Month: September 2007

Backdoor

by digby

If they really have 57 votes then there is absolutely no reason for the Senate not to implement the Kleiman strategy for sure. (And even if there is some unknown reason as to why this strategy wouldn’t work, at 57 votes, there is ample reason to force this vote over and over again keeping the spotlight on the plight of the troops.)

They are dragging out the “reasonable” Gates on this because they are actually scared the Dems might make this one happen. And if the Dems play hardball, they could be right. It’s very hard to argue that the troops shouldn’t get a decent period of time off between deployments, as you can see by Gates’ convoluted explanation.

This is one where the Democrats can seize the argument in simple terms if they have the discipline to stick with it. “The troops have been stretched to the breaking point fighting in Iraq for longer than it took us to win WWII. The president refuses to give them the time off between deployments that all the experts say is necessary. We will.”

The argument has juice:

Some Democrats believe that the Webb bill, which has support among military families, and from some senior military officers concerned about strains on the troops, may be their best chance yet to entice wavering Republicans…

The Republicans’ dilemma was apparent Sunday when Senator John Cornyn, a conservative Texas Republican, was asked on CNN how he would vote on the Webb proposal. “I’m concerned about deployments, lengthy deployments,” and their effect on military families, he said – while declining to say how he would vote.

They needn’t get into long explanations and shouldn’t respond to the notion that it’s a backdoor drawdown. Let the Republicans keep making the accusation in public — preferably over and over again so every single person in the country hears it. Just keep pounding away at the “support the troops” line. It has the virtue of being the right thing on the merits as well. This administration is breaking the military with its inability to get any allies on board with its neocon catastrophe. These repeated deployments without proper respite are causing huge problems. It’s not a ploy. Somebody really does have to step in and do something about this.

That it could result in a real drawdown is merely an added inducement.

That is also reveals the Republicans to be complete charlatans in their vaunted great love for the military is frosting on the cakewalk.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Narrative Structure is for Wussies: An Appreciation of Jim Jarmusch

By Dennis Hartley

This week I wanted to give the Criterion Collection “two snaps up” for their recent DVD reissues of two essential titles from iconoclastic indie director Jim Jarmusch-his influential 1984 film “Stranger Than Paradise” and (arguably) one of his most underrated films, “Night on Earth” (originally released in 1991).

It’s hard to believe that 23 years have passed (Jesus I’m getting old) since “Stranger Than Paradise” firmly established Jarmusch’s unique, patented blend of long, static camera takes with his inscrutably deadpan observances on the inherent silliness of homo sapiens. It’s always a challenge doing a synopsis of a Jarmusch film (trust me, they are much more entertaining on screen than they appear on paper) but I’ll give it my best shot…

Jarmusch regular John Lurie is Willie, a brooding, too-cool-for-school New York City slacker who spends most of his time hanging out with his endearingly goofy buddy Eddie (Richard Edson). Both men suffer from terminal boredom, which is somewhat alleviated by their bemused, low-key bickering (leave it to Jarmusch to create characters who manage to be remain bored and uninspired while living in the world’s most exciting city! But then again, wasn’t that the very premise behind “Seinfeld”? Discuss.)

Enter Eva (Eszter Balint), Willie’s long-lost teenaged cousin from Hungary, who unexpectedly shows up one day (much to his chagrin). Eddie is intrigued, but the misanthropic Willie has no desire for a new roommate, blood relative or not, and Eva decides after a few days that she would probably find more welcoming accommodations with the pair’s Aunt Lotte (delightfully played by Cecillia Stark), who lives in Cleveland.

Flash forward one year, and we find Willie and Eddie still sitting around the apartment, still bored silly, still engaged in the same petty bickering. Eddie convinces Willie that a road trip to Cleveland (in the middle of winter?!) might be just the ticket to break them out of their rut. Willie grumpily agrees, and off they go to visit Aunt Lotte and cousin Eva. In order to avoid spoilers for those who have not seen the film, suffice it to say that the interpersonal relationships take some unexpected turns, and more road trips ensue. Oh-and I guarantee you will have Screamin’ Jay Hawkins tunes in your head for days!

It’s worth noting that future director Tom DiCillo did the fine black and white DP work on the film, demonstrating an eye for gleaning the strange beauty in the stark, wintry, industrial flatness of Cleveland and its Lake Erie environs. (BTW, in case you missed my review of Tom DiCillo’s newest film, “Delirious” you’ll find it here.)

“Stranger Than Paradise” is generally held up along with a select handful of early 1980’s releases (like Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing) as one of the low-budget wonders that helped spark the post-Cassavetes indie film movement that continues to thrive today (Or has it become the “mainstream”? Discuss!)

If there is a “sleeper” in the Jarmusch catalog, it would have to his ode to taxi drivers, “Night on Earth”. There have been several PAL DVDs available for some time; the Criterion release marks the domestic debut. As per usual, it’s the Europeans who seem to be the first ones to “get” any American filmmaker of consequence, long before the homeland audience catches on-I guess we’re too busy standing in line to see “Jackass 2” to be bothered (Do I sound bitter?)

“Night on Earth” is framed by a structural device that Jarmusch had previously utilized in his 1989 film “Mystery Train”; it is a collection of loosely connected vignettes that all take place in the course of one evening. The main difference between the two films lies in the location setting; “Mystery Train” takes place in one city, and “Night on Earth” is spread out over five cities and two continents (the director had toyed with the title “LosAngelesNewYorkParisRomeHelsinki”, but wisely decided it was too unwieldy).

Our five-course meal gets off to a shaky start in Los Angeles, with a relatively flat segment that is a bit underwritten (perhaps on purpose, as it is an obvious homage to John Cassavetes, who was famous for working without scripts). Wynona Rider plays an outspoken, gum cracking cabbie who picks up a fare at the airport (Gena Rowlands) who turns out to be a Hollywood casting director (er-guess what happens). It’s worth sitting through just to see these two interesting actresses working together, if nothing else.

Don’t let the bland appetizer put you off, however, because things improve rapidly with the second vignette, which takes place in New York City. Spike Lee regulars Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez hitch a late night ride to Brooklyn with an amiable German cabbie (Armin Mueller-Stahl) whose driving skills (and sense of NYC geography) are marginal at best. Jamusch milks maximum laughs out of the cross-cultural pollination that ensues (a recurring theme in his films). The three actors are wonderful together.

Next, we jump the pond over to Paris, where an African immigrant cab driver (Isaach De Bankole) has endured a long night of racist insults and obnoxious passengers. He spots a blind woman (the ever intense Beatrice Dalle, who dazzled in one of my favorite French films of all time, “Betty Blue”) and offers her a ride, thinking “at least she won’t cause me any trouble”. Naturally, he’s wrong! A clever parable about stereotyping.

The next stop on the European leg is Rome, where the most consistently amusing installment takes place, featuring comic actor Roberto Benigni in the driver’s seat. Veteran character actor Paolo Bonacelli (you may recall his memorable turn as the creepy, sadistic Turkish jail keeper in “Midnight Express”) plays a priest who is in for the shock of his life after getting into Benigni’s cab. Bonacelli, an actor with a marvelously expressive face, is a joy to watch as he registers steadily increasing horror while Benigni cheerfully and matter-of-factly recounts a lifetime’s list of “sins” in an unsolicited taxicab Confession that gets exponentially funnier along with the steadily escalating depravity of the acts being described (not unlike the legendary joke featured in “The Aristocrats” ).

The final segment makes for a bittersweet dessert. Jarmusch pays homage to his favorite director (and drinking buddy), Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki (I loved his 2002 film “The Man Without a Past”-a real gem). A Helsinki cab driver (Matti Pellonpa) picks up a trio of working stiffs who are stumbling home after a long night of drinking. Alternately sad and darkly funny (in that peculiarly Scandinavian fashion) as passengers and driver compete to top each other’s sob story in order to establish which one of them is leading the most depressing and miserable existence (some form of traditional Finnish male bonding?). Three of the actors in the piece are Kaurismaki regulars. And just in case we still don’t get the connection, Jarmusch even named one of the drunken characters “Aki”!

Overall, ”Night on Earth” achieves a satisfying synchronicity as a thoughtful meditation on certain universal truths that govern the human condition, regardless of cultural orientation or geographical location (and delivers it in a much more entertaining and less heavy handed manner than the recent spate of dreary, overrated, self-important “message” films like “21 Grams”, “Babel” and the particularly execrable “Crash”).

Jarmusch 101-The Report Card:

Stranger Than Paradise : A+
Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai: A+
Night on Earth: A
Dead Man: A-
Down by Law : B+
Mystery Train: B
Broken Flowers: C+
Year of the Horse: C (Earns extra credit if you are a Neil Young fanatic)
Coffee and Cigarettes: F (Sorry, I’d rather put a cigarette out in my eye than suffer through this bad cup of Joe again.)
Permanent Vacation : (Incomplete) Jarmusch’s elusive 1980 debut feature is the only one of his titles I have not seen, as it was never issued on DVD; the good news is that it is now available, as an extra on the aforementioned “Stranger Than Paradise” reissue!

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The Presidential

by digby

A very savvy friend of mine, a political player of many years, has put together a memo for various interested parties about the lay of the political landscape which he has allowed me to share with you. I’ll excerpt passages in various posts over the next week or so, but I thought you might be interested today on his thoughts on the presidential race:

The Presidential

As we are only one-quarter of the way through the longest and first open election in decades, most pundit predictions are, no doubt, wildly premature. Pundits in Washington read early and inconclusive polls. They then sometimes venture to real America like anthropologists (think David Brooks or Broder) but manage to return with their preconceptions remarkably intact.

There will be many surprises and most Americans will quite sensibly not begin to pay real attention to all this until the holidays. Still, the level of interest in this Presidential election now is higher than any election since 1992. One can say that this summer’s YouTube/CNN debate did conclusively prove that “regular” Americans ask far better questions than Wolf Blitzer.

What we know, so far, is that Hillary Clinton runs a very efficient and nearly error free campaign. There is no question of her sizable lead in early national polls. John Edwards is running an unabashedly liberal campaign about the economic divide in this country. He will take chances. Barack Obama has built an amazing network of financial and presumably grassroots supporters and continues to demonstrate tremendous potential. It is hard to see much of an opening for Senators Dodd or Biden, and Bill Richardson needs to win the Nevada caucus to move into serious contention.

The Republicans are in some trouble in part because there is no heir apparent to anoint with the nomination. Their current putative frontrunner, Rudy Giuliani, is somewhat radioactive to the right to lifers, gun lobby and nativists at the base of the party. Certainly, he does echo the neocons well. He also has a trainload of personal baggage. Fred Thompson parachutes into the race from his perch on TV, but he also raises a series of questions. Most of his career has been as a lobbyist. Either he or Mike Huckabee will become the Southern conservative in the race. History has shown this is not a bad place to be in the GOP. Ron Paul, the Libertarian Congressman, is going to do better than expected.

John McCain, who was supposed to be next in line in the GOP hierarchy, spent all his money, though he can qualify for federal funding. He is still unpopular with the base even though he turned himself into a pretzel supporting Bush, thus destroying his moderate appeal. Mitt Romney’s political views are, shall we say, elastic. His religion is apparently a real problem with the evangelicals who make up the GOP base vote in several early primary states. But he may prove least objectionable to the various GOP factions and could prove tough in the general, as he morphs back to a Northeast Governor running as a Washington outsider.

The disgraced Newt Gingrich will not run but he labels the GOP field “pygmies.” Someone will emerge though rather quickly in the primaries. The failed leader Bush will be pushed to stage right. The Republicans have proven as good at both the mechanics and stagecraft of modern political campaigns as they have been as incompetent at governance. So expect a very close race in the end.

Because of the absurd early start and frontloading of the primaries, it is likely there will be party nominees in February, unless there is a split in all early primaries and no one has any momentum. This means six months say, before the Democratic nominee can spend general election money, so the presumed nominee will have to work to stay in front of the distracted public. There will likely be little money for paid communication during this period by the candidates, so the premium will be on earned media. Maybe next time the DNC should consider some time before the end of August for a convention. The Party though can spend in the interim going after the GOP nominee.

The Bush undertow on the GOP is severe and history indicates an incumbent party with this unpopular a President has difficulty winning another term. Only once in the last five tries (Bush in ’88) has a party succeeded in three consecutive terms. Reagan’s approval numbers were 20 points higher than Bush’s will be next year. The Republican issue agenda is out of favor with the public. So, the GOP and its allies will run a scorched earth campaign with character assassination of the nominee front and center. It will make George Bush’s 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis look like child’s play. An independent media campaign should begin next spring reminding voters of the many failures of the Bush and the entire GOP agenda. The GOP nominee should be tied around Bush, his failed policies, and anemic approval rating.

Hillary Clinton is the most centrist of the major Democratic candidates for the nomination while the broader electorate views her as the most liberal. This is not surprising as this has been the right wing campaign against her since 1992. If she is the nominee, the Republicans will plan their whole effort to make her the issue and to drive up her “unfavorables,” already in the high 40s. Of course they have already thrown the kitchen sink at her so who knows how much further opinion can be driven against her. Certainly she is far more unpopular in red geography that no Democrat would carry anyway. What a white guy in Georgia thinks about her really doesn’t matter. Democrats in red and purple geography though are concerned about the down ballot effect if she pulls out all the haters. The key question remains whether she can dampen negative perceptions through her performance. She managed that in upstate New York in her Senate race. There is little time for that type of retail politics in the Presidential. It is naive though to think there will not be a further smear of Bill Clinton’s private life. Kathleen Willey already has her book ready, and Wolf Blitzer, likely, has the interview already booked.

No doubt, there will be a quasi-racist campaign against Obama if he wins the nomination with an emphasis that he is “not one of us” given that exotic background and middle name. Suddenly, the media establishment has decided “experience” is the central criteria in a President. Too bad that was not the hurdle in 2000.

One journalist at the Atlantic wrote that the political press hated Edwards and tried to bury him in the first quarter. In addition, his economic prescriptions are viewed with great alarm by the merchants of the status quo. The right wing is also busy trying to push that he is not a macho “real” man like Rudy and Fred Thompson.

Bush though has smashed the Republican Party brand among Independents and has served to unite the ever-fractious Democrats. Whether this is just a reaction to the current neocon/Dixie politics is, of course, open to debate. The components for a more progressive coalition, even if temporary, are in place. The self-identified number of Democrats and Independent leaners to the Democrats is at the highest level since 1992.

The recent Democracy Corps memo has a number of encouraging sign posts:
The Democrats have an average lead of 12 points in the general Presidential and
9 points in the named Congressional ballot.

Democratic geography is solid right now while many red areas are evenly divided.

Democrats are now carrying White Catholics who Bush carried in 2004 by 13 points. No one can win the White House without the Catholic vote.

Democrats maintain a 2 to 1 lead with currently unmarried women and are marginally ahead with married women who Bush handily carried.

Among younger voters the margins keep growing. The generic Democratic nominee even has a 14-point lead among white voters under 30.

The current overconfidence in Democratic quarters though is a bit unwarranted. One only needs to remember Mike Dukakis and his 17-point July1988 lead. At this point in 2004, two 527s, ACT and the Media Fund were on their way towards raising and executing a $200 million-plus field and media effort. In many key states, this was the de-facto field program for John Kerry and a program of some relative scale needs to be mounted quickly. Bush and the right wing 527s still outspent Kerry and liberal 527s by $20 million in Ohio in 2004 according to one very informed observer.

Thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, corporations are now free to give unlimited money right up to Election Day on persuasion ads. Several magic words cannot be used. As a general rule, major corporations do not like Democrats controlling the White House and the Congress. So imagine one industry group, the insurers and drug companies under the GOPs current Medicare drug benefit and privatization schemes. The 10-year estimate from all of us transfering to these industries is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. So if they spend 1% to maintain this cash flow, it amounts to a rounding error. Halliburton and the rest of the war profiteers certainly have a vested interest in the GOPs theory of war without end. The oil and coal industries have similarly large stakes. So one should expect a great deal of independent spending during the year knocking down the Democratic nominee and it will be difficult to trace the origin of much of the money until later. Some spending will be done by make believe trade associations, others by newly created 527s.

The GOP nominee also has less electoral geography about which to be concerned. It also may be wishful thinking, for instance, to imagine West Virginia in the Democratic column. Florida is a reach, as is Virginia. If Rudy is the nominee, New Jersey certainly must be watched. Romney puts New Hampshire in serious play. It could get worse. An initiative currently circulating for the June 2008 ballot in California by the GOP would change the electoral votes to the winner by Congressional district instead of by state. If passed, this initiative would push 20-plus electoral votes to the GOP and could make the Democratic states won in 2000/2004 plus Ohio not enough for the Democrat. Winning Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona would be required. The Democrats are organizing to fight back but it will cost and divert money. Maybe next time, the Democrats should play offense by proposing a similar measure in Florida.

So there remain many serious obstacles in the path of any Democratic nominee, despite the current good news.

That money angle is especially important and something I don’t think many of us in the Netroots are quite prepared for. The Democrats will be forced to rely on free media for nearly six months if the primary is decided as early as everyone thinks it will be. We need to think about how to deal with that.

And then there is the specter of corporations spending unlimited dollars on “persuasion” ads. This could be very powerful stuff, using the full energy of corporate marketing and advertising to sell the Republicans to a country that doesn’t want them. It works all the time in the marketplace. We’ll see if they can pull it off in politics.

As my friend notes, the Republicans are very good at campaigning and character assassination. It’s what they do best, and the Democrats just simply don’t have an equal talent. When you combine it with the GOP’s nearly limitless access to money, it’s a serious mistake to assume that the Dems can’t lose. In a world where vast amounts of Republican money and corporate liars weren’t available to bombard the people with an alternate reality, perhaps we could relax and assume that their epically disastrous performance in office would automatically disqualify them from winning any further elections for a while. But we don’t live in that world. It’s would be a very good idea to be prepared for some very, very nasty trench warfare.

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His Due

by digby

Here’s an interesting article about Alan Greenspan’s new book. It sounds oddly gripping yet bizarre:

Mr. Greenspan returns repeatedly to the far-reaching importance of communism’s collapse. He says it discredited central planning throughout the world and inspired China and later India to throw off socialist policies. He recalls meeting a former manager of a produce distribution center in China who says he once had to labor to allocate produce according to government edict; now the allocations are made by auction. “Now I don’t have to get up at four a.m.,” he quotes the manager as saying. “I can sleep in and let the market do my job for me.” Mr. Greenspan recalls his amazement when an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin asks him to discuss Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher with whom Mr. Greenspan had been friends.

I have a feeling that advisor just wanted to see if it was actually true that the single man with the most influence on America’s economy, and the world’s, could really still be impressed with that adolescent romance novelist. It’s hard for me to believe too. But he wasn’t just a fan. He was a member of Rand’s inner circle:

Greenspan was initially a Keynesian and logical positivist, but was converted to Objectivism by Rand. During the 1950s and ’60s Greenspan was a proponent of her philosophy, writing articles for Objectivist newsletters and contributed several essays for Rand’s 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal including an essay supporting the gold standard.[7] During the 1950s, Greenspan was one of the members of Ayn Rand’s inner circle, the Ayn Rand Collective, who read Atlas Shrugged while it was being written.

Imagine that. Reading Atlas Shrugged while it was being written! I’ll bet that makes college Republicans and Jonah Goldberg feel all funny in their pants just thinking about it.

I’ll look forward to the economists around these parts delving into his explanations and rationales for what he did over his long run at the fed. It sounds as if he spends quite a bit of time tap dancing. But I’m most interested in his take on the various presidents he worked with. For instance:

he believes that “Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were the most intelligent, he wrote, while he found Ford the most normal and likeable. Ronald Reagan was the most devoted to free markets, though his grasp of economics “wasn’t very deep or sophisticated.”

Whodda thunk? The current miscreants apparently come in for quite drubbing:

Soon after Bush took office, Greenspan wrote in a new book, it became evident that the Treasury secretary and White House economists would play secondary roles in decisions on taxes and other issues. In addition, officials with whom he had worked in the administration of President Gerald Ford changed after Bush brought them back to Washington, he said he found.

“The Bush administration turned out to be very different from the reincarnation of the Ford administration that I had imagined. Now, the political operation was far more dominant,”

Is he suggesting that Dick Cheney’s famous dictum, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter…this is our due,” is not sound economic policy? How odd. And I wonder if he thinks that encouraging broke, indebted home buyers who had no chance of economic improvement to buy those volatile ARM’s as he did a couple of years ago was sound economic policy too? I guess I’ll have to read the book to find out.

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Sweet Home Alabama

by digby

The US Attorney scandal is still percolating even though Alberto Gonzales has wandered off into the sunset, and one of the most intriguing cases is one of the more obscure: the apparent railroading of the Democratic Governor of Alabama at the direction of Karl Rove:

Siegelman’s case has become something of a major cause among those who charge that he was targeted by a highly partisan Department of Justice so he would be no threat to Republican Gov. Bob Riley in his bid for reelection to the post he wrested from Siegelman in 2002.

Congressional hearings into that alleged DOJ politicization are currently gaining steam and there will be much testimony about the Siegelman case in the coming days and weeks.

But even though he did not want to be interviewed while in prison (and I can’t say I blame him), he did send me a nice, hand-written letter that arrived in the office while I was on vacation.

While I don’t think it would be appropriate to report the four-page letter verbatim, I don’t think Siegelman would mind if I repeat his assertion that if congress digs deep they will find a major scandal and miscarriage of justice in his case.

“I know that if Congress looks deep enough, the Alabama case will be like the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s impeachment and his resignation,” the former governor wrote from his federal jail cell. “All the ingredients are mixed into this case.”

It does seem as if Siegelman’s case encompasses a whole bunch of very interesting Rovian elements. Here’s how a NY Times editorial put it:

June 30, 2007
Editorial
Questions About a Governor’s Fall

It is extremely disturbing that Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, was hauled off to jail this week. There is reason to believe his prosecution may have been a political hit, intended to take out the state’s most prominent Democrat, a serious charge that has not been adequately investigated. The appeals court that hears his case should demand answers, as should Congress.

The United States attorneys scandal has made clear that partisan politics is a driving force in the Bush Justice Department. Top prosecutors were fired for refusing to prosecute Democrats or for not bringing baseless vote-fraud cases to help Republicans. Lawyers were improperly hired based on party affiliation.

If the Justice Department was looking to help Republicans in Alabama, putting away Mr. Siegelman would be a shrewd move. In a state short on popular Democrats, he was elected governor in 1998. He was defeated for re-election in 2002 by just a few thousand votes, in an election marred by suspicious vote tabulations.

The charges Mr. Siegelman was convicted of suggest that he may have been a victim of selective prosecution. He was found to have named a prominent Alabama businessman to a state board in exchange for a contribution to a campaign fund for a state lottery, something Mr. Siegelman supported to raise money for his state’s woefully inadequate public schools. He was not found to have taken any money for himself and many elected officials name people who have given directly to their own campaigns to important positions. The jury dismissed 25 of the original 32 counts against Mr. Siegelman.

The most arresting evidence that Mr. Siegelman may have been railroaded is a sworn statement by a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson. Ms. Simpson said she was on a conference call in which Bill Canary, the husband of the United States attorney whose office handled the case, insisted that “his girls” would “take care of” Mr. Siegelman. According to Ms. Simpson, he identified his “girls” as his wife, Leura Canary, and another top Alabama prosecutor. Mr. Canary, who has longstanding ties to Karl Rove, also said, according to Ms. Simpson, that he had worked it out with “Karl.”

The idea of federal prosecutors putting someone in jail for partisan gain is shocking. But the United States attorneys scandal has made clear that the Bush Justice Department acts in shocking ways. We hope that the appeals court that hears Mr. Siegelman’s case will give it the same hard look that another appeals court recently gave the case of Georgia Thompson. Ms. Thompson, a low-level employee in a Democratic administration in Wisconsin, was found to have been wrongly convicted of corruption by another United States attorney.

Congress, though, should not wait. It should insist that Mr. Canary and everyone on the 2002 call, as well as Mrs. Canary and Mr. Rove, testify about the Siegelman prosecution.

The US Attorney scandal wasn’t just some abstract exercise in executive power. It affected real people, using the most powerful tools in the government’s toolbag. This man was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

This is one to keep an eye on. Too bad his name isn’t Scooter.

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A Willing Suspension Of Disbelief

by digby

“No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there,” Giuliani said on NBC’s “Today” show. “Did they search carefully enough? Didn’t they search carefully enough?”

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Recognizing One Of Their Own

by digby

Chris Matthews had a discussion today about how Giuliani continues to fare well with social conservatives, surprising the political observers who were certain they would reject anyone with his stands on social issues and messy personal life. They still seem stymied, resorting to confused observations about how they think he is “leader” and therefore can be trusted or some such twaddle.

As regular readers of this blog know very well, I am not surprised by this at all. Many social conservatives are phonies, and the rest are willing dupes. I’m not sure why people are still surprised by this. How many diaper wearing wingnut senators and teenage boy-chasing conservative congressmen does it take to prove that the whole family values campaign was just another market tested bludgeon with which to hit liberals over the head?

I used to argue endlessly about this, citing things like porno viewing numbers and divorce and abortion statistics in the heartland which proved that the supposed “real Americans” were just as loose in their personal lives as everyone else. Many readers argued with me and said that I was projecting — the social conservatives may be rigid and small minded,they said, but they are sincere. And when I pointed out that the brouhahas about Janet Jackson’s nipple and that blond desperate housewife jumping into a black football players arms had more than a tinge of racial rather than moral outrage, I was told that I was wrong: people really were stunned at such overt sexuality on television, despite the fact that there is a ton of explicit sexuality on television that barely raises an eyebrow.

I gave up. I know that much of popular culture is a sewer and I got tired of making the argument because in the end it always came back to the fact that many fine Americans were justifiably upset and being contrarian was politically unwise. Whatever.

And now we have GOP it-boy Rudy Giuliani, a man whose history makes Bill and Hillary Clinton look like Ma and Pa Kettle, being offered all kinds of excuses for his positions on the issues and his own sewer of a personal life. In today’s NY Times a young theology student and budding conservative propagandist offers up the idea that only a rightwing hypocrite can go to China … er … end abortion rights:

Roe v. Wade, with no textual warrant in the Constitution, struck down the states’ democratically enacted restrictions on abortion. By fighting Roe, pro-lifers aim not to make abortion illegal by judicial fiat, but to return the decision about how to regulate abortion to the states, where we are confident we can win.

Our greatest obstacle is the popular belief that overturning Roe would automatically make abortion illegal everywhere. In fact, our goal may well be undermined by politicians like President Bush, who seem to use “strict constructionist” as nothing more than code for “anti-abortion.”

Only a constitutionalist who supports abortion rights can create an anti-Roe majority by explaining that the end of Roe means letting the people decide, state by state, about abortion.

Slick-o-rama.

I might even think this made sense except for the fact that social conservatism has hinged its entire movement on the personal character of politicians. I certainly remember many a smug, pursed-lipped winger insisting, “if his wife can’t trust him, why should the country?” It’s true that they are supposedly big on redemption, but that requires that the “sinner” begs for forgiveness, which I saw the much loathed Bill Clinton do dozens of times and have yet to see Rudy Giuliani even attempt.

The truth is that “family values” for the most part is just a phrase certain tribal conservatives use to assert their moral superiority over the rest of us, probably in an attempt to deflect the fact that they are, at heart, cruel bigoted small-minded jerks. And there is no more cruel, bigoted, small-minded jerk than Rudy Giuliani, the poster boy for the newly pragmatic Republican Party. (You remember the Republicans, don’t you? The party that lived by its principles and talked straight, unlike the terrorist loving hippies?)

Matthews and the rest of the talking heads won’t touch the real reason why the allegedly religious, moralistic, family values loving far right seems to be so taken with the urban hedonist, Rudy Giuliani. But it’s really not hard to figure. They recognize a kindred spirit, and it’s that spirit that animates his crazy talk about terrorism too. He’s all about kicking dark-skinned ass and that is an intensely appealing attribute to the GOP base. In fact, when you strip all the marketing and polling and propaganda away, that’s what it’s all about.

Update: And James Fallows, who is in Shanghai and reporting on this as the man from Mars, watched the post speech show on Larry King and came up with this about Giuliani:

He looks like a man who is crazy. Making no clinical diagnosis here, just talking about his affect as it comes across on TV. I am sure this is partly just my unfamiliarity with his tic of stressing a point by opening his eyes so wide you can see the whites all the way around. He does that a lot, and at first glance it’s odd. But beyond that is the eerie sense of how strongly he resembles the earlier, cockier G.W. Bush of two or three years ago.

That Bush – the one who hadn’t yet lost the Congress, who hadn’t yet seen Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, et al driven from his inner council, who hadn’t glimpsed the tragic possibilities for his dreams in Iraq — combined certainty of bearing with sketchiness of factual information. That’s just how Giuliani comes across if you haven’t seen him for a long time. Great certainty about “staying on the offense” against terrorism; zero displayed knowledge of what that means or indeed what he was talking about at all.

He reminds the wingnut hordes of Bush during the glory days, back when he was da man, a swaggering, arrogant, stupid prick. They were on top, too, burning piles of Dixie Chicks CD’s and wearing purple heart band-aids and American flags like a bunch of teen-aged bullies. These adolescent morons ran the world for a minute and Rudy seems like the guy who can get it back for them.

Except, of course, he nuts. But as Tom Friedman famously said about Rumsfeld, that’s what they like about him.

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Strategering

by digby

Chris Dodd just told Tweety again that we can’t end the war without 60 votes. We all know the drill. But Mark Kleiman writes today about a possible legislative strategy that seems quite logical to me and doesn’t require 60 votes:

Anything that can be ridden on the Defense Appropriations bill (or on a continuing resolution) doesn’t need 60 votes in the Senate. It needs 51 votes in the Senate, or 218 in the House, that will stand firm.

Take, for example, the Webb Amendment, forbidding troops from being required to serve tours in Iraq longer than the spells between tours. If passed, it would force a troop drawdown by spring.

The Democrats should offer the Webb Amendment when the Defense Appropriation comes up. If the Republicans want to filibuster, fine. Don’t pull the amendment. Just let them keep filibustering. As long as the amendment is on the floor, there can be no vote on the bill itself. Keep calling cloture votes, one per day. After a few days, start asking how long the Republicans intend to withhold money to fund troops in the field in order to pursue their petty partisan agenda.

If the Republicans in the Senate hold firm, it’s their stubbornness that’s holding up the bill. If they fold, and the bill gets to the President’s desk and he vetoes it, then pass the same damned bill again. And start asking how long the President intends to block funding for troops in the field in order to pursue his petty partisan agenda.

As of October 1, there’s no money to fund the war. So the usual move is to pass a continuing resolution, which keeps the money flowing until the appropriation passes. Fine. Pass a continuing resolution with the Webb Amendment attached. If the CR runs into a filibuster or a veto, ask how long …

I thought it was very odd when they didn’t pursue the Webb Amendment earlier. But maybe there was a method to their madness. The Webb Amendment is powerful. It will support the troops in the most direct manner possible, making it law that they be allowed to have a reasonable break between deployments. The military families will all support it.

Forcing the Republicans to filibuster something that gives the troops a break seems like excellent politics to me. I’d be interested in hearing from some of you legislative mavens out there about this. Why wouldn’t it work?

(Besides, I still want to see I want to see Huckleberry Graham give his famous dramatic reading of Miss Mellie’s death scene in “Gone With The Wind” to obstruct passage of the Webb amendment, don’t you?)

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Issues

by digby

I could not care less if Condi Rice is gay and is in a long term relationship. But I also don’t think it’s surprising that people would publicly speculate about it considering the history of the man she works for:

It’s Texas, 1994, and Karl Rove is running George W. Bush’s campaign against Gov. Ann Richards. Bush appears to be in for an uphill fight against a popular incumbent, but then the whispers and the rumors start. Maybe there’s a lesbian working for Richards. Maybe she’s using state funds to visit her lover. Maybe Richards herself is gay.

“There was a lot of whispering going on in the backwater,” says Bill Cryer, a former newsman who worked as Richards’ press secretary. “I don’t think anybody ever really thought Ann Richards was gay, but somebody was trying to plant the seed.”

Bush says nothing about the rumors, but he doesn’t have to. The stories are everywhere, and one day a Bush surrogate — a state senator serving as Bush’s East Texas campaign chairman, a guy who just happens to have worked with Rove — says just enough about the rumors to get the word into the press. Richards’ appointments of “avowed homosexuals,” he tells a reporter, might be a liability in her campaign for reelection.

Just like that, the allegation is on the record, the rumors become newspaper stories, and Bush becomes governor of Texas.

I don’t think it even matters if Condi’s gay, frankly. No honorable person would have worked for Bush after that regardless of his or her sexual orientation. But you have to admit that it takes an extremely unusual person to be the best friend and confidant of a man who would do such a thing if she were gay herself.

It’s become clear in the last few years that right wingers are psychologically unfit to lead the nation. Vast numbers of them are “conservative” not due to philosophy but to cover up for serious personal issues with sexuality, masculinity, oedipal complexes and worse. In fact, it’s so pervasive that one must now assume that conservative political leaders are driven by a complicated desire to compensate for psychological problems rather than the usual political mix of ambition, ego and drive to power. There are just too many examples of disturbed, neurotic, secretive GOP hypocrites out there. It’s a feature not a bug.

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Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Again

by tristero

The end of a blistering, spot-on Times Editorial

… [Bush’s] only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.

Yes. And the Times can do its small part to ensure that the US doesn’t repeat the mistake of wars “that should never have been started.”

They can terminate David Brooks’s and and Thomas Friedman’s contracts, effective today, and hire as replacements Jessica Tuchman Mathews and Barbara Ehrenreich. They should fire Michael Gordon for his credulous and intellectually disengaged regurgitation of Pentagon statistics and assertions and they should let Elizabeth Bumiller go for her utterly worthless, utterly biased I-use-the-term-loosely reporting. They can also retire the thoroughly misleading references to Al Qaeda in Iraq that grossly distort the situation and only serve the propaganda interests of the Bush administration.

Most importantly, and also most unlikely, they should call for the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush, Dick Cheney and the entire Bush cabinet. There isn’t enough paper in the world to list the reasons why they should go – and go now. And there are no good reasons for them to stay a moment longer.

[Updated immediately after posting.]