Month: March 2008

Saturday Night At The Movies

Allow Me To Demonstrate

By Dennis Hartley

A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station.
-Abbie Hoffman

In September of 1969, Abbie Hoffman and fellow radical activists Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner were hauled into court along with Black Panther Bobby Seale on a grand jury indictment for allegedly conspiring to incite the massive anti-Vietnam war protests and resulting violent mayhem that transpired in the Chicago environs during the 1968 Democratic Convention. What resulted is arguably the most overtly political “show trial” in American history.

Scarcely a day after I went to see Brett Morgen’s new documentary, Chicago 10, which recounts the events leading up to the “police riots” in the streets, the tumultuous convention itself and the subsequent trial of the “Chicago 7”, I saw this story on the local TV news here in Seattle and thought to myself,“Yippee!”

TACOMA, Wash. – About 150 people — those opposed to the Iraq War and those supporting it — gathered noisily outside a Tacoma Mall office building on Saturday. A group known as World Can’t Wait had organized an anti-war protest to mark the coming fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. But long before their protest was scheduled to begin, counter-protesters arrived. The counter-protesters surrounded an office building that houses military recruiting offices, which anti-war protesters had said they planned to “shut down.” They shouted “God bless our troops” and waved American flags. As the two groups faced off, dozens of police officers, including some in full SWAT gear, served as a buffer zone. They formed a human line to divide the groups. But there were no arrests or injuries. The two groups shouted insults at each other and waved posters and flags. The demonstrators shouted insults at each other and each side attempted to out-yell the other side. “They don’t appreciate our soldiers and what they do for our freedom,” said Cheryl Ames. “I am on this side because I do not agree with the way the war started,” said Tommie CeBrun. Protesters held up photos of Iraq detainees tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. They also laid out 281 pairs of shoes on the sidewalk in front of the building, including 81 pairs of combat boots that carried tags bearing the name of a U.S. military member killed in Iraq who listed Washington as his or her home state. The protesters said the 200 pairs of shoes represented the 200-to-1 ratio of the Iraqi-to-American death rate. But the act was met with a volley of insults. Warnings for military families to avoid the mall had been circulating for days, since some recent protests, including one at the Port of Olympia, have seen increased violence. Meghan Tellez and her children planned to avoid the mall. Her husband is in the Navy Reserve. “I love that mall, but I don’t want my children around that,” she said.

Up against the mall, motherfucker.

Yes, it’s been nearly 40 years to the day since the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention, but it would seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same; which is all the more reason that you need to rush out and see Chicago 10 immediately.

First, let’s solve the math story problem that addresses the disparity between the film’s title and the conventional “Chicago 7” reference. There were originally 8 defendants, but Bobby Seale was (for all intents and purposes) “banished” from court early in the proceedings after heated verbal exchanges with presiding judge Julius Hoffman. After draconian physical restraint methods failed to silence him (Seale was literally bound, gagged and chained to his chair at one point), Judge Hoffman had him tossed out altogether. His crime? Demanding his constitutional right to an attorney of his choice, for which he eventually served an unbelievable 4 year sentence for contempt (well, “unbelievable” back in the pre-Gitmo era). The group’s outspoken defense attorneys, William Kuntsler and Leonard Weinglass, also rubbed the judge the wrong way and were cited for contempt as well (although they never did time). Hence, we end up with “10”.

Using a mélange of animation, archival footage and voiceover re-creation by well-known actors, Morgen expands even further on the eye-catching multimedia technique that he and co-director Nanette Burstein used in their 2002 doc The Kid Stays in the Picture.

The bulk of the animated sequences are re-enactments from the trial itself, with dialog lifted directly from courtroom transcripts (and trust me, no rewrites were required because you couldn’t make this shit up). This visual technique perfectly encapsulates the overall circus atmosphere of the trial, which was largely fueled by Hoffman and Rubin’s amusing yet effective use of “guerilla theatre” to disrupt the proceedings and accentuate what they felt to be the inherent absurdity of the charges. The courtroom players are voiced by the likes of Nick Nolte (as prosecutor Thomas Foran), Jeffrey Wright (as Bobby Seale) and the late Roy Scheider (in full “fuddy-duddy” mode as Judge Hoffman).

Do not, however, mistake this film as a gimmicky and superficial “cartoon” that only focuses on the hijinx. There is plenty of evidence on hand, in the form of archival footage (fluidly incorporated by editor Stuart Levy) to remind us that these were very serious times. In one memorable clip, the usually unflappable Walter Cronkite, ensconced in the press booth above the convention arena, shakes his head and declares the situation in Chicago to be tantamount to “…what could only be called a police state”. Interestingly, the iconic, oft-used footage of reporter Dan Rather being manhandled by security officers on the convention floor is conspicuously MIA; Morgen seems determined to avoid the conventional documentary approach in order to give us a fresh perspective on the story. The footage of the Chicago police wildly bludgeoning any and all who crossed their path (demonstrator and innocent bystander alike) still has the power to shock and physically sicken the viewer. There is a protracted montage of this violence that seems to run on for at least 10 minutes; sensitive viewers may find this sequence particularly upsetting.

I have to give kudos for the excellent soundtrack; or rather, for what songs are not on the soundtrack. For once, a film about the “turbulent 60s” does not feature “Fortunate Son” by CCR, “Get Together” by the Youngbloods or (most notably) “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield (you can always re-watch Forrest Gump if you wish to wallow in trite 60s clichés). Appropriately incendiary music by Rage Against the Machine, The Beastie Boys and Eminem balances well with less-plundered period songs from Black Sabbath (“War Pigs”), Steppenwolf (“Monster”) and the MC5 (“Kick Out the Jams”).

I understand that Steven Spielberg is currently in pre-production on a dramatized version of the story, written by Aaron Sorkin and tentatively titled The Trial of the Chicago 7. Rumor has it that Sacha Baron Cohen will play Abbie Hoffman, which would be such a perfect match on many levels (if someone can prove to me that his alter-egos, Ali G and Borat, don’t have deep roots in the political guerilla theatre of the 60s, I’ll eat my Che cap). With the obvious historical parallels abounding vis a vis the current government’s foreign policy and the overall political climate of disenfranchisement in this country, I say the more cautionary films about the Chicago 7 trial that are out there, the merrier.

If I have any quibble with Chicago 10, it is a minor one. Although some of us are old enough (ahem) to remember the high-profile media coverage of the trial and grok the circumstances surrounding it, perhaps a little hindsight analysis or discussion of historical context would have been helpful for younger viewers. But as I have already said, perhaps Morgen wanted to steer clear of the usual clichés, like parading a series of talking heads with gray ponytails, sentimentalizing and waxing poetically about the halcyon days of yore. Besides, if you “remember” the 60s, you probably weren’t there anyway, right?

Radical cheek: Monkey Warfare, Sir! No Sir!, Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, The Great Chicago Conspiracy Circus, Growing Up in America, Punishment Park, Steal This Movie!, Medium Cool, Getting Straight, FTA, The Strawberry Statement, Sympathy for the Devil, Drive, He Said, Wild in the Streets, Zabriskie Point), The Something’s Happening (aka Hippie Revolt), 1969, The Weather Underground, The Murder of Fred Hampton, Nixon , The Trials of Henry Kissinger,The War at Home (1979), Berkeley in the Sixties, Revolution (1968), Woodstock , Panther, Hearts and Minds, Born on the Fourth of July , Hair, Across the Universe, I’m Not There, Running on Empty, The Big Fix, Return of the Secaucus 7.

Update: In honor of Roger Stone’s epic ratfuck, here’s a very special Spitzer Night At The Movies – DH

Why the French think we are a funny people

With all the media frenzy over the Governor Spitzer scandal, I got to thinking about films that deal with “sex and politics” themes.

My personal favorite of the genre is an outstanding and overlooked drama from 1995 that was originally presented as a three-part miniseries in the UK, The Politician’s Wife. Juliet Stevenson delivers a tour-de-force performance as Flora, the staunchly supportive wife of Duncan Matlock, an ambitious rising star in England’s conservative Tory party.

A scandal erupts when Duncan is caught with his pants down by the notorious British tabloid press. His fling with an “escort” girl (Minnie Driver) quickly becomes fertile ground for muckraking, as he happens to be the Minister of Family (oops). At first, Flora suffers in silence, desperately wanting to believe her husband’s assurance that it was only a regrettable one night stand. She caves to pressure from Duncan’s handlers (including her own father) to keep a brave face in public, “for the sake of the party”.

But when a conscience-stricken member of the Minister’s inner circle slips Flora some irrefutable evidence proving that the “fling” was in fact a torrid year-long affair, her pain turns to bitterness and anger. Fueled by the deep sense of betrayal and growing awareness of Duncan’s wanton abuse of his powers, she hatches a clever and methodical scheme to subvert his political capital (i.e. to drain his precious bodily fluids, figuratively speaking).

The beauty of Paula Milne’s script lies in the subtle execution of Flora’s revenge Avoiding the usual “Hell hath no fury” clichés, Milne’s protagonist (not unlike Livia in I, Claudius) finds her empowerment through an assimilated understanding of what makes the members of this particular boy’s club tick; she is then able to orchestrate events in such a manner that they all end up falling on their own swords (keep your friends close, but your enemies closer). Intelligently written, splendidly acted, and not to be missed.

Politicos in flagrante: Scandal (1989), Blow Out,Murder at 1600, Absolute Power, No Way Out (1987), The Contender,Primary Colors, Bulworth, The Hunting of the President, Advise and Consent, The Candidate, Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, Shampoo, Don’s Party, WR: Mysteries of the Organism .

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Everybody Must Get Stoned

by dday

See, there’s a very simple explanation for how federal investigators discovered Eliot Spitzer’s secret trysts in hotel rooms with prostitutes. They were merely alerted by a series of suspicious financial transactions and thought it was a bribery case and then just stumbled upon the prostitution ring. It’s all so very s-

What’s this now?

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ”used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida.
The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ”a social contact in an adult-themed club.” It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn’t taken off his calf-length black socks “during the sex act.”

Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton’s presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.

”Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,” the letter states, before going on to offer ”certain information” about Spitzer.

”The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,” the letter said.

So a well-known Republican ratfucker with a history of making threatening phone calls to Spitzer’s father in the middle of the night, is contacted by the FBI, in reference to God knows what, and he refuses to talk to them, but through his lawyer he leaks a bit of oppo research he picked up in a sex club, which he’s been known to frequent. The Miami FBI apparently TAKES NO FOR AN ANSWER, and may have forwarded the information to the FBI in New York (they would not say whether or not they received the letter). A month later Stone goes on Michael Smerconish’s radio show and says unequivocally that “Eliot Spitzer will not serve out his term as governor of the state of New York.” A couple months later Spitzer is picked up on a wire and you know the rest. Immediately Stone is interviewed by Newsday, and you can almost smell the smugness.

“I didn’t make him go to a prostitution ring,” said the most famous and ruthless Republican dirty trickster who still walks the earth. “He did that all on his own.”

Stone said that even before I asked if his hand was somehow in Spitzer’s latest trouble. I figured, somehow or another, it had to be.

“No comment on that,” Stone said. “I will say I knew it was coming. That’s why I wasn’t too upset about the results of the special election,” where a Democrat grabbed a supposedly safe Republican State Senate seat, leaving Democrats just one vote shy of control.

Conversations with Stone often go like that. Always cocky. A little cryptic. Leaving you wondering about more.

Yeah, I’m wondering why some slimy political operative is all but managing federal investigations in the Bush Justice Department.

Scott Horton at Harper’s has some more, including this new article from the New York Times.

The Justice Department used some of its most intrusive tactics against Eliot Spitzer, examining his financial records, eavesdropping on his phone calls and tailing him during its criminal investigation of the Emperor’s Club prostitution ring. The scale and intensity of the investigation of Mr. Spitzer, then the governor of New York, seemed on its face to be a departure for the Justice Department, which aggressively investigates allegations of wrongdoing by public officials, but almost never investigates people who pay prostitutes for sex.

A review of recent federal cases shows that federal prosecutors go sparingly after owners and operators of prostitution enterprises, and usually only when millions of dollars are involved or there are aggravating circumstances, like human trafficking or child exploitation. Government lawyers and investigators defend the expenditure of resources on Mr. Spitzer in the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. case as justifiable and necessary since it involved the possibility of criminal wrongdoing by New York’s highest elected official, who had been the state’s top prosecutor.

So the Justice Department, under the direction of Roger Frickin’ Stone, at least from the outside, deployed massive resources to capture the bad actions of a sitting Democratic governor, while in the analogous case of the DC Madam they expended no energy entrapping David Vitter or Randall Tobias. And we know the Bush Administration has a history with going after Democratic governors and even putting them in the slammer.

Eliot Spitzer did what he did; there’s no getting around that. The selective prosecution and politicization of justice, however, continues to magnify in this case.

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Changing The Conversation on National Security

by digby

As we’ve “celebrated” the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion these last few days, with exciting speeches by the Commander in Chief and former war advocates pleading for everyone to forget what they said then and listen to them now, it’s probably predictable that the mainstream media failed to cover the Winter Soldier testimony last week or that they are pulling back their coverage from Iraq now that it’s not a sexy story. The fact that CNN has had Kira Phillips over there for a couple of weeks dressed in Prada fatigues and interviewing people in the Green Zone tells us everything we need to know.

And, predictably, the war is falling down the list of people’s concerns, what with the economy doing a belly flop and the necessity to obsessively report every tit-for-tat of the election campaign. There are only 24 hours a day seven days a week, after all.

But the war will not disappear just because the media finds it dull. It is our single most important national security challenge and it’s costing the taxpayers a mint and still killing and maiming thousands of people. If Democrats don’t make this election a referendum on this war, keep it on the front burner and offer solutions, Bush’s plan to dump this thing in the lap of the Democrats and then blame them for the failure will succeed and the politicians in the next congress and the white house will be under tremendous pressure to keep it going forever. That is, after all, how Cheney designed the war. (You’ll notice that oil companies and military contractors are showing record profits. Again.)

The good news is that Democratic challengers (26 and counting)are out on the stump at town meetings and fund raisers all over the country with their responsible plan to end the war in Iraq. It challenges the conventional wisdom and gives Democrats a way to explain in coherent fashion how the war can be brought to an end — and what a holistic liberal foreign policy might look like. The plan challenges the foreign policy paradigm with which we are all familiar — carrots and sticks, military vs diplomatic — and brings in some of the other important issues such as the media, the usurpation of the constitution and energy policy to address the fundamental problems we confronted during this lawless regime. Problems which resulted in the illegal and immoral quagmire of Iraq.

The plan is designed for candidates who need to show their constituents the way out and for all Democrats to begin to change the conversation on national security. It can be useful for the rest of us for the same purpose as we chatter about politics on our blogs, around the water cooler and over our holiday dinners.

You can access the plan at their web-site and endorse it yourself if you’d like.

ROTFLMAO

by tristero

You can’t make this stuff up. PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins decided to attend a screening of a film espousing “intelligent design” creationism, a film in which the producers thoroughly misrepresented (meaning, lied) and thereby secured their participation. Well apparently, someone recognized PZ in line, banned him from the screening; the security guard even threatened to arrest him! But somehow they failed to recognize Dawkins!!! Go here for a good chuckle. And as always, read Pharyngula. Pz himself has many funny things to say about it.

Slaughter

Glenn Greenwald says, more or less, what needs to be said about Anne-Marie Slaughter’s attempt to sidestep talking about her rotten judgment in 2002/2003. He is too polite to add that Slaughter and her co-enablers of George W. Bush’s pointless war have blood on their hands. I am not so polite. Nor do I see any reason to be when someone as intellectually shallow as Slaughter – intellectual depth is as much a function of character as it is the willingness to deploy the term “metric” when it measures nothing real – holds an important, prestigious job she doesn’t deserve.

I’ve discussed Slaughter’s bad ideas before (and probably earlier as well). This time I was struck by how truly weird and manipulative her writing style is. Consider:

I’ll start by offering a metric for how to assess any candidate — and any expert’s — plan for Iraq. The test for the best policy should be the one that is most likely to bring the most troops home in the shortest time (to stop American casualties, begin repairing our military, and be able to redeploy badly needed military assets to Afghanistan), while also achieving the most progress on the goals that the administration stated publicly as a justification for invading in the first place: 1) ensuring that the Iraqi government could not develop nuclear or biological weapons of mass destruction (done); 2) weaken terrorist groups seeking to attack us (this goal was based on false premises then, but is highly relevant now); 3) improve the human rights of the Iraqi people; and 4) establish a government in Iraq that could help stabilize and liberalize the Middle East. No policy can possibly achieve all of those goals. But the policy that offers the best chance on all five measures is the policy we should follow, in my view. And applying those measures to concrete policy proposals is the debate we should be having.

Let’s look closely at this remarkable statement.

It is not merely a typo that Slaughter enumerates four “metrics” and calls them five – it indicates the extent either of her fuzzy thinking or her dishonesty (or both). The missing measure seems to be before the colon, I suspect. But using plain speech as a criterion I count nine goals, all told (ymmv). The confusion comes because Slaughter plays a shell game. In “number zero,” she uses the liberal invocation to “bring the troops home” but in reality that’s the farthest thing from her mind; Actually, she wants to transfer the troops to Afghanistan. And in number 4, the real goal is not to “establish a government in Iraq” – we should be so lucky – but to “stabilize and liberalize the Middle East.”

But surely, our astute readers here at Hullabaloo have noticed that in reality, there is simply one “metric” Slaughter advances for judging candidates: Whether they’ll stay in Iraq ’til we find the pony.

But we’re not done. Slaughter purports to be a serious voice – she certainly has the credentials. But these are deeply unserious proposals. For one thing, Slaughter lives in a world where the United States acts in an entirely isolated manner. Not so much as a suggestion in her proposals that all foreign policy in the 21st century must, given the modern interdependency of nations, be multi-lateral.

Finally, let us ponder the first clump of proposals – return the troops to the US, repair the military, and ship “military assets” – she means “increase troop levels,” but tries to finesse it – out again to Afghanistan. What’s missing is any thought-out notion of time and expense. If we factor in her goals for Iraq, which require US troops, we are talking years before this transfer of assets could be effected. And billions upon billions of dollars. The US has neither the years nor the cash. And, more importantly, it shouldn’t have the interest in taking naive, expensive unilateral military action anywhere (and bringing up unilateral action in Rwanda, as she does in her post, is plain shabby rhetorical mush).

Let me put this another way. If Slaughter is the finest mind Princeton can find to be “Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,” then the bar for having a successful academic career in international affairs is set dangerously low. I’d like to nominate a replacement, if not for her job, then at least for her slot as a Huffington Post blogger.

I nominate Digby.

80,000 Well-Armed, Angry Sunnis

by dday

The American media has forgotten that there are countries to the east of Pennsylvania, home of the April 22 primary. The marginalization of the Iraq debacle is expected, since in many ways the media wants to obscure their own failures in the run-up to the invasion in the first place. If they manage to re-open any foreign bureaus, perhaps they’d like to pay some attention to a story of 80,000 angry Sunnis threatening to strike and reduce Iraq to total chaos.

At issue are the Concerned Local Citizens groups (CLCs) that we have been paying for over a year not to kill us and instead to defend their territories and drive out Al Qaeda in Iraq. You could not set up a more potentially unstable situation if you tried. The CLCs have no fealty to the national government; in fact they are if anything oppositional to it. The Shiites in power are afraid of incorporating the CLCs into the Iraqi security forces. It has been alleged that the CLCs include former insurgents and rogues, and they are primarily interested in 1) receiving money, and 2) defending their corner of Iraq from all invaders, foreign and domestic. This is not a path to national reconciliation but balkanization.

And then the military and the Administration went and did the worst thing possible – they forgot to pay everyone on time. That’s right – the incompetents that still reign throughout the Bush Administration aren’t paying the bills. And so we may see a general strike.

The success of the US “surge” strategy in Iraq may be under threat as Sunni militia employed by the US to fight al-Qaida are warning of a national strike because they are not being paid regularly.

Leading members of the 80,000-strong Sahwa, or awakening, councils have said they will stop fighting unless payment of their $10 a day (£5) wage is resumed. The fighters are accusing the US military of using them to clear al-Qaida militants from dangerous areas and then abandoning them.

A telephone survey by GuardianFilms for Channel 4 News reveals that out of 49 Sahwa councils four with more than 1,400 men have already quit, 38 are threatening to go on strike and two already have.

Improved security in Iraq in recent months has been attributed to a combination of the surge, the truce observed by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, and the effectiveness and commitment of the councils, which are drawn from Sunni Arabs and probably the most significant factor, according to most analysts.

The military is using these Sunni forces to “do their dirty work,” as one council head put it, and now they aren’t even holding up their end of the bargain. Also, the fact that none of the CLC members are being allowed to get jobs in the Iraqi security forces is causing a lot of tension.

I want you to watch this video (I don’t think there’s any way to embed it) and you then tell me how empowering and arming these CLCs is going to lead to a stable democracy in Iraq. Here we have Sunni strikers chanting “America is the enemy of God.” You’ll see the story of a university professor in Diyala province who was bullied by Al Qaeda in Iraq members and fought back by leading one of the CLCs. And now he’s turned against America and is leading a strike.

This is the surge going up in flames. You’d think that would merit a story or two on the nightly news. And the point is that this ad hoc strategy to build security gains in Iraq is not only fated for failure, but when that failure occurs is will be maybe the WORST possible outcome, with both sides of the sectarian divide armed to the teeth and scornful of the Americans.

UPDATE: The beneficent Atta J. Turk comes up with the YouTube of the Guardian report.

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Who’s Watching You?

by digby

… and why?

Glenn Greenwald gets to what’s important about this snooping into the passport files of the three presidential candidates — the simple observation that if the government has the means and the ability to spy on citizens without proper restraint or sanction, it will. In this case, they are saying it was some “contract employees” (temps?)whose curiosity got the best of them. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but it illustrates just how easy it is for the government, and government employees, to use the vast powers and technological prowess taxpayers pay for, to intrude on American citizens’ privacy.

Why in the world was it so easy for any State Department employees, much less contractors, to access such files in the first place? These are three of the highest profile people in the United States. How many other people’s files have been accessed and for what reasons? This is, after all, the Bush administration, where even the Justice department was run as an arm of the white house political machine.

This is the problem. Human nature alone dictates that if people can stick their noses in other people’s business they will. When there are also the incentives of power (and perhaps, money) it’s almost irresistible to some people. That is why the fourth amendment exists — the enlightenment concept of our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness depends upon our ability to maintain our privacy.

When you allow your government to become a surveillance state to “protect you” from the “enemy,” its inevitable that the power will be misused and will end up encroaching on your freedom and autonomy. The definition of “enemy” after all, is subject to interpretation. If you build a police state, they will use it. (And history shows exactly what that can lead to.)

This episode may very well be benign. If we start hearing about “questionable” travels by one of the candidates, we’ll know. (President Clinton’s records were searched by Bush operatives in 1992 to find out if he had secretly traveled to Russia to meet with his communist handlers, after all.) But it’s bigger than that. The government handles vast amounts of information and except for a few intrepid citizens and the ACLU, nobody seems to be too exercised about what they might be doing with it. If anyone thinks they won’t possibly use it for political purposes, they’re being naive.

Nobody likes slippery slope arguments, but they can also be seen as being properly attentive to the consequences of certain actions. A right to privacy is fundamental to freedom. If we don’t strenuously protect it, the consequences are that we won’t be free. It’s no more complicated than that.

Sam at Scholars and Rogues has more on privacy vs. technology, here.

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He’s Going For It

by dday

Looks like Bombs Away John McCain is going to go ahead and try to lie his way to the White House.

But while the McCain campaign is backing away from the specific claims about Iranian training of Al Qaeda, it is asserting that Iran collaborates with Osama bin Laden’s organization.

Mr. McCain’s national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, told The New York Sun, “There is ample documentation that Iran has provided many different forms of support to Sunni extremists, including Al Qaeda as well as Shi’ia extremists in Iraq. It would require a willing suspension of disbelief to deny Iran supports Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Responding to Mr. Scheunemann’s remarks, a senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, Susan Rice, yesterday told the Sun, “It’s very bizarre.” She noted that Mr. McCain had “made the same statement three times in as many days. Surely he must know, as Senator Lieberman reminded him, that Iran is not engaged with Al Qaeda in Iraq. I don’t know if he is confused, or is he cynically trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iran as Cheney and Bush did Al Qaeda and Iraq in 2002 and 2003?”

The far-right New York Sun has skin in this game, because their article about AQI/Iran ties is being used by the wingnutosphere, sometimes multiple times with the statement “multiple sources have confirmed” attached, to “prove” the claim. However, the fact that both Raymond Odierno and David Petraeus disagree with any mention of a Shiite Iran/Sunni Al Qaeda link isn’t enough for Bombs Away John.

This is no different than Preznit Gimme ‘Nother War blustering on about Iran being a continued “nuclear threat” 4 years after they curtailed their nuclear program, and explicitly claiming they want to “destroy another nation” based on a badly translated quote by the Iranian President, who has no power over military affairs. The idea is to knowingly deceive as a pretext for war.

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Politicians Gone Wild

by digby

Of all the wisecracks heard in the marble halls of New York’s Capitol after Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s downfall in a call-girl scandal, one jest enlightened as much as it stung: Spitzer’s got to be the only guy in Albany who PAYS for sex.

It is an open secret that there is a lot of fooling around going on at the statehouse. And at other statehouses, too.

In fact, Gov. David Paterson, in an extraordinary news conference on Tuesday, his first full day on the job after taking over from Spitzer, acknowledged he had had extramarital affairs with a number of women while he was a state senator. At night, legislators, young staffers, younger interns, lobbyists and reporters mix at two or three bars just blocks from the Capitol. And there are numerous receptions, campaign stops and caucuses where lawmakers, straight and gay alike, often have many opportunities for a hookup.

Up until just a few years ago, lawmakers would go “window shopping” for interns at the start of every legislative session. In a practice that went on for decades, the interns would be corraled in a Capitol newsstand so that legislators could pick their office help based on their looks, not their resumes.

The hanky-panky even has its own lexicon: There’s the “Bear Mountain Compact,” which says that what goes on north of the state park just outside New York City stays there. Lobbyists, staffers and reporters who seek to enhance their influence by bedding powerful lawmakers are known as “big game hunters.” And the men who sleep with the women lawmakers are “boy toys.”

“Unfortunately, many of the people who seek public office are flawed people to begin with and the environment in Albany just tends to bring that out,” said Paul Clyne, former district attorney in Albany.

Clyne issued a scathing report in 2004 on the internship program at the Capitol, famously saying he would never let his daughter become an intern. The report led to reforms in the program, including an end to fraternization between lawmakers and interns outside the office.

“There was a lot hitting on us and boundaries being crossed,” said one young woman lobbyist who was part of that scene for years.

I am probably more libertarian on matters of private sexual behavior than a lot of you. In fact, I know I am since I didn’t find Spitzer’s actions to be a matter of public interest except to the extent he had actually prosecuted others for the crimes he had committed and had run on a platform of moral rectitude.

However, this truly is beyond the pale and should be a matter for investigation. If politicians who corralled a bunch of women into a newsstand to be chosen for jobs in legislators’ offices based on their sexual attractiveness to the disgusting pigs they were going to work for are still in office today, they should be exposed. That’s not consensual behavior, that’s sex discrimination. This practice apparently went on until 2004, and there’s no excuse for it.

I’m not surprised that extramarital sex goes on in political capitals, where people from far flung parts of the state or the nation are brought together, away from their normal social and private circumstances. It happens in show business too, for similar reasons — fame, power and fortune create a whole bunch of incentives that don’t necessarily exist in people’s everyday lives.

But this article indicates that lobbyists are selling their bodies for political consideration and that lawmakers used the intern pool (at least until recently) as their own private whorehouse. It’s institutional, not personal. That’s called corruption and discrimination and it’s not the same thing as consensual sex between two adults. This is more like some kind of sexual plantation.

Surprisingly, the private sector is way ahead on this stuff. Going all the way back to the 90’s, the business world began to learn that sexual harrassment and discrimination was lethal. It’s hard to believe that the politicians who wrote the fucking laws took until 2004 to figure out that treating interns like Amsterdam whores was probably not a good way to go, but apparently they did.

Everybody knows that politics is a dirty business, but this is ridiculous.

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Dumb As A Fox

by digby

I have often wondered why John McCain never travels anywhere without Joe Lieberman and Huckleberry Graham plastered to his side. Apparently, Lieberman is there to clean up McCain’s messes. On top of his insanely ill informed (and repeated) assertions that the Suni Al Qaeda are getting training in Shia Iran, he blew it again today in Israel and Holy Joe stepped up once more to explain it:

When McCain made a foreign policy gaffe in Jordan on Tuesday, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman who quietly pointed out the mistake, giving McCain an opportunity to correct himself in front of the international press corps. In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim — by calling the holiday “their version of Halloween here.”

[…]

The holiday — although a joyous one — commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. “I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim,” Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. “And it’s my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it’s a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays.”

[…]

McCain’s mistake wasn’t a big deal. But what is interesting, Appelbaum points out, is Lieberman’s role during this trip. In two days, Lieberman has intervened twice in front of the press — once helping McCain with a correction on Sunnis/Shiites and once putting the blame on himself regarding the description of Purim

This isn’t the first time, by far. During the primary, Lieberman had speak up and help out McCain on domestic policy as well, when he when asked a question about education in Florida:

Lieberman: You know a lot of candidates can give you a good answer on education or on health care or on any of the other things that you worry about….You gotta have a president that’s going to pull people in both parties together and say OK, you’re a Democrat, I’m a Republican, but do you know what’s more important? We’re Americans and we have a responsibility to deliver to the American people

That’s going to have to be his appeal, because his command of the issues is looking nearly as bad as Bush.(The vaunted Independents seem to be buying it.)

While it’s shocking to those of us in the reality based community that this man has reached this stage in life, having been in government for decades and run for president once already, and is still a bumbling fool, it’s important to remember that this is not a disqualifier for the presidency in the United states of America. In fact, it may even be a conscious strategy. Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr all profited from their ignorance. They are the guys people want to have a beer with (or in Poppy’s case, a pork rind with), which, as we all know, is far more important to many people than intelligence or knowledge ever could be. So I would never underestimate the power of being stupid to make people want to vote for you. Americans can ‘t stand eggheads.

So, perhaps that’s why Lieberman’s with him — to clear the record and make him look even dumber than he naturally is.

But what’s Huckleberry’s job?

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