Month: January 2008

Hot Politics

by digby

I don’t know what the significance of this is, but I thought you might find it interesting. Try not to picture this too literally:

The Politics of Sex

Playboy magazine conducted a nationwide survey on the “politics of sex” and found that voters in both blue states and red states “are surprisingly united when it comes to sexual matters, and there is less separation in the bedroom than originally thought.”

* More people under 40 have sex at least once a week than vote for president once every four years.
* 25% of all Republicans and 35% of all Democrats have had more than 10 sexual partners in their lifetime — a higher percentage than vote in congressional and local elections.
* 55% of Republicans have sex at least once a week, compared with just 43% of Democrats.
* 14% of Thompson supporters and 12% of Obama supporters claim to have sex “almost every day.” Just 5% of Clinton and Giuliani supporters have sex that frequently.
* On average, Republicans say they were 18.4 years old when they first had sex. Independents were 17.6 and Democrats were 17.5.
* 58% of respondents think Bill Clinton was the sexiest president of the past 40 years; Ronald Reagan is second, with 22%.
* 38% say Richard Nixon was the least sexy; Bill Clinton is second, with 18%.
* 23% of all Republicans and 24 percent of all Democrats would “definitely” or “probably” say yes to a one-night stand in the Oval Office with a president they found physically and sexually attractive.
* 51% of all Republicans and 67% of all Democrats have watched porn with their sexual partners.
* 55% of people who attend church every week consider themselves to be “sexually adventurous.”
* Americans of both parties say they are more turned on by intelligence than by physical appearance.

The Tweety Affect

by digby

Via Salon, h/t to BB

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Myth of Progress Grows Mythier

by dday

So I read the news reports of Iraq passing a change to its de-Baathification law with interest. It appeared to come out of nowhere. The Iraqi Parliament was off for a month in December, was no closer to this law before then, but all of a sudden, just when the President is tooling around the Middle East, this law gets passed. Indeed, he was the first to praise it:

Traveling in Manama, Bahrain, President Bush hailed the law as “an important step toward reconciliation.”

“It’s an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people,” he said.

Obviously this was something spearheaded by the Shiite majority in the Parliament, otherwise it could not get done this quickly. What I did not know until reading deeper into the reports is that the law was actively opposed by the Sunni minority who you would think would be precisely those to benefit from its implementation. And the prime movers were the Sadrists, not likely to be those interested in unity and reconciliation.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that the parliamentarians who criticized the law were drawn from the National Dialogue Council led by ex-Baathist Salih Mutlak, from the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi (an ex-Baathist), and from two of the three parties that make up the Sunni Arab National Accord Front.

So the parties in parliament that have the strong Baathist legacy did not like the law one little bit. But they are the ones that it was intended to mollify!

Parliament has been unable to get a quorum on several recent occasions, and barely mustered a quorum on Saturday, with 143 members in attendance out of 275. The new law passed with a narrow majority. The vote count was not published anywhere I could find it, but it could have been as low as 72 […]

The Sadrists had demanded that the De-Baathification Commission not be dissolved, but would accept a change in name for it. They had demanded that the Baath Party remain dissolved, and that the high-ranking members of the party be forbidden to enter the new political life or serve as bureaucrats. The Sadrists had also insisted that any high-ranking Baathists presently employed by the new Iraqi government must be fired!

The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.

Essentially, this law forces a Baath Party member who wants a job in the government to appear before a judiciary board in public view and announce that they are an ex-Baathist, in a time where Shiite militias and death squads still operate. This is a death sentence that appears to be more about rooting out Baath Party members than anything else.

Critics of the legislation suspect the new body will be manipulated by the same parties that dominated the old committee. They also worry that any Baathists who seek jobs will be targeted by paramilitary groups.

“I wouldn’t come back to my job because of this law,” Sunni parliament member Saleh Mutlak said. “It’s humiliating to the people. You have to condemn yourself, and then be investigated, and then you could be killed [by someone] after going to the committee.”

It’s very easy for Bush defenders and war supporters to conflate the sectarian elements in Iraq, so let’s be clear. This is a law that everyone is saying is designed to help Sunnis that was opposed by most major Sunni groups. This is just the same as the return of the zombie lie that Iranian explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) are being used by insurgents and “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” when Iranians are Shiites, Al Qaeda is Sunni and the “bombs” they described are no more than hand hammered ashtrays that could be made anywhere in the world.

While Republicans spin and lie and distort, Democrats appear unwilling to pick apart the arguments even a little bit, and so in the absence of a response, the lies stand.

Welcome to Iraq policy in 2008.

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On The Nod

by digby

The good Roger Ailes has finally put up the answers to the Political Junkie Year In Review Contest.

If you haven’t taken the quiz you can do so here:

Part I — Dr. Phil In The Blank

Part II — Who Said it?

Part III — Grand Old Police Blotter

Part IV — The Year In Right Wing Sex

Part V — Multiple Guess

I got 58 points which means: “The year 2007 is a traumatic memory which will haunt you to your dying day”

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Reporter, Heal Thyself

by digby

In case you missed it, here’s a mea culpa from the Politico for their lousy coverage of the campaign so far.

A few observations. First they admit that the blogs they read everyday are Drudge, Real Clear Politics and TIME’s The Page every day. These are all conservative and/or establishment “blogs.” Make of that what you will.

Second, and more importantly:

NBC’s Brian Williams stirred some controversy earlier in the week when he reported that his network’s correspondent covering Obama admitted it was hard to be objective covering the Illinois senator. Reporters are human, and some did seem swept up in the same emotions many voters experienced when they saw a black man win snow-white Iowa by preaching a gospel of change. Many are sympathetic to Obama’s argument that the culture of Washington politics is fundamentally broken

The first part of that is an unexceptional observation. Reporters are human and they very well could get caught up in the moment like anyone else. It’s the final sentence that brought me up short. If the culture of politics is fundamentally broken it’s largely due to the performance of the media, which the Politico, with no self awareness, goes on to prove:

Hillary Clinton, cautious and scripted, got the reverse treatment. She is carrying the burden of 16 years of contentious relations between the Clintons and the news media.

Many journalists rushed with unseemly haste to the narrative about the fall of the Clinton machine. On this score, reporters are recidivists. The Clintons were finished in 1992, when Bill Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign was rocked by scandal. In 1993, when Time pronounced him “The Incredible Shrinking President.” In 1994, when Hillary Clinton botched health care and Democrats lost Congress. In 1995, when Bill Clinton pleaded he still had “relevance.” In 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal sent the Clinton presidency reeling.

Hillary Clinton’s comeback in New Hampshire this week probably shared a trait in common with those earlier episodes: The media frenzy itself became part of the story, contributing to a sense of piling on and making people more sympathetic to the candidate.

They just hit a few of the highlights of egregious Clinton coverage, but it speaks for itself anyway. It wasn’t just that they wrote the Clinton obituaries over and over again, it’s that when they weren’t working hand in glove with the right wing to pimp their well-financed trumped up scandals, they were busily devising new rules and moving the goalposts (which we all naively expected them to maintain once Bush seized office, and were sorely disappointed.) Over and over again the public rejected them, in my opinion, because they were so often trivial and so often accompanied by the unctuous schadenfreude that was dripping off the press corps last week.

And then there were Gore and Kerry, both of whom were also treated like dirt by the media to the point where they quit presidential politics. (It’s possible that the thing the media hates most about the Clintons is that they haven’t been run out of town yet.)

Whatever it is, if the reporters are worried that politics in Washington are broken, they don’t need anyone else to come in and fix it. There’s nothing more infuriating that listening to a bunch of beltway kewl kidz bemoan the state of politics in one breath and then immediately launch into some puerile psychoanalysis based on superficial observations about “style” and “tone.” If they “fixed” themselves, it would go a long way toward solving the problem.

*I should add that this article seems to be ingenuous and I don’t mean to be overly cynical. But I’m still not sure they really get what the problem is. Time will tell.

Update: I just heard a reporter on CNN say that the racial controversy this week-end came about because of comments about Martin Luther King being gassed and comparisons to John F. Kennedy Jr. You can’t make this stuff up.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Out here in the fields

By Dennis Hartley

In the audacious opening shot of his magnificent, sprawling, demented epic, “There Will Be Blood”, director P.T. Anderson presents us with a tracking shot of a vast expanse of rocky, desolate scrub land, scored by an ominous, discordant drone. When the camera (literally) disappears down a hole, we are introduced to the story’s protagonist, a lone, shadowy figure, chiseling away at the subterranean rock wall of a derelict well with a fierce, single-minded determination. There is nary a word of dialogue uttered during the ensuing 15 minutes or so of screen time; yet through the masterful implementation of purely cinematic language, we are given a sufficient enough glimpse so as to feel that we may already have some inkling of what it is that drives this man, even though we do not yet even know his name. Stylistically, this scene is more than a little reminiscent of the prologue for “2001 – A Space Odyssey ”. What we witness in the film’s introduction may not be quite as profound or seminal as Kubrick’s rendering of “the dawn of man”, but it does put the spotlight on something just as primeval. It is something that is buried deep within the capitalist DNA-the relentless drive to amass wealth and power through willful exploitation and opportunism (hey, don’t knock it- it’s what made this country great!)

Flash forward a few years, and we find that our mystery man not only has a name, but has made a name for himself in the midst of California’s turn-of-the-century oil boom. The ambitious Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) has moved up from prospecting for precious metals to leasing tracts of land for the oil drilling rights. He is well on his way to becoming a very wealthy man. He did not get to this place in his life by being a nice guy (who does?). He is a bachelor; but in order to give an impression as a sincere “family man”, he totes a young orphan along to business meetings, who he introduces as his son (not unlike Ryan and Tatum O’Neal’s con artist team in “Paper Moon”). In his worldview, you are either with him, or you are his “competitor”. In fact, Plainview is the quintessential lone wolf, having very little tolerance or use for people in general, unless they can help him further his agenda.

Plainview’s biggest payday arrives in the form of a furtive and enigmatic young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), who walks out of the desert one day with a hot tip about a possible oil field that lies beneath his family’s central California ranch land. Everything appears to be going swimmingly until Plainview crosses paths with Sunday’s twin brother Eli (also played by Dano) a fire and brimstone evangelical who sees his family’s business partnership with Plainview as a potential cash cow for building up his ministry. The relationship between these two characters forms the heart of the story’s conflict.

Plainview and Sunday are in reality two peas in a pod; they both employ their own fashion of charlatanism and manipulation to get what they want. They circle each other warily, grudgingly accepting that they need each other to achieve their goals. Plainview sees himself as an empire builder, and promises the milk and honey of economic prosperity to sway the landowners to his way of thinking. The somewhat unhinged Sunday envisions himself as a prophet, and uses the lure of eternal life and the theatrics of faith healing to win over his followers. He clearly sees (plainly views?) Plainview as the Devil; this is proffered by the director in one of the film’s most stunning visual moments, where Anderson frames Day-Lewis in ominous silhouette against the hellish backdrop of an oil well fire, recalling the image of Chernabog in the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment from “Fantasia “. I also think it is significant to note that when we are first introduced to Plainview, he emerges from underground (the Underworld?). The resulting pissing contest between prophet and profiteer makes for a compelling tale.

The story spans thirty years; culminating on the eve of the Depression, by which time the obscenely wealthy but completely soulless Plainview has morphed into a reclusive Charles Foster Kane type figure, alone in his mansion. The film’s jaw-dropping climatic scene is destined to be dissected and argued over by film buffs for some years to come.

The story is rich in allegory; especially in the character of Plainview, who is the very personification of the blood-soaked history of profit-driven expansionism in America (and it goes without saying that the particular brand of puritanical religious zealotry represented by Sunday has been responsible for its fair share of damage throughout U.S. history as well). This film reminded me, oddly enough, of the excellent documentary “The Corporation”, in which the filmmakers build a psychological profile of the typical corporation, as if it were a person. The summation from that film’s official website says:

“To assess the ‘personality’ of the corporate ‘person,’ a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social ‘personality’: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.”

That works for me as a profile of Plainview, and to some extent, Sunday as well. The famously dedicated and meticulous Day-Lewis is nothing short of astonishing in his role. I dare say it is one of his finest performances to date. He does make some interesting choices; especially in his carefully measured vocal inflection. I swear that he is uncannily channeling the voice of the late Jack Palance. But it works-and maybe it’s not such a stretch, since director Anderson appears to be channeling the mythic style of George Stevens’ westerns (“Giant”, obviously; and in a tangential sense, “Shane”). Credit must also go to Paul Dano (“Little Miss Sunshine”), who does an admirable job of holding his own against the greatest character actor on earth. In a recent TV interview, Dano said that Day-Lewis never once broke character, even refusing to acknowledge him off-camera.

This marks the most cohesive and mature work from director Anderson, who adapted his screenplay from Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!”. Anderson’s previous films have shown a tendency to polarize critics and audiences. I personally find him one of the most unique American filmmakers working today, and I think that this movie is going to surprise a lot of people. Kudos as well for Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood’s soundtrack.

Prospectors, wildcatters and boom towns (oh my!): Giant , Oklahoma Crude, Thunder Bay, Boom Town(1940), Wildcat(1942), Tulsa (1949), In Old Oklahoma (aka War of the Wildcats), TheOil Raider, Sin Town(1942), Jesse James Rides Again, Flowing Gold, Black Gold (1936), Pipe Dreams (1976), The Claim (2000), The Spoilers, Paint Your Wagon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Eureka(1984), ,Barbary Coast Greed (1925), McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Goin’ South,The Far Country, Lust for Gold(1949), The Gold Rush (1925), The Chechahcos (1924), Deadwood (HBO).

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Bipartisanship Observed

by dday

The dissolving of Unity08 (what am I going to do with all my political capital points now?) and folding it into a Draft Bloomberg movement is just so revealing. The idea was to have this supposedly inclusive “online convention” to draft a serious alternative to the two parties. Instead, it’s a conduit for hero worship toward a billionaire who’s looking to buy the White House. I guess the people weren’t deciding the right way so their betters had to do the deciding for them. Some grassroots movement.

Now that the speculation has heightened on a Bloomberg candidacy, with even some backlash, it’s worth taking a look at how a politics based on nothing but calls to “get along” would work in practice. All of us in California have a unique perspective on this question.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger were named Arnold Schwartz, and if he were born in Austin and not Austria, he would almost certainly be the vessel of the hopes of the Unity08 crowd, not Bloomberg. In truth, Schwarzenegger is a con man, which is what you’d expect from an actor playing at executive. Since coming into office, he has played with a variety of images – reformer, hardcore Republican, environmental advocate – before settling on the label of “post-partisan”. These are just labels, because his core ideological concerns have not changed a bit, with policies friendly to big business, concerned with redistributing wealth upwards, and punishing the middle and lower classes.

The first thing Schwarzenegger did in office was eliminate an increase in the vehicle license fee, depriving government of $8 billion dollars in revenues. Then he sought to solve every problem under the sun through massive amounts of borrowing, combined with a philosophical opposition to any tax increases. This constrained any solutions to move the state forward to a narrow band. Then he cut worker’s compensation benefits to benefit his corporate buddies. All the while he spent and spent and tried to be all things to all people, in the interest of being liked. An example (Not that I’m a fan of the heartless Tom McClintock, but the quote is so instructive).

McClintock showed the governor a chart he had drawn. It illustrated that spending under Davis had increased an average of 7% a year. Under Schwarzenegger, it was climbing at a 10% rate. Similarly, he pointed out, the deficit — the billions being spent over the revenue coming in — was larger than under Davis.

According to McClintock, the governor replied: “That is bad news that people don’t want to hear. People want to hear only good news. I don’t want to hear pessimism. I’m an optimist.”

This year, the inequities in California’s budget structure were made clear. The housing debacle and major increases in unemployment shrunk revenues and created a $14 billion dollar deficit. Not only that, but state employee retiree health care was majorly unfunded, and the prisons were the worst in the country, overcrowded and mismanaged to the extent that federal judges were about to mandate releases.

Faced with the consequences of his own policies of borrowing and putting off reality to our children and grandchildren, Schwarzenegger declared a “fiscal emergency,” and is using the shock doctrine principle by taking advantage of the crisis to radically alter the power of the executive in state government. He put together a budget that only deals with the problem from the spending side. He plans to cut education, release 50,000 prisoners, slash services for the elderly and the blind, lay off prison guards, close 48 state parks (that’s the California dream, isn’t it?), and reduce health care for the needy (more on that later). Loopholes for corporations and people who buy yachts don’t come under the budget knife.

Schwarzenegger is trying to suspend Prop. 98, which mandates a certain level of education funding, and he seeks a constitutional cap on spending where mid-year cuts would be at the complete discretion of the executive. This is something that Arnold tried to push through the Legislature in 2004, to no avail. He tried a ballot measure in 2005; it was rejected. Faced with a crisis, he’s gone to the same failed solution, and is holding the budget hostage to it.

The “post-partisan” label that Schwarzenegger has taken up has enabled him to just use the language of both sides of the political aisle while rigidly holding to conservative “drown the government in the bathtub” policy. So he sounds schizophrenic to those who don’t scratch the surface.

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to further his reputation as a dabbler who has political Velcro glued to his fingers, he succeeded with elements of his State of the State speech yesterday.

One minute this Republican governor was praising the public works programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The next he was calling for more partnerships with private industry to build public infrastructure – the seeming antithesis of the New Deal.

One minute he was acknowledging the harsh consequences of spending cuts that involve “not just dollars, but people.” The next he was calling for across-the-board spending cuts and refusing to raise taxes.

Because he’s supposed to be some kind of post-partisan, state political insiders have convinced themselves into believing that this is an elaborate ruse, that Schwarzenegger is just calling for outlandish cuts without taxes to get a broader compromise (Odd way of forcing compromise, by proposing something entirely on one side of the equation). They’re so convinced that he’s some kind of coalition builder and compromiser that they don’t listen when he says he won’t raise taxes (actually, he’ll just call taxes fees and make sure they’re applied regressively, if at all). It’s entirely based on the image of the Governor and not the reality.

Meanwhile, as if it’s happening in a different sphere, the Governor is pushing ahead with health care reform while cutting the public programs set to expand under that reform. The health care plan is predicated on an individual mandate, subsidies so everyone can afford coverage, and a massive expansion of public programs. Without the public programs it’s just a forced market. And yet this is what he’s cutting in the current budget. This is a familiar pattern for the governor. Earlier this year he used the line-item veto to terminate treatment for mentally ill homeless people (now that’s post-partisan!) because he claimed a ballot measure that was supposed to add money to the program provided full funding for that treatment. It’s a dodge and a lie, yet the same people who want to work with this guy because he’s so beyond partisanship continue to fall for it.

I go into so much detail on this because it’s a model for how progressive policy would suffer, necessarily, under “post-partisan” executive leadership. Envisioning a government of national unity where everyone puts aside differences neglects the inconvenient fact that politicians have substantive differences, including those who claim to be above politics. Mayor Bloomberg, himself faced with a significant budget deficit, responded to the crisis by saying “The first thing we’re going to do for the city is try to reduce spending.” He has his own ideological rigidities, too, especially in foreign policy, where he shows little difference from George Bush. “Let’s everybody get along” is a transparent way to not say “Let’s everyone do what I say” when that’s the actual meaning. Corporatist warmongers don’t get to say who should start or stop the bickering. They have to put their ideas in front of the public and allow them to be accepted or rejected. The cult around Bloomberg mirrors the starstruck media cult around Schwarzenegger. Failing to scrutinize what this call for “bipartisanship” is a cover for will put the country in the same dire straits as California is in right now.

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Things They Do Look Awful Cold

by digby

Pew has released a study of the so-called Generation Next, the 18-25 year olds and it’s very good for Democrats:

In their political outlook, they are the most tolerant of any generation on social issues such as immigration, race and homosexuality. They are also much more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than was the preceding generation of young people, which could reshape politics in the years ahead. Yet the evidence is mixed as to whether the current generation of young Americans will be any more engaged in the nation’s civic life than were young people in the past, potentially blunting their political impact.

That last is important. Having come of age in the shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, I can tell you that disillusionment is a very serious risk to any movement when you have a large cadre of young idealists. The Democrats had better deliver for these young people or they won’t be energetic and involved for long. They’ll turn inward and self-directed instead of activist and outwardly directed, even if they stay Democrats. And that doesn’t help us. Republicans have the force of the aristocracy behind them, with all that entails. We need a grassroots movement.

It was only 20 years ago that the youth vote was all gaga over St. Ronnie (a very depressing time.)If these young people remain engaged in politics, and culturally and politically liberal, this country might just right itself.

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Huckabee And The Murderer: The Mother Of A Victim Speaks.

by tristero

Please watch the following poignant short video:

There is a crucial question the video does not address: Why did Huckabee work to release Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist? The rape that landed him in the Arkansas slammer wasn’t his first. He had been implicated in others, but in at least one case, the victim was too afraid to testify. No wonder, Dumond had already been involved in a brutal murder. In that case, Dumond, turning state’s evidence, denied killing the man; he only bashed the guy on the head several times with a hammer. So, again, the question:

Why did Huckabee work to release Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist?

Answer: Because Wayne Dumond was the darling of the extreme right. And Huckabee was trying to curry their favor.

Huckabee listened hard when right wing activists in New York and Arkansas claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Dumond had been framed for rape. But Huckabee never bothered, apparently, to read the transcript of Dumond’s rape trial. And shamefully, he ignored the pleas of the rape victim herself not to release Dumond.

But how on Earth could the imprisonment of a serial rapist become a right-wing cause-celebre?

Answer: Dumond’s victim – in the rape that landed him in prison – was a distant cousin of then-Governor Bill Clinton. According to the extreme right, Dumond was framed for the rape. In addition, Clinton may have had, according to the right, some involvement in vigilante justice, Arkansas-style. While awaiting trial for the rape of Clinton’s distant relation, a drunken Dumond was castrated. He claimed that three men associated with the local Sheriff attacked and mutilated him. The far right intimated that Clinton may have put the Sheriff up to it. (Of course, the insinuation was bogus, based on nothing but imagination. In fact, investigators suspected that Dumond castrated himself when drunk, behavior that is not unheard of with rapists.)

The people Huckabee listened to, and trusted, told him that Clinton framed Dumond for the rape of his cousin and, in retaliation, possibly ordered his castration.

That is the absurd story Huckabee believed and caused him actively to work for Dumond’s release from prison. Whether Huckabee acted out of political cynicism and opportunism or was simply gullible (or both) doesn’t matter. That Huckabee would fall for such a preposterous conspiracy tale – and ignore actual trial testimony and the pleas of a rape victim – demonstrates that he has neither the judgment nor strength of character to be considered seriously for any position of responsibility, let alone the most powerful political office on Earth.

As if that weren’t enough. Huckabee has gone on to lie about his responsibility in Dumond’s release. In spite of scads of documentary evidence proving the contrary, Huckabee has tried to twist the record to claim it was not he but Democrats, including Bill Clinton, who worked to free Dumond.

And now, with the same shameless, incoherent aggressiveness he has shown throughout his entire career, Huckabee claims the people who made the video exploited the mother of Dumond’s murder victim. Let’s let Lois Davidson speak for herself, not that Huckabee would deign to listen:

Last night, Mike Huckabee accused me of being exploited and used for political purposes. I assure you, Mr. Huckabee, I am not being exploited. I am fully aware of the actions I have taken in attempting to inform the public of your role in my daughter’s rape and murder. I have spent over 7 years thinking about this.

I am not a dupe. But you, Governor Huckabee, were duped time and again by convicted felons who once released from prison by you began hurting people again.

Mr. Huckabee, I am not a victim. However, my daughter was a victim. She was raped and murdered by a serial rapist that you wanted freed from prison. Please be honest about the role you played in releasing my daughter’s killer.

In other words, Huckabee was either deliberately lying when he claimed exploitation. Or he was totally ignorant of the facts. Or both. Regardless, it’s more evidence, as if any more were needed, that Huckabee is totally incapable of good judgment.

The media have been treating Huckabee in one of two ways. They think he’s an entertaining clown – the squirrel-eating good ‘ol boy who pardoned Keith Richards. Or they think of him as unfairly criticized for his compassionate, merciful character.

Huckabee is no clown. The real clowns are the people who snark about Huckabee and don’t take him seriously, who don’t recognize the genuine danger posed by permitting his radical christianism and ignorance to gain him so much as a mention in the mainstream discourse. And Huckabee shows no mercy to the victims of his opportunism. He is also a ruthless, belligerent politician who, when attacked, has absolutely no scruples. He will lie and when caught, lie some more. It goes without saying that his actual proposals – for example in regards to taxes – are unworthy of serious discussion. He should have no place in the national political discourse and it is a measure of how sick our discourse really is that he now has close to a central one.

Note: If you would like to check up on the details of this post (and if you are new to the Dumond story or have any doubts, you really should), please go here where you will find links to get you started. This prize-winning article by Murray Waas in the Arkansas Times should help you get a handle on the extent of Huckabee’s lies about his involvement in Dumond’s release.

I’ve written more about Huckabee than is healthy for anyone. Here is one. Here’s another. Perhaps they may be of interest as you dig around a little bit and learn more about the corrosively dangerous political and cultural forces that have elevated such an ignorant, vicious, and incapable little man to such prominence.

Jack Booted Pacifists

by digby

Alex Koppleman interviewed Jonah Goldberg about his Book “Liberal Fascism” and I was struck by this assertion:

What appealed to the Progressives about militarism was what William James calls this moral equivalent of war. It was that war brought out the best in society, as James put it, that it was the best tool then known for mobilization … That is what is fascistic about militarism, its utility as a mechanism for galvanizing society to join together, to drop their partisan differences, to move beyond ideology and get with the program. And liberalism today is, strictly speaking, pretty pacifistic. They’re not the ones who want to go to war all that much. But they’re still deeply enamored with this concept of the moral equivalent of war, that we should unite around common purposes. Listen to the rhetoric of Barack Obama, it’s all about unity, unity, unity, that we have to move beyond our particular differences and unite around common things, all of that kind of stuff. That remains at the heart of American liberalism, and that’s what I’m getting at.

See, liberals are goose-stepping militaristic conformists because we want the country to unite. I couldn’t help but be reminded of this, from a little while back:

Nearly 17 months after he first issued his call for a ”fresh start after a season of cynicism,” Gov. George W. Bush ended his quest for the presidency today on a nearly identical note, pledging to purge Washington of what he characterized as a crippling discord.

[…]

Mr. Bush’s words made … clear that he saw himself as the country’s best hope for bridging ideological divides, healing partisan wounds and making sure Americans could gaze upon the White House with unfettered respect.

”It’s time for new leadership in Washington, D.C,” Mr. Bush told the crowd here late tonight in Bentonville, a Republican stronghold with its own significance. It lies in the district where a young Bill Clinton once ran a failed campaign for Congress, and it is now represented by Asa Hutchinson, one of the House Republicans who presided over Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.

[…]

Just before Mr. Bush began and just after he ended his remarks on a stage inside a local airport hangar, his campaign played a new tape of music. It featured snippets of the Fleetwood Mac song ”Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow),” which Mr. Clinton used as the theme for his 1992 campaign, followed by The Who song ”Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Almost 12 hours earlier, in Chattanooga, Tenn., Mr. Bush told supporters there was ”a better day ahead” if the country chose to elect someone who would ”elevate the people’s business above everyday politics.” Supporters’ chants evoked the nearness of the moment of decision.

”One more day!” they roared.

What the nation needed, Mr. Bush told them, was ”a president who can unite this nation, a president who puts aside the endless partisan bickering that seems to gridlock our nation’s capital, a president who puts the people first, a president who lifts this nation’s spirits.”

”I’ll be that president,” he added, a sentence that was equal parts promise and prediction. It underscored the optimism that Mr. Bush had, from the very beginning, sought to project to voters.

His schedule for a 16-hour day was also an expression of that. Between stops in Tennessee and Arkansas, his plane touched down in Wisconsin and Iowa, and while any one of those four states could provide the key to a Bush victory, none has as many electoral votes as battlegrounds like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

But the states are genuine tossups that were initially expected to be much more hospitable to Mr. Gore. By visiting them today, Mr. Bush emphasized the breadth of his appeal and the sometimes surprising vulnerability of the vice president.

He did not let his assertion of strength and confidence distract him from the business of beseeching supporters to grant him victory. With 24 hours before Election Day, Mr. Bush stripped campaigning to its essence: coaxing and cajoling, pleading and persuading.

”I want you to understand that I can’t win without you,” Mr. Bush told a crowd of about 1,000 in Green Bay, Wis. ”I hope you redouble your efforts to make sure people get out to the polls.” Minutes later, he added: ”When you go out there and tell the folks where we stand on the issues and where we stand when it comes to bringing people together to get things done, and you tell them that the core of this campaign is the inherent trust in the American people, I believe it doesn’t matter what political party they’re in. They’re going to come our way.”

He was very convincing to a lot of people, especially in the beltway. In fact, the gasbags all said Bush should be handed the presidency when the results were disputed in Florida because he was the only one who could bring the country together after all the ugliness. (The ugliness being perpetrated by his campaign, but whatever.)

I don’t remember Goldberg or any of the other wingnuts protesting that Bush was being a fascist at the time he was criss-crossing the country assuring everyone that he was going to “change the tone.” In fact, they were saying that he was a great leader who would lead the whole country in a big round of kumbaaya and tax cuts.

Within minutes of his leaving office, I am fully assured that Bush will be put in the pantheon of liberals, however. (You know what they say…)

Proof? Here’s Jonah:

I would argue that Nixon was not a particularly conservative guy. Measured by today’s standards and today’s issues, Nixon would be in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

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