Month: January 2008

St. John And The Big Money Boyz

by digby

Back in 2004, John McCain made a tepid complaint when the Swiftboat liars went after John Kerry. This time he’s taking as much money from them as he can. in fact, they are giving big bucks to all the Republican campaigns. Well, except for one.

Christopher Hayes reports in The Nation:

Also noticeable among the recipients of Swift Boat largesse is one who received only a single donation: Mike Huckabee. Despite meager fundraising and little national name recognition, the former Arkansas governor has experienced a bubble-like expansion of support and media attention, taking the lead in Iowa and approaching a steady lead in national polls. But the lack of Swift Boat contributions lends credence to the claim that Huckabee is viewed warily by the money men who call the shots in the modern GOP. Despite proposing a radically regressive tax change and taking Grover Norquist’s antitax pledge, he’s been attacked savagely by the Club for Growth and eviscerated by columnist George Will for “comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs,” among them “free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.”

This all supports the notion that the people behind the Swift Boat operation are chiefly concerned with the continued upward redistribution of wealth that is, more or less, the contemporary GOP’s raison d’être. In 2006 Perry ponied up $5 million to start the Economic Freedom Fund, a 527 group devoted to attacking Democratic incumbents, and landed a large donation from prominent Swift Boat donor Carl Lindner. All of which is to say that the Swift Boaters aren’t some kind of side show, a coterie of vicious mudslingers operating at the edges of respectability. They are the show. They are modern conservatism’s core funders and beneficiaries. With conservatives staring straight into the abyss, their activities in this election cycle could very well make the Swift Boat smears look tame by comparison.

I’d bet money on it.

And I’d bet money that McCain is going to be the nominee too. It looks like Romney can’t close the deal, Giuliani is a flake and the rest are just stooges. McCain’s the only one who the Big Money Boyz can fall back on. They’ll put up Lee Atwater’s firewall in South Carolina (the same one that did him in in 2000.) In fact, it’s already going up.

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Reality TV

by digby

This is powerful:

I think what works about that ad is that its focus is entirely on the voters, not the candidate. In our celebrity drenched culture, that’s oddly moving.

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Actually, It’s Not That Hard

by tristero

Glenn Greenwald:

Both legally and politically, it’s hard to imagine a more significant scandal than the President and Vice President deliberately obstructing the investigation of the 9/11 Commission by concealing and then destroying vital evidence which the Commission was seeking. Yet that’s exactly what the evidence at least suggests has occurred here.

Oh, I dunno about that. As utterly outrageous as it is, most of us can all too well imagine this administration destroying torture tapes and not telling the 9/11 Commission about it.

And as far as scandals go, there’s the 2000 election, and 2004 Ohio. There’s Bush ignoring August 6, 2001. And let’s not forget the entire Bush/Iraq war. And Plame. And Schiavo. And the subversion of science. And surreptitiously hiring journalists to flack for the administration. And let’s not forget Katrina. Or those attorneys general who were gleefully indicting and jailing Democrats for partisan advantage. And what about the energy companies and Cheney? Remember California’s blackouts?

Which brings up an interesting question. Given such an extraordinary number of world-class choices, what IS the most significant scandal of the Bush years?

Well, I’m certain what would be considered the worst scandal, if we had a working press and a non-befuddled citizenry. And it’s that the leaders who perpetrated and funded the worst attacks on American soil since the Civil War have never been found. It’s an indication of how truly weird things have become that this most fundamental function of government – you protect your citizens by bringing to justice those that are known to be responsible for attacking them – has kind of been finessed or forgotten. But I can think of even worse than that.

The most significant scandal of our time is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are still wielding power.

And sadly, I can imagine even worse. That the United States elects as president one of the uber- bozos contending for the dubious honor of GOP nominee.

Click And Munch Time

by tristero

Yesterday, I saw Denzel Washington’s excellent new film, The Great Debaters, the inspiring story of a debating team from a tiny black college in Texas in 1935. There is much to say about this film – including the portrayal of an emerging African-American middle-class, something that Hollywood rarely deigns to address. But I had an odd thought, after seeing it, connected to my previous post.

While watching “The Great Debaters,” I was struck by how everyone is actively, intensely involved in the cultural and political concerns of the film. Of course, such a response to the racism portrayed makes disengagement by anyone, including we viewers, impossible. But the same intensity of participation is equally apparent in the scenes shot in Texas juke-joints, even in the incidental banter at a party.

The world in which “The Great Debaters” takes place is a world that has no place for slackerism. No one, not a single student, parent, sheriff, lyncher, shrugs a shoulder, and “whatevers” the situation.

And that got me imagining what a movie about the current strange American cultural moment would look like. Think about it for a second. The tube’s on, they’re flashing picture after picture of torture and even murder from Abu Ghraib. We cut from the tv screen to reaction shots of the couple watching the news, jaws hanging slack, absently munching from his ‘n hers matching canisters of freshly-wrought Pringles.

The husband blinks twice, points the remote at the camera, we hear a click, then the sound of Jack Bauer’s voice threatening some baddie who Doesn’t Look Like One Of Us. But it’s only for a moment, as the music swells, denoting a 6 or 7 minute break from simulated torture in order to tout the subtle advantages accrued to the viewer if she deploys a particular brand of vaginal douche on her nether regions. Another click, and the grooviest computer graphics imaginable are superimposed over grainy footage of a guy in a gorilla costume while a narrator intones, “As the computer analysis makes clear, it is impossible to tell from the gait whether the creature shown here is human or some species not known to science.”

Another click and we’re back to the newscast. The correspondent for the Abu Ghraib story signs off, a pensive look marring the studied vapidity of his boytoy face and we dissolve back to the newsroom, carefully decorated to create the appearance of competent reportering. “In other news, the primary race heats up. And it all comes down to haircuts. When we come back, two professional barbers will speak with our senior correspondent in Iowa on what it takes to snip and cut when the leadership of the Free World depends upon the placement of every follicle.”

Click. Munch. Click. Munch, munch. Click.

Remembering To Forget

by dday

(Digby has asked me to stick around and spout off every now and again. I consider it a privilege.)

Hey, remember when the oil for food scandal was simply the gravest episode of corruption in world history? Remember how it discredited the UN and proved that our allies in Old Europe were working with our enemies? Remember when the very serious Paul Volcker was brought in to investigate, and how this was the lead story on wanker cable news shows like Brit Hume’s for about a year? Remember when that lightweight Norm Coleman made the scandal his personal crusade and accused George Galloway of getting more in kickbacks than Zaire’s Mobutu? Remember when every documented incident of defense contractors stealing billions from the US Treasury as a result of the war was met with cries of “Oil for food, oil for food”?

Well, now that it’s completely out of the wingnut spotlight, not only does it turn out that the only guy who’s been actually convicted of fraud in this scandal is a Texas oilman, but the latest two companies to be investigated are pharmaceuticals.

GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca have been asked to hand over papers as part of a probe into bribes allegedly paid to Saddam Hussein’s former Iraq regime.

The Serious Fraud Office is examining allegations of bribes paid to secure lucrative contracts in breach of Iraq’s 1996 to 2003 oil-for-food programme.

The programme, established in the wake of UN sanctions, allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy humanitarian provisions.

I eagerly await the 24-hour news channels to cover this with all the vigor of a missing girl in Aruba.

(Also, Chevron knew about illegal payments too, and they acknowledged their executives did nothing to stop it, including this member of the board of directors named Condoleezza Rice).

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Ugh, ugh and ugh

by digby

Now this stuff really makes me mad. From Dave Neiwert:

[Racist prick Steve Sailor] cites the execrable Shelby Steele, who loves to pretend that “racism is dead” and that white guilt is a much bigger problem:

Many whites assume that the mixed-race and Hawaiian-born Mr. Obama is, in Mr. Steele’s words, “indifferent to the whole business of race and identity.” According to Mr. Steele, the author of 1990s acclaimed “The Content of Our Character,” they see voting for Mr. Obama as proving that they personally aren’t guilty of racism.

Mr. Steele suggests that many whites hope electing Mr. Obama president will show blacks that white racism isn’t what’s holding them back anymore. Numerous white Democrats, I would add, view backing Mr. Obama as confirming their moral and cultural superiority over other whites (those redneck racists). Whites strive for status mostly against other whites, and conceive of minorities primarily as handy props in these intra-racial struggles.

Right. The Democrats who support Barack Obama are only doing it to prove their moral and cultural superiority over other whites. I guess conservatives (both black and white) can’t even conceive of the idea that there are liberals out there who don’t spend their lives trying to prove their superiority to “redneck racists,” as many of these narcissistic, paranoid conservatives seem to think they do. (Most people try to ignore the jackasses if they possibly can — which is undoubtedly what drives them crazy.)

In case anyone wonders if the netroots or the party at large can come back together after the primaries, I can guarantee you that when the Republicans start in with this low down crap, no matter which Dem is nominated, every last one of us will be on board.

The right is fully prepared to run against either The Bitch, O-Bambi, or The Breck Girl (and in case he makes a sprint for the finish, Bill “Anchor Baby” Richardson) with the most hideous misogynist/racist/quasi-homophobic/xenophobic campaign in history. They know they are probably going to lose — but they’ll let the neanderthals on the bench have some fun in the second half to sharpen their skills.

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The New Religious Right

by digby

From Eve Fairbanks at TNR:

How come the most authentic anti-illegal candidates — the ones who have been advocating a big fence and no amnesty for years — were so hopeless? My own views are more liberal on this, so I’m tempted to believe it’s because building the fence and deporting millions of people simply isn’t what people want to do.

But as Tancredo pointed out, now all the GOP candidates push these same ideas! Really, immigration hardlining is just a new religion. Its early disciples are the weirdos, those harrowed souls chased in their dreams by the specter of Mexicans scurrying across rivers, whose very fervency marks them as people not to be taken seriously. But as one of those souls, the decision whether to throw your weight behind fellow travelers — Tancredo, when he was in the race, or now Fred Thompson — versus Romney or Huckabee is like the choice between keeping trudging in exile with the early purist martyrs or becoming a well-fed court priest for the Emperor Constantine. So you have a suspicion the Emperor converted just to expand his power. But, really, when you’re set up in gigs that nice and given so many people to preach to, who cares?

I think this is about right. It’s true that Romney and Huckabee aren’t true believers in the latest Republican Religion, but they will happily make room for the prophets with cushy wingnut welfare and access to the corridors of power. After all, the human sacrifices scheduled for the mass purifying rituals are just a bunch of dirt-poor disenfranchised foreigners. (Fuck the Mexicans, they don’t vote for us anyway!)

Let’s hope our Latino American brothers and sisters realize that it’s in their best interest to put these people in their place by voting for the party that hasn’t been invited to join the new Religion of Hate. (And let’s hope that party doesn’t decide to appease these new wingnut mullahs by converting.)

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MIASNBC

by digby

Can anyone fill me in on the logic behind MSNBC going to reruns all day yesterday and today, when people are off work and there is a very important political story out there?

Don’t get me wrong. Not watching Tweety is like a vacation. But I had thought MSNBC was trying to reposition itself as a “political” channel, sort of like FOX (as opposed to the CNN “news” model.)

Nada. Reruns all day of “Lockup” which is better than yesterday, which was all day repeats of the pedophile gotcha show — a curious choice for daytime TV…

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Kids Today

by digby

…are awesome:

One of the biggest capital punishment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a generation was put together largely by a young, fresh-out-of-law-school member of Kentucky’s overworked and underpaid corps of public defenders.David Barron, 29, filed an appeal on behalf of two Kentucky death row inmates, arguing that the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections across the country can cause excruciating pain, and thus amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.After three years of long hours on Barron’s part, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the case onJan. 7.”I can’t believe I’ve got a case before the Supreme Court and I’m not even 30 years old,” Barron said.This is the first time in more than a century that the high court will address the legality of a method of execution. Thirty-six states use lethal injection, and executions across the U.S. have come to a halt in the meantime.

Legal experts said the Kentucky case apparently got the attention of the high court because it arrived fully developed — it went through a full-blown trial with more than 20 witnesses, who argued both sides of the question of whether inmates suffer extreme pain while immobilized, unable to cry out.

Death penalty proponent Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said the case gives the Supreme Court “a clear shot at the merits of the injection question.”

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The shaggy-haired Barron — a Billerica, Mass., native who received a law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 2003 — can be found in his office at nearly all hours. His office is about the size of a walk-in closet and is so cluttered that Barron must move boxes and books for visitors to sit down.

Barron is a hardcore Boston Red Sox fan, papering his office door with pictures and headlines. He draws professional hope from the way the Red Sox finally won the World Series after 86 years of futility.

“There’s something to be said about representing the people who society casts aside,” Barron said. “They are the ones often left to fend for themselve

Good man.

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Divisive Dems

by digby

This just makes me sad:

I got yapped at the other day by the Obama campaign after wondering if Sen. Barack Obama was unfavorably comparing Sen. John Edwards to Sen John Kerry, regarding being easily painted as a flip-flopper.

On Monday Obama suggested that Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore were divisive.

In an argument about his electability, Obama compared himself favorably with Sen. Hillary Clinton who is viewed negatively by nearly half the country. Obama is viewed far more favorably by independents and Republicans.

Then he said, per ABC News’ Sunlen Miller, “I don’t want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We’ve done that in 2004 and 2000. 47 percent of the country on one side, 47 percent of the country on the other . . . We don’t need another one of those elections.” [also reported in the Chicago Sun Times — d]

There are reasons why the country has been polarized, but it’s not because of Al Gore or John Kerry. (And anyway, Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million votes. There was a little issue down in Florida that lost that one.)

I guess there’s nothing wrong with running against former Democratic candidates, but it seems kind of gratuitous. Maybe it’ll work, though. Everybody knows that divisive Democrats are the problem (although it’s the first time anyone’s made a point of that in a Democratic primary. Bold move.) The truth is that we rank and file Dems don’t have anywhere to go except out of the political process all together. We can’t vote for Republicans, who are completely out of the question. Why not run against the Democratic party? It worked for Bill Clinton, didn’t it?

And from the looks of this poll, it’s working for Senator Obama too. This could be the road to victory.

Update: Molly Ivors has more. As does Kos and Atrios. (But you knew that…)

Update II: I’m trying to track down where these “47” numbers came from since both Gore and Kerry scored higher in the election, and I’m guessing it’s the recent hitjob on Hillary Clinton by Sally Bedell Smith, where she reports a 47% favorability rating for Gore. But I think Bedell Smith’s numbers are misleading. Other polls showed Gore with as high as 60% favorables just before the election. Zogby showed him at 53% in April of 1999 and 59% in September 2000.

I’m not accusing Senator Obama of lying. There were a couple of polls that did have Gore with favorabilities in the high 40’s just before the election. But unless you believe that Gore was given a free ride by the press and the Republicans — Kerry too — you can’t hang anything on a candidates’ favorabilities a year out. They will all get worked over, as Obama himself has acknowledged. It’s the process. But after all is said and done, it’s likely that Democrats and Dem leaning independents will like their candidate quite a bit, and that Republicans and Republican leaning independents will not. It’s the nature of the two party system. If Al Gore wound up with more than 10% of the people still having a favorable impression of him after all that was done to discredit him, it was a miracle. And yet he won the popular vote.

I’d love for it to not be close this time. And I’m hopeful that it won’t be. A mandate would be great. But there’s no guarantee that someone who has high favorables a year out can get that done anymore than someone who has high unfavorables, can’t. It just isn’t dispositive of the question of who can best win.

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