you going to save that program? Where are you on Iraq? Where are you on immigration?” sometimes you get answers like that.

MR. BALZ: You know, it’s interesting. The, the Republicans have gotten a lot of criticism for not coming to Tavis’ debate the other night, and I think justifiably so, for all the reasons that have been discussed here this morning. But, as you point out, all of the candidates on all sides of this race are finding ways to avoid real interaction with the press.

MR. BUCHANAN: Mm-hmm.

MR. BALZ: Senator Clinton has had one real press availability out on the campaign trail since she announced. Most of them—she did all the Sunday shows last week. She’s basically not doing any others. Obama is very much the same way. They’re all using friendly sources. As you say, they’re trying to get their message out through the Internet. The Republicans go on Sean Hannity all the time. They’re looking for ways to avoid tough follow-up questions.

Right. The tough follow up question to “what would you do if the Cubs and the Yanks meet in the World series” would be … what?

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick these people are insufferable sometimes. How deep must your massively inflated ego and lack of self-awareness be to not know that your silly, Dr Phil pycho-babble “character” coverage is what makes candidates look elsewhere to talk about substantive issues. These people won’t allow them to. Everyone in the corporate press is obsessed with trivia and focused like a laser on any utterance that will “prove” the person fits their pre-conceived narrative. (Read this bucket full of utterly useless lightweight psycholanalytical drivel, if you don’t believe me. Hillary the Empty Bore — just like Gore! Awesome.)

The candidates are “hiding” from their tough questions like Russert’s penetrating query on Cubs vs Yanks (or the equally stupid Russertesque “gotcha” questions calling them on something they said in 1978 or his mind-numbing hypotheticals about ticking time bombs and sanctuary cities) because they know that it doesn’t matter what they say, the approved narrative will be advanced. Why the hell should any of them bother answering the corporate media’s questions anymore?

The bigger problem is that they haven’t stopped listening to them.

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And, by the way, did David Gregory get too much sun this summer when he was vacationing with his fellow aristocrats in Martha’s Vineyard? This has to be the most vapid piece of “analysis” I’ve seen in many a day:

MR. GREGORY: I think there’s a couple of issues. One, she, she will constantly fight this issue of being her own president, her own woman, and, and is Bill Clinton, the former president, lurking in the shadows, influencing policy? And the way he wrapped his arms around her answers say she’s her own woman, and she’s thought this through, and that’s what she should really be doing. It’s a land mine he’s always going to be walking through.

The second thing is that I think Republicans—all these Republicans that say she is the inevitable nominee, they want her to be the nominee. The only thing they could get Republicans excited right now in their doldrums is the idea of the Clintons running for president, the notion that it’s two-for-one again. And I, I was thinking about George W. Bush in 2000, ending every stump speech saying “When I put my hand on the Bible, I’ll restore honor and digerty—dignity to the White House.” They’d like to, to rehash some of those themes.

Yah think?

I guess that’s why these top Village stenographers make the big bucks. Their superior “access” gives them unusual insights like that.

Update: Sommerby has more on the “important questions” that Russert posed during the debate:

PART 2—IT TAKES A VILLAGE BURGHER: Tim Russert didn’t ask about climate change at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate. We had no time for a topic like that. But we did have time for these ruminations. To Russert, these things really mattered:

1) Russert found time to ask John Edwards (for the ten millionth time) about his troubling haircuts.

2) He found time to present the latest 24-style hypothetical—and to play “gotcha” with Hillary Clinton, employing an old Sean Hannity trick. (You get your guest to disagree with a quote. Then, you try to embarrass your guest when you reveal who said it!)

3) He found time to bore the world with a question (to Dennis Kucinich) about a municipal problem in Cleveland—a problem which occurred in Cleveland in 1978.

4) He found time to collect a Bible passage from each of the hopefuls—after leading with the latest RNC-scripted suggestion about the troubling lack of faith among these bad vile Democrats. (“Before we go, there’s been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values. I want to ask you a simple question…”)

“There’s been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values!” And yes, that’s true, there has been such discussion—among the nation’s pseudo-conservative hacks. But then, Russert has increasingly become a parody of a corporate-selected, multimillionaire mogul.

There’s more.

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Brass On Board

by digby

The story of the day is surely Seymour Hersh’s latest in which he says that the administration seems to have convinced the generals that it needs to attack Iran to protect the troops in Iraq:

The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.

“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.

A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.”

And the good news is that Britain seems inclined to go along in order to get back their manly pride after that incident with the sailors last spring. (The neocon bullies taunted them relentlessly on that and it worked.)

So, there we have it. All the months of screaming into he void by many bloggers and others on this subject, culminating last week in the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment in which many Democrats, including our presidential frontrunner, signed on to the fundamental premise Cheney is using to justify the attack. (What an excellent move on their part.)

Read the article. It has that sickening stench of a done deal, just like that roll-out in the fall of 2002.

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

Cheney isn’t really a politician anymore and hasn’t been one for a long time. He represents the people who really run things at times like this, the big money boyz, and their concerns are not so parochial as a Republican win. They run things no matter who’s in office. (And anyway, they’ve set certain things in motion, pillaged the treasury so thoroughly and solidified their hold on the media and the Democrats sufficiently enough that they think a few years of GOP R&R is probably a good idea. They need to allow the Democrats just enough power to be blamed, in any case.)

Hersh has been reporting on this impending Iran attack for some time. He has excellent sources inside the military. Until now he has said that there was sufficient resistance among the top brass to doing this, which sounded right to me. It’s hard to believe that the military would want to start a new front at this point. This article indicates that they have been persuaded. And it also indicates that the argument they used is the argument they have also seized upon to sell the war to the American people.

John Amato caught Hersh on Blitzer this morning:

Hersh: You can also sell counter-terror, it’s much more logical. You can say to the American people, we’re only hitting these people that are trying to kill our boys and the coalition forces and so that seems to be more sensible, The White House think s they can actually pitch this, this would actually work…

The subtext of that, of course, is that they will browbeat the American people into either stifling their dissent against this action or risk being called traitors to the troops. Only treasonous betray-up bloggers would dare say a word.

And in case anyone’s wondering about how they plan to sell this to the American people, we have our answer. Their spanking new “grassroots” group of bloodthirsty billionaire profiteers are on the case:

Its next target: Iran policy.

Instead of the mushroom cloud fear mongering to get the people to accept this action they are going to use the more subtle form of emotional blackmail: harming the troops. When we object to this action we will be accused of not wanting to protect our boys from harm. And it will probably work, at least long enough to flummox the politicians and tie the rest of us in knots trying to explain what’s wrong with that picture, until it’s far too late.

(Imagine if the Democrats had really gone to the mat on the Webb Amendment…)

And just in case anyone is wondering what the fallout of this insane action is likely to be, well, nobody knows. And nobody in the administration is thinking much about that, other than once again, I suspect, relying on puerile schoolyard logic that says the Iranians will tuck their tails between their legs and run like a bunch of shrieking little weenies once they realize that mighty Big Daddy isn’t joking around anymore.

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

It would seem that Cheney and the Big Money Boyz have decided that we can’t take any chances on a premature withdrawal from the middle east. And that takes precedence over the possibility of things hurtling out of control. Or perhaps, for inscrutable reasons, they want thing to hurtle out of control. Maybe they are just like so many rich, short-term thinkers who apparently don’t love their children or their country or they would care more about the future. (History? We’ll all be dead.) Maybe they’re just insane. Whatever the case, hitting Iran seems to be more likely than it has been up to now and the political establishment seems to be either on board or paralyzed.

So, how’s your week-end going?

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The Difference

by tristero

UPDATED: SEE BELOW

Much has been, and will be, said about the far-right group of zillionaires operating under the paranoid name of “Freedom Watch.” Of course, they’re a propaganda outlet of the White House, and they’re crazy as bedbugs. But I would like to draw attention in the Times article to one of my ongoing concerns: the problem of modern rhetoric.

Please understand: I love Eli. I’m pointing this out simply to make it clear how, even today, rightwing nuts with reputations of respectability deploy the most vacuous of cliches coupled Neanderthalian vitriol and still retain a sense of “seriousness.” Here’s some of what the crazies say in the article:

“Ideologically, we are inspired by much of Ronald Reagan’s thinking — peace through strength, protect and defend America, and prosperity through free enterprise,” Mr. [Ari] Fleischer said…

“A bunch of us activists kept watching MoveOn and its attacks on the war, and it just got to be obnoxious,” said Mr. [Mel] Sembler, a friend of Vice President Dick Cheney. “We decided we needed to do something about this, because the conservative side was not responding.”

The emptiness of Fleischer’s comment is self-evident (although, at a different level, the association of Reagan with all these “goodies” is more subtle than you might think). But Sembler’s are rather interesting.

Notice the colloquial, ungrammatical “A bunch of us activists.” You’d think he was some kind of stringy-haired student with a denim jacket full of “Peace Now” buttons. In fact, as the Times puts it, he’s “a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia.”

This far removed from the fake erudition of an old-style conservative like William F. Buckley who could demand, in perfect Miss Grundy grammar, that those diagnosed with HIV should have their “buttocks” – his word- tattooed. But don’t kid yourself: The use of “us activists” is quite deliberate, setting up the equally grammatically crude putdown “it just got to be obnoxious.” Sembler may actually talk like a stoner in real life – who knows or cares? – but clearly he’s doing so on purpose here. Remember: this is coming from an ambassador, not some Motley Crue fan slurping on a bong.

Here is what Eli said in response:

“This is the fourth or the fifth group that intends to be the right-wing MoveOn,” Mr. Pariser said, naming other fledgling groups like TheVanguard.org and Grassfire.org. “So far, it’s not clear that this group is anything other than a big neoconservative slush fund. They are a White House front group with a few consultants who are trying to make a very unpopular position on the war appear more palpable [sic]…”

I think people see that Freedom’s Watch is a few billionaires, and not a large, mainstream constituency,” [Pariser] said.

This is all perfectly fine, but it’s not great, and that is my point.

Wingers got the following emotionally-laden phrases and words in their comments; “Inspired; Ronald Reagan; thinking; peace; strength; protect; defend; America; prosperity; enterprise; obnoxious; do something about this.” (To their audience, Reagan is a positive.) Eli got in “right-wing MoveOn; big neoconservative slush fund; White House front group; few consultants; unpopular position; a few billionaires.”

We can quibble about this, adding or subtracting a few words here and there but the difference is quite clear. The wingers’ language is simple and direct, filled with monosyllabic feelgoods, and a nasty one-word putdown. The response was hedged (“So far”), polysyllabic, included words with complex structure and meaning (“palpable,” but “palatable” is meant), and unjustifiably restrained. Certainly both Fleischer and Sembler can easily be characterized as “obnoxious,” and that’s the least of it.

So yes, Eli made his point (and of course, he’s right: I’m talking only about the use of rhetoric here) but it was nowhere near as memorable as “us activists” and “obnoxious.” Nor did it have the levels of association embedded in Fleischer’s words. Again, this isn’t about Eli Pariser, but about the extent of the problem we all face with modern rhetoric.

I am not – repeat, NOT – advocating a Rhetoric of Stupidity – monosyllabic and contentless. The rightwing has a lock on that. What I am saying is that until normals can find a truly persuasive style of presentation, we will continue to fight an uphill battle, rhetorically speaking, against rightwing extremists. And that ain’t real good.

[UPDATE: Some of us have been trying, in comments, to come up with what we think Eli should have said. But, thanks to Nell, we have a topper. From WaPo, and don’t you just love it when wingers sue each other?

Larry Klayman, the conservative lawyer best known for repeatedly taking the Clinton administration to court in the 1990s, sued supporters of the Bush administration yesterday, claiming they appropriated the name “Freedom’s Watch” for use in a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in support of the Iraq war.

Klayman, who supported the initial invasion but now says he is against the “chaotic” war, accuses what he says is an “arrogant Washington elite” of adopting a name he has used for nonprofit work since 2004.

Freedom’s Watch is made up of an arrogant Washington elite.” I like it, I like it! ]

[Updated to take notice that “palatable,” not “palpable” was meant.]

Saturday Night At The Movies

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

By Dennis Hartley

I thought we’d take a spin around the solar system tonight, via two new films; one that gets my vote for the best documentary of 2007, and the other…well, we’ll get to that.

Normally, I make a conscious effort to not shamelessly gush about films in this column (it’s so unseemly) but pardon me while I gush over a new documentary about the Apollo space program, “In The Shadow of the Moon”. Admittedly, I walked into the theater with a bit of trepidation; it would seem that the NASA legacy has already been milked for all its worth, from a slew of hit feature films (“The Right Stuff”, “Apollo 13”) and popular IMAX documentaries, to highly lauded TV fare (“From the Earth to the Moon”).

But somehow, director David Sington has managed to take this very familiar piece of 20th century history and infuse it with a sense of joyous rediscovery. In the process, it offers something rarer than hen’s teeth these days-a reason to take pride in being an American.

The premise is simple enough; surviving members of the Apollo moon flights tell their stories, accompanied by astounding mission footage (some previously unseen). There are a few of the “tumultuous 60s” clichés tossed in (clips of student demonstrations, political assassinations, etc) but they remain onscreen just long enough to provide brief expository reference. The film is beautifully scored (Philip Sheppard) and edited (David Fairhead).

The term “hero” is glibly tossed about with reflexively wild abandon in our post 9-11 world; but as you listen to these astronauts recount their extraordinary experiences with such eloquence, fierce intelligence and self-effacing candor, you realize that these people truly do represent our best and our brightest, they are “heroes” in every sense of the word.

It’s interesting to hear the astronauts expound on the pragmatic geo-political perspective that results from being in a position to “blot the entire earth out with (your) thumb”, as one gentleman puts it. Several marvel at how truly fragile the Earth looks hanging “like a jewel” in the vast blackness of space; one interviewee ponders incredulously as to “how we can worry more about paying three dollars for a gallon of gas” than we do about attending to the health of the planet. I lost count of my “amens” halfway through the film.

This is also the first time (to my knowledge) that these men have been given a public forum to extrapolate at some length on the profound spiritual, metaphysical and philosophical questions that arise following such literally out of this world experiences as walking on the surface of another planet; it’s fascinating and extremely moving at times.

I don’t say this about a lot of films, but I am prescribing that you run out and see it immediately. “In the Shadow of the Moon” is a perfect tonic for the Bush blues. It reminds us that there was a time not too far gone when the rest of the world looked to this country for inspiration; a time when people were NOT ashamed of hailing from the great state of Texas, because it was then better known as the home of Mission Control.

We move now from science fact, to science fiction. For his new sci-fi thriller “Sunshine” (currently available on PAL DVD only), director Danny Boyle teams up again with writer Alex Garland, who provided the screenplays for both 28 Days Later and its sequel (Garland also penned the original novel that inspired Boyle’s film “The Beach”).

Ostensibly about a team of astronauts on a mission to salvage the dying Sun and save the Earth, “Sunshine” ambitiously aims to take its protagonists on a Homeric journey, by way of Tartovsky (“Solaris ”) and Kubrick (“2001 – A Space Odyssey”). Unfortunately, after a fairly successful liftoff, the film quickly veers off course and loses its trajectory.

The story is set in 2057, when the Sun is suffering from a condition that, as near as I was able to tell from the rather sketchy scientific exposition, is akin to some type of solar constipation. There’s something blocking the star’s ability to generate its own nuclear fusion…uh, I think. Well, whatever “it” is, there ain’t no sunshine when it’s gone…okay?

Anyway, the highly specialized 8-member crew of “Icarus II” is mankind’s last hope (the crew of “Icarus I” apparently stopped sending postcards some months back). It is up to them to launch and detonate a powerful bomb that will presumably jump-start the Sun back into its preferred central heating mode for our solar system.

I know what you’re thinking-sounds a tad familiar? Yes, it is pretty much a glorified rehash of “Armageddon”. Well, “Armageddon” for philosophy majors. Because, you see, things get “deep” between the requisite scenes of stuff blowing up real good. There’s an awful lot of brooding and gnashing of teeth going on amongst the crew members once they set the controls for the heart of the sun. It is also implied that there are metaphysical conundrums afoot, but the screenplay fails to extrapolate on the significance. By the time the third act disintegrates into a cheesy “Alien” rip-off, you probably won’t care anyway.

Boyle regular Cillian Murphy stars as the brooder-in-chief, the crew’s egghead physicist, ‘Robert Capa’ (I’ve racked my mind over that one…why is a fictional nuclear physicist named after a famous war photographer? I invite your speculation. These are the types of things that keep me awake at night, folks.) To his credit, Murphy maintains a compelling presence, even though you suspect that he doesn’t have much more of a clue about what is going on in this film than the viewer does. Michelle Yeoh does an earnest turn as ‘Corazon’ a biologist who nurtures the onboard green houses, reminiscent of Bruce Dern in “Silent Running” (hmm…if Capa is the ship’s Brain, then I assume she is the Heart?)

Some have hailed this as a masterpiece. I am not one of them. Granted, it is handsomely mounted, with some nice set designs and impressive special effect work; but it lacks a cohesive story. It’s like someone reached into a hat full of interesting ideas, threw the scraps of paper up in the air, and just let them blow about the room while trying to follow them with a camera. For a story that flies so close to the Sun, “Sunshine” left me cold.

Is it hot in here, or is the world ending? When Worlds Collide, Last Night, The Day the Earth Caught Fire (personal fave!), Deep Impact. Just for campy fun: Meteor

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Well, At Least They Didn’t Call The CIA And US Army Upstarts

by tristero

When you act like you’re cuckoo, no one should be surprised when others act the same way. This would be funny if not for the fact that if this sheer idiocy doesn’t stop immediately, people in both countries who deserve to live long, happy, and peaceful lives will likely die horrible deaths. All because their governments are hellbent on proving to each other that they are the biggest assholes:

Iran’s parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army “terrorist organizations,” in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Oh, and for the benefit of the young’uns amongst us who don’t quite get the title of this post, quack here.

Deny The DNI

By digby

What in the hell are the Democrats going to do about DNI Michael McConnell? I understand that spooks, by nature and profession, are liars, but this fellow is not supposed to be political, and we are ostensibly in a democracy in which government employees — all government employees — work for the people. They are not allowed to lie to the people’s representatives, even if they think it’s for our own good.

McConnell’s position is supposed to be non-partisan and apolitical. And yet he is known to have consciously misled the congress, threatened them with “being responsible for American deaths” if they don’t do what he says and, it’s quite clear, strategized the FISA bill abortion last August with the White house, which is a big no-no. It’s a bad idea to trust anyone with the kind of power this man wields without strenuous oversight. It’s political malpractice to trust a man this manipulative and dishonest. He is a problem.

Here’s the latest example of his blatant (and disturbingly sloppy, which explains why our intelligence agencies can’t find water if they fall out of a boat) misleading of the congress:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told Congress last week that a May wiretap that targeted Iraqi insurgents was delayed for 12 hours by attempts to comply with onerous surveillance laws, which slowed an effort to locate three U.S. soldiers who had been captured south of Baghdad.

But new details released this week portray a more complicated picture of the delay, which actually lasted about 9 1/2 hours and was caused primarily by legal wrangling between the Justice Department and intelligence officials over whether authorities had probable cause to begin the surveillance.

[…]

McConnell has been criticized by Democrats for selectively disclosing classified information and for claiming that “some Americans are going to die” because of public debate over surveillance laws. Earlier this month, McConnell retracted Senate testimony that the new intelligence legislation had helped lead to the capture of terrorism suspects in Germany.

Many Democrats and civil liberties advocates have complained that McConnell and other administration officials exaggerated or misrepresented the Iraq wiretapping episode to score political points, largely by playing down how bureaucratic problems contributed to the delay.

“The idea that this incident has something to do with these soldiers getting killed is just outrageous,” said Michael German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who now works as policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is all internal bureaucracy. It has nothing to do with the law.”

It really was below the belt. McConnell owes the country an apology for that implication:

Administration officials began highlighting the Iraqi case as a problem in classified briefings with lawmakers over the summer, officials said. McConnell elaborated on the episode on Sept. 20 when he testified before the House intelligence committee. He said that it took “in the neighborhood of 12 hours” to obtain the emergency surveillance order.

“So we had U.S. soldiers who were captured in Iraq by insurgents, and for the 12 hours immediately following their captures, you weren’t able to listen to their communications,” asked Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M). “Is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” McConnell answered.

Except, that is a lie:

In fact, the timeline released this week shows that officials in Washington did not begin seeking the warrant until 10 a.m. on May 15 — more than 86 hours after the three soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division were reported captured. Authorities had already received approvals for other wiretaps in the case, the timeline shows.

Maj. Webster M. Wright III, public affairs officer for the 10th Mountain Division, said in an e-mail that he was unaware of the wiretap discussions that occurred in Washington.

“We were given everything at the tactical level that we asked for, to include extra troops, intel assets, aviation, CID investigators, analysts and [human intelligence] specialists,” Wright said.

This is why all this “trust us, we’re keeping the boogeyman rom killing you in your bed” is so dangerous. Michael McConnell has repeatedly lied to congress. You can’t trust liars. If they needed this power for legitimate reasons they would have no reason to make up scenarios to justify it. They can always go behind closed doors and share classified information with the people’s representatives who are authorized to receive it. Indeed, we expect them to o it. The only conclusion you can come to is that they are using this power for nefarious reasons.

Michael McConnell has given interviews that call his judgment into question. He is a proven liar. He has shown himself to be a tool of the Bush Administration. What in the world is this man doing in charge of some of the most delicate intelligence functions in the government? He had a reputation for rectitude before took the job. but he either became tainted by the Cheney/Addington paranoid vision or he was highly overrated. Either way, the congress should never take his word for anything. There’s something very wrong with him.

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They Like The Dark Ones

by digby

If you’re a racist, vote Republican:

In the transcript, translated from Spanish by The Washington Post, Bush said that Europeans were insensitive to “the suffering that Saddam Hussein has inflicted on the Iraqis” and added: “Maybe it’s because he’s dark-skinned, far away and Muslim– a lot of Europeans think he’s okay.”

Right. The Europeans are insensitive to the suffering of Iraqis because they’re “dark-skinned Muslim” lovers.( Of course that makes no sense because the suffering Iraqis are “dark-skinned Muslims” themselves but this is Junior we’re talking about,after all.)

It revealing that he characterizes Saddam as “dark-skinned” at all and further that he thinks the Europeans thought he was “okay” because of the fact. Apparently, he

Everyone says that Bush isn’t a racist. Whatever. But he has a little habit of letting his little white worldview slip every once in a while. My personal favorite is this one:

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

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The Outsiders

by digby

According to the AP, Move-On, the much loathed liberal grassroots group of nearly three and a half million members is being met with a similar group of grassroots conservative outsiders:

Outsiders Aim to Frame Political Debate

WASHINGTON — They raise millions of dollars, conduct provocative ad campaigns, work with a vast network of like-minded allies and have the power to frame the presidential election going forward as much as the candidates themselves.

That used to define only the liberal MoveOn.org, an organization of 3.3 million members that has raised $25 million in the past 18 months and is helping spearhead an anti-war coalition.

Now, a group of conservatives and Republicans with close ties to the White House have formed their own enterprise, Freedom’s Watch, landing on the political scene with a $15 million ad campaign to defend President Bush’s Iraq war strategy.

As such, Freedom’s Watch and MoveOn.org could be the left and right bookends not only on the war, but on a number of issues that will decide the 2008 elections and shape congressional debate beyond. Freedom’s Watch organizers said they are considering whether to create a political subgroup, like MoveOn has, that could directly play a role in elections.

Right. Book-ends.

When Blakeman speaks of “we,” he is referring to “friends, former administration people, party leaders, decision makers.” Unlike MoveOn, which has its roots in California’s Silicon Valley, Freedom’s Watch is clearly a Washington creature.

Many in its inner circle of strategists and donors are close to Vice President Dick Cheney or held high posts at the White House. Blakeman, whose 26-year-old nephew died when the World Trade Center collapsed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, was director of scheduling and appointments at the Bush White House.

Among those who brainstormed with him this summer was Mary Matalin, Cheney’s counselor until 2003 and still an adviser to the vice president. Ari Fleischer, the former White House spokesman, is a member of the Freedom’s Watch board.

The group’s donors include Mel Sembler, a friend of Cheney’s and longtime Republican fundraiser. Sembler was chairman of the legal defense fund for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity. Another donor is Kevin E. Moley, a former U.S. ambassador to international organizations in Geneva and a senior aide to Cheney during the 2000 presidential campaign.

The group organized itself as a nonprofit lobbying organization and, unlike political organizations that advocates for or against candidates, is not required to identify its donors. Still, when it launched its multimillion-dollar ad campaign on the war in August, Blakeman listed some of its supporters, several of them pro-Israel conservatives.

Besides Sembler and Moley, other donors are Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., who recently launched a new conservative newspaper in Israel, and several former Bush fundraisers who landed ambassadorial posts. They include Moley and Sembler, who was ambassador to Italy, as well as Howard Leach, former ambassador to France, and Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta

Only in the Village could someone characterize that group as being “outsiders.”

You just have to laugh.

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That’s The Way, Uh Huh, Uh Huh, I Like It, Uh Huh, Uh Huh

by tristero

If ever you want to know how to respond to the likes of David Brooks, I can’t think of anything better to recc’d than this letter by Drew Westen in response to Brooks’ review:

To the Editor:

My first response to David Brooks’s review of my book, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” (Aug. 26), was mild amusement. The review was playfully sarcastic, and I must admit my own appreciation for that genre. And how else could you respond to a review that argues for objectivity in politics after beginning with the words: “Between 2000 and 2006, a specter haunted the community of fundamentalist Democrats. Members of this community looked around and observed their moral and intellectual superiority.”

Then once the e-mail started pouring in, asking how I could possibly have made the arguments attributed to me, it became clear that Brooks had succeeded in inoculating thousands of potential readers against a book that some effective political communicators (e.g., President Clinton) had enthusiastically endorsed because of the ways it suggests Democrats talk about abortion, gays, guns, terrorism, taxes, race and a host of other issues that have cost them at the polls.

As summarized by Brooks, my central thesis is that Democrats should campaign using “crude emotional outbursts” and guttural noises, preferably interrupting debates by “barking” and “exploding” about their opponent’s history of drinking if he has one (or, better yet, if he doesn’t). He then wonders how I might explain Howard Dean’s failure to win the 2004 Democratic primaries against the more emotionally subdued John Kerry. (Of course, he wouldn’t have had to wonder if he’d simply gone to the index and looked under the entry “Dean, Howard.”)

Brooks never mentions that the book is a 400-page scientific and historical argument against precisely what he offers as a counterthesis, expressed in this rhetorical question: “Is it possible that substance has something to do with the political fortunes of parties? Could it be that Democrats won in the middle part of the 20th century because they were right about the big issues — the New Deal and the civil rights movement? Is it possible Republicans won in the latter part of the century because they were right about economic growth and the cold war? Is it possible Democrats are winning now because they were right about whether to go to war in Iraq?” This all sounds so, well, “fair and balanced” — until you think about it. Democrats’ stand on civil rights has cost them dearly since Richard Nixon discovered the race card in 1968. Al Gore lost despite an unrivaled period of prosperity and growth. And Democrats actually voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002 (perhaps convinced by the objective arguments of none other than Mr. Brooks) and won in 2006 only when they started to talk passionately about Iraq.

But for Brooks, the “core problem with Westen’s book is that he doesn’t really make use of what we know about emotion.” As a professor of psychology and psychiatry who has been contributing to the scientific literature on emotion for over 20 years, I don’t know who exactly “we” is, but I have to hand it to him: he put that knowledge to pretty good use in leaving readers with a bad taste in their mouths about a book they hadn’t read. Which illustrates the central thesis of the book: that a little knowledge about emotion can go a long way in politics.

Drew Westen

Atlanta

I will say one thing about the Bush era. From Brady Kiesling’s deeply moving resignation letter to Colin Powell on the eve of the Bush/Iraq war- which should be in any collection of great American documents – to Dr. Westen’s wonderful letter, the Bush administration has inspired some truly wonderful writing in opposition to it.