Month: April 2008

Speaking For the Little Guy

by digby

Up-is-downism makes a triumphant return to the political stage:

McCain calls Obama insensitive to poor people

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.

The GOP nominee-in-waiting rapped his Democratic rival for opposing his idea to suspend the tax on fuel during the summer, a proposal that McCain believes will particularly help low-income people who usually have older cars that guzzle more gas.

“I noticed again today that Sen. Obama repeated his opposition to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their lives,” McCain said. “Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy.”

The Arizona senator deflected questions about his record on the Bush administration’s tax cuts — he initially opposed them but now supports extending them — by again criticizing Obama.

“Sen. Obama wants to raise the capital gains tax, which would have a direct effect on 100 million Americans,” McCain said. “That means he has no understanding of the economy and that he is totally insensitive to the hopes and dreams and ambitions of 100 million Americans who will be affected by his almost doubling of the capital gains tax.”

I don’t think I need to explain everything that’s wrong with that, do you? The idea of McCain claiming that anyone, much less Barack Obama, doesn’t understand the economy because “100 million Americans” would be affected by the raising of the capital gains tax is mind boggling.

Good God, that man has chutzpah. Just like his political mentor, the reformer with results, “Free Lunch” Bush.

Update: And then there’s McCain incomprehensible, and exceedingly dangerous, foreign policy. Not that anyone cares because he was a POW and that automatically makes him a geopolitical genius.

Update II: The shrill one on McCain’s delusional economic agenda.

H/T to DG

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Mercenary Pariahs

by digby

Via TBOGG, I see that Blackwater can’t find love anywhere in Southern California:

San Diego officials will challenge Blackwater Worldwide’s permit for an indoor military training facility in South County, saying the public didn’t know about the plan.

“Residents deserve to know when a facility like this is approved – before it is approved,” San Diego City Council President Scott Peters said.

The North Carolina company received a permit in March for a training site in Otay Mesa, an industrial section of south San Diego, shortly after abandoning its controversial proposal to build a larger facility in Potrero in East County.

The city Development Services Department granted the permit without public hearings. The site was already permitted for a vocational school, and city staff members decided Blackwater’s training of Navy personnel qualified. The facility will have a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms.

Brian Bonfiglio, a Blackwater vice president, said the opposition seems to originate from anti-war sentiment, not animosity toward the facility itself.

If that’s so, then we are seeing a major sea change. San Diego is a super military town. If it’s gone “anti-war” then you can pretty much guarantee that it’s over for the pro Iraq crowd.

I don’t know if it’s actually true that San Diego is anti-war, but I think it’s pretty clear that just about everybody is anti-Blackwater. This is an unAmerican company made up of war profiteers who have no loyalty to anyone but their own bottom line. The soldiers fighting over in Iraq on their third and fourth tours for peanuts certainly aren’t crazy about the preening jackasses who make their job more dangerous.

These mercenary “security” companies do not adhere to American law and they don’t answer to the American government. They are a very dangerous step toward a privatized military that answers to no one but its owners. The problem is that the rest of the world will hold Americans responsible for what they do and we will all pay the price.

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Following The Script

by digby

I wrote this back in the beginning of February:

Chris Matthews personally deplored Bill Clinton when he was president, loathed Al Gore in 2000, hated John Kerry in 2004 and right now despises Hillary Clinton. And there are huge hints of what’s to come if Obama does get the nomination, particularly if McCain, the man who Matthews has already said “deserves to be president” becomes the Republican nominee. He has the narrative already primed:

One idea in the notebook was something a congressman had told Mr. Matthews years earlier. The congressman had said that every so often in life, the galloping horse of history comes by and you have to make a decision. “You have to jump on that horse or you miss your turn,” Mr. Matthews had said. “The country is facing that. Do I want to jump on the horse, or not? It’s too tricky. It’s too scary. It’s moving too fast. I’m not ready.”

The galloping campaign, in Mr. Matthews’ estimation, was that of Senator Barack Obama. He had the momentum, was in the saddle, was holding the reigns. But had Mr. Obama become the avant-garde candidate? If so, he was in trouble. The middle-class workers would pull back in suspicion. Who was this Ivy League guy on his, um, high horse? They wouldn’t get on board. The galloping horse of history might pass them by.

Matthews sees himself as the voice of the working man, so this is his pivot point. Just wait….

Later in the month I wrote this:

It was only a matter of time before the media began to trivialize Obama and his campaign as a bunch of latte sipping left-wing hippie elites. That’s the 30 year conservative rap on liberals and it’s been fully internalized by the MSM and a whole lot of Americans, including some Democrats. When you start to hear the pundits talking about “beer track/wine track” this isn’t far behind…

You’ll note that this was before Wright and before the so-called “bittergate.”

This is a Village meme that has been used over the course of thirty years.(Fifty, if you want to go back to Stevenson.) It has been so internalized among the media elites that the Republicans don’t even have to say it out loud anymore. It was inevitable that it would happen.

However, when Obama started to look like the probable nominee, and the media were looking a bit like they could fail to recite their lines, they did prime the pump. The opening salvo came from none other than David Brooks on February 8th:

Obama’s people are so taken with their messiah that soon they’ll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings. There’s a “Yes We Can” video floating around YouTube in which a bunch of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and the guy from the Black Eyed Peas are singing the words to an Obama speech in escalating states of righteousness and ecstasy. If that video doesn’t creep out normal working-class voters, then nothing will.

Here’s the cover of Newsweek today:

That’s arugula vs beer, btw. The cover says “Obama’s Bubba gap” and the story is called “Obama’s Otherness,” (which I earlier referred to as the “Barack ain’t quite right” theme.)

I’m not trying to tout my incredible prescience here, but simply pointing out that this was always going to happen. It’s the way the modern political narrative is structured and it’s the most fundamental thing we have working against us. They did it to Bill Clinton too — he was a pot smoking hippie, draft dodger you’ll recall. Al Gore was portrayed as a little rich girl who grew up in a fancy hotel. Here’s Time magazine from November 1999:

Al Gore’s childhood is the stuff of classics. Specifically, the children’s classic Eloise, by Kay Thompson. Both Al and Eloise lived in a hotel, both were born in the late ’40s, both had busy parents, both have had to wage wars on boredom. And this month, the Eloise licensing campaign heats up with dolls, furniture and collectibles. How the two kids match up:

[Eloise] A top-floor suite at the luxurious Plaza Hotel in New York City

[Al Gore] A top-floor suite at “Washington’s Family Hotel,” the Fairfax, now the Westin-Fairfax, in Washington

The story was a giggling GOP oppo plant, but that didn’t stop the kewl kidz from running with it. I don’t need to remind you about John Kerry and his “butler” and the “green tea” and the “wit-whiz” psuedoscandals of 2004. If Clinton were still the front runner, she’d be portrayed in the press as a cross between Dalmation draped Cruella DeVille and Evita Peron with her 100 million and Bubba trophy husband. (Actually, she is — they aren’t taking any chances.)

Meanwhile, you have a temperamental, fabulously wealthy, flip-flopping, seventy one year old warmonger on the other side who’s being called “the coolest guy in school” by 20-something reporters.

Nobody should be surprised or unprepared for this by now. I think Obama’s campaign people underestimated how this label could be applied to their guy and they allowed it to play out in Pennsylvania in ways that should have been anticipated. But then I have always wondered why Democrats are always off guard every time this hits them.

Maybe this election will change all that. I hope so. But so far, I’m seeing the narrative playing out exactly as I thought it would and it leads me right back to where I started. I believe that Democrats are nearly guaranteed to win due to the fundamental forces driving this election. But I’m not so sure the Democrats will win with any kind of progressive mandate if they let the media frame the election in these terms and I’m definitely not so sure that our new president will be able to enact a progressive agenda if he (or she) moves right thinking to disable this narrative. (That’s the whole point.) The silver lining is that it’s being deployed early in the game due to the long primary and that offers a chance to change the storyline before the general. They need to get to it.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Crazy rhythms: The Visitor doesn’t miss a beat

By Dennis Hartley

If Richard Jenkins doesn’t get an Oscar nod for his amazing performance in Thomas McCarthy’s new comedy-drama, The Visitor, I will personally picket the Academy. Writer-director-actor McCarthy’s previous effort was the critical favorite The Station Agent, and once again he draws us into an extended family of very believable, warm-blooded characters, generously giving all of his actors plenty of room to breathe.

Jenkins absolutely inhabits the character of the life-tired, middle-aged widower Walter Vale. He is a Connecticut college professor leading a life of quiet desperation; he sleepwalks through his dreary workday, and it’s obvious that any inspirational spark is long gone from an unwavering lesson plan that is more aged than his students. His personal life has become rote as well; most of his leisure time is spent puttering, and half-heartedly plunking away on his late wife’s piano. In the film’s wonderfully played opening scene, Walter fires his private piano teacher, who turns out to be the fourth in a row that he has dismissed. As a parting shot, she suggests that if he should decide that mastering the keyboard is just not his forte, especially “at his age”, she would be most interested in buying his “wife’s” piano (ouch). Clearly, Walter needs to get out more.

When Walter travels to New York to attend a conference and present a paper, he has a big surprise awaiting him at the seldom-used apartment he keeps in the city. Unbeknownst to the professor, a mysterious third party has sublet his digs to an immigrant couple-a Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira). After some tense moments between the mutually startled parties, the forlorn Walter invites them to stay rather than turning them out on the street. As a friendship slowly grows between the three, Walter begins to emerge from his cocoon, prompted by Tarek’s infectious enthusiasm for pounding out joyful rhythms on his African djembes. Before he knows it, the staid professor is loosening his tie and joining Tarek in a drum circle at a public park. When Tarek is arrested by undercover cops in the subway due to a misunderstanding and ends up at a detention center for illegal immigrants, Walter hires a lawyer and becomes even more ensconced in the couple’s lives. Add one more unexpected “visitor” to the mix-Tarek’s widowed mother Mouna (the lovely and stately Israeli actress Hiam Abbass) who has traveled from Detroit to investigate why her son hasn’t contacted her for an alarming period of time. Now, all the elements of a “perfect storm” are in place for the reawakening of Walter Vale.

Thanks to Jenkins’ subtle, quietly compelling performance, that transformation is the heart of the film, and an absolute joy to behold. Although he has over 70 films to his credit (mostly supporting roles, but always memorable), he is probably most recognizable for his portrayal of the “late” father in HBO’s popular series, Six Feet Under Hiam Abbass is a revelation here as well; she and Jenkins play off each other in sublime fashion in all of their scenes together. In fact, no one in the cast hits a false note, ever. This is undoubtedly due in large part to the fact that McCarthy is an “actor’s director” in the literal sense; he remains active in tackling roles himself (most recently appearing in HBO’s final season of The Wire as a newspaper journalist who manufactures his stories).

The “strange bedfellows” setup of the plot may look like The Goodbye Girl or The Odd Couple on paper, but this not a glib Neil Simon play, where characters throw perfectly timed zingers at each other; these people feel, and interact, like real human beings. There is plenty of humor, but there is also genuine heartbreak and bittersweet melancholy. The important thing is that it is all perfectly balanced, and beautifully nuanced.

Although the circumstances leading up to Tarek’s unfortunate detention could be viewed as an allusion to the sometimes Kafkaesque scenarios faced by illegal immigrants in a post 9-11 world, McCarthy doesn’t get preachy on this particular issue or use his film as a polemic. In fact, this movie has more in common with the keen social observations of Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things or the gentle, knowing satire of Bill Forsyth’s low key culture-clash comedy Local Hero than, say, The Road to Guantanamo.

One thing I will say-if the overwrought and vastly overrated Crash (2005) could win Best Picture (of which I lamented here) then surely The Visitor, which deals with many of the same themes, and in a less histrionic and more palatable manner, deserves consideration as well (we shall see). In the meantime, you don’t want to miss this lovely little gem.

Hello, stranger: Living on Tokyo Time,Stranger Than Paradise, Night on Earth, Mystery Train, Lost in Translation, The Brother From Another Planet, Tokyo Pop, ,Crocodile Dundee A Great Wall, Ninotchka,The Wild Child, West is West, Bend It Like Beckham , East Is East, The Gods Must Be Crazy, The Last Wave, My Beautiful Laundrette, Where the Green Ants Dream, Moscow On The Hudson, Barcelona, The Coca-Cola Kid, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World , Montenegro, Walkabout , The Emerald Forest, L’Auberge espagnole, Due South Seasons (TV series).

Previous posts with related themes:
Crossover Dreams: Borderline Cinema (12/30/06)
Narrative Structure is for Wussies: An Appreciation of Jim Jarmusch (9/15/07)

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The Big Guns

by digby

Everyone on the internets seem to be in a bad mood today. Post Pennsylvania blues? Coming down from post Pennsylvania euphoria? Whatever.

I didn’t want to have to do this, but it’s bad enough to require drastic action. No, I’m not going to shut down the comment section. I’m pulling out the big guns.

If you haven’t already, meet Fenway, Tbogg’s new Basset pup:

I dare you not to smile.

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It Burns

by digby

In this time of economic turbulence, get ready for more of the stupidest news segments ever:

LEMON: All right, looking to save some money in this economy? Of course you are. Who isn’t? Well, give us couple of minutes now. We’ll save you some bucks. Our simple solution to the rising cost of food.

Here’s a trip to the grocery store with a consumer expert and CNN’s T.J. Holmes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: We haven’t made it to a single item, no groceries at all, no food, but still, we need to be working right now and be mindful of what’s going on, what’s happening here.

ROBYN SPIZMAN, CONSUMER EXPERT: Exactly, before you put your foot in the door, you want to check out the stores.

The first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to look at the store circulars, see if there’s any manufacturer coupons. And already, I’ve hit the big one. Just pages and pages of coupons right here, ready for me to use. And then, I might look to see how long they’re good for, which this says all month. So, now I know if I don’t have time to use them now, I can use them later.

HOLMES: One of the first things you often see when you come into the store are …

SPIZMAN: Deals.

HOLMES: Deals, the signs. They often have these very kiosks like this set up. And you look through them, buy one, get one free, two for this, two for that. These are important to stop at always — why?

SPIZMAN: Why, because first of all, take a look at them, take a second. It doesn’t mean spend all day.

HOLMES: Right.

SPIZMAN: I’m going to spend just a few minutes. But for example, this vinegar, it’s two for $4, it’s a name brand that I use all the time. And I’m saving $2.38 on buying two.

HOLMES: A lot of people pantries are full of stuff — we don’t even know what’s in there.

SPIZMAN: I promise you that most — and most women in particularly, like we have 10 bottles of salad dressing. Not all of us, but some of us. And so, you want to start looking at what are you really using and running out of, so you don’t have to run out every time.

The rule is to look high and to look low because store brands and manufacturers of popular brands often will pay more for what’s called a slotting fee. And according to the grocers that I’ve spoken to, they say that’s why, you know, there’s these brands in the middle. They paid for that right.

Seasonal is so important because one, that means the price is going to be better. And then, it also means that the product is in season, so it’s going to be juicier. You’re going to get the value.

I think the goal is to be a conscious society and also, we can save money in the interim by buying smart, sometimes buying less and knowing what you’re buying. And there’s great power in that because you only have to learn it once. And once you know, you’re ready to go.

Let’s figure out what we’ve learned here.

You should check to see what you are running out of before you shop. “Seasonal” means the product is in season. And ladies if you already have 10 bottles of salad dressing, you don’t need to buy any more! Oh, and try to buy items that are “on sale” which means they cost less than when they’re full price.

People pay this woman money for advice like this, which just proves that they actually don’t know the value of a dollar and probably need it.

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Oh No He Didn’t

by digby

From Crooks and Liars:

Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News Friday night, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the conservative pundit that “the left wing of the Democratic Party, frankly, kind of admires American terrorists.

Right.

Gospel singer Gene Collett says he took a message from God and turned it into a song about accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph.

He has released “The Ballad of Eric Robert Rudolph” to 1,270 gospel and country radio stations.

“Right or wrong in what he’s done, his race is over, now only in his mind are the sweet fields of clover,” Collett sings in the chorus. “Rudolph has run, and where has he trod, now he faces Caesar but his final judge is God.”

At least one radio station in Western North Carolina is interested in the song.

“We need to jump on that big time,” said Vann Campbell, of WRKR 1320 AM in Murphy, the Cherokee County town where Rudolph was arrested May 31. “His song is really neutral. It’s not overly judgmental and it doesn’t make (Rudolph) out to be a hero.” …

–Citizen-Times (Asheville, N.C.)

You remember Rudolph, don’t you? He was a God fearing right wing extremist who was on the run for several years for after “bombing an Atlanta-area abortion clinic in 1997 and a Birmingham, Ala., clinic in 1998. In addition to the clinic bombings, Rudolph was indicted in relation to the 1997 bombing of an Atlanta gay and lesbian nightclub that injured five people and the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, which killed one person and injured 111 others.”

And when they finally caught him:

Since he didn’t look as if he had stumbled out of a cave, investigators believe Rudolph must have received help over the years. “If he’s been living in a mobile home, you’d assume quite a few people knew he was there,” says Ronald Baughn, a retired federal law-enforcement agent who helped investigate the Atlanta and Birmingham bombings. Indeed, Rudolph had become a local folk hero. In Murphy, T shirts and coffee mugs appeared saying RUN RUDOLPH, RUN.

That’s more than just admiration for American terrorism. That’s solidarity.

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McCain’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Week

by dday

I hope somebody’s taking notes on this week’s travails for John McCain, because if this was October and anyone was paying attention, his entire staff would be fired and the RNC would be gamely talking about random downballot races and how “2012 looks to be an up year.”

The week started with a front-page story about his legendary temper, with new stories revealed therein. Then McCain embarked on a “Forgotten Places” tour this week, traveling across the country to places that “conservatives don’t normally appear.” And now, we know why. In Alabama, he attracted a largely white crowd in the landmark of the civil rights movement, Selma, and praised a ferry that was constructed due to an earmark, after condemning the practice. He then departed for Youngstown, Ohio, where he offered a stirring defense of free trade at a plant which closed earlier in the decade. When asked about the “cheap dumping of foreign goods” on US shores, McCain replied “I can’t turn that around,” which ought to be comforting to unemployed steelworkers.

Then came multiple gaffes over the situation in New Orleans. First extremist pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement McCain enthusiastically sought, reiterated his belief that Hurricane Katrina occurred as a punishment for a planned gay pride parade in the Crescent City (why Mississippi had to bear the brunt of the storm as well is unclear). McCain had to answer for these charges while docking in New Orleans, and he responded like any adult politician would, by saying “it’s nonsense” eight times. Hagee has since retracted the comment, but clearly it made things awkward on McCain’s stroll through New Orleans.

Of course, McCain’s ideas on New Orleans aren’t much better than Hagee’s justifications for the hurricane. And Newsweek actually committed some journalism on that front, reaching into recent history to remind everyone that while Bush was galavanting around the country partying and ignoring the fact that New Orleans was underwater, one of his party partners was McCain:

Not only that, but McCain’s prescriptions for New Orleans leave much to be desired:

Today he took a walking tour of the Ninth Ward–perhaps the most visible symbol of the Bush administration’s inaction in the wake of Katrina–passing a mix of rebuilt homes and vacant, blighted houses. After the tour, McCain addressed reporters in front of a restored church. “Never again will we allow such a mishandling of a natural disaster,” he vowed. “Never again.”

Yet on the issue of New Orleans, it’s still unclear how different McCain and Bush actually are. Speaking about Katrina, McCain, like many other Republicans, has trashed the administration’s handling of the storm and has vowed to prevent similar catastrophes. “We can never let anything like that happen again,” McCain told reporters on board his Straight Talk Express earlier this week. Still, the senator, who has visited the Lower Ninth Ward twice since the storm, has yet to tread into the far trickier debate over what to do about New Orleans now, a fight that has dragged on and on with little progress since the waters washed part of the city away.

The senator won’t present his own plans for recovery, at least not today. Asked earlier this week if he thought the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt, McCain shrugged, considering the question for several seconds. “I really don’t know,” he finally said. “That’s why I am going … We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is.”

Democrats pounced on this errant statement that McCain would be open to tearing down the Ninth Ward, and despite his media constituency running interference for him, there’s no question that saying this in the midst of a tour to forgotten places was just a cardinal sin. When he was confronted about it, he claimed that he never said it despite the fact that the quote was only three days old.

McCain is of course completely constricted by his new image as a tax-cutter while still trying to keep alive the flame of the old image as a budget hawk, which essentially means that he won’t be able to pay for anything that he proposes. In fact, the Washington Post hit him again, for offering tax proposals that he once considered anathema, and offering no explanation for the sudden change of heart (we know that he’s unable to keep the fragile Republican coalition together without claiming to be the second coming of Milton Friedman). This leads to an endless series of contradictions.

McCain ended the week by admitting the country is worse off than it was eight years ago, despite having said the opposite on multiple occasions and offering economic proposals that are identical to Bush’s. The New York Times attacked him for offering multiple favors to a wealthy Arizona friend and contributor. Oh, and McCain reveled in private fundraisers throughout this tour of “Forgotten America” this week, including one in Alabama where he got an 80% discount from a municipality on rental space and used PRISON LABOR for the event.

The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee.

He also said he would do anything he could to stop the North Carolina GOP from running their stream-of-consciousness “OBAMA WRIGHT GOD DAMNS AMERICA SCARY BLACK ZOMG!!1!” ad, which resulted in the ad running anyway. And while the media certainly gave a ridiculous amount of coverage to this ad as they will any anti-Democratic attack ad, I think the real story is McCain’s impotence – not that he’s trying hard, or at all, to stop the ad, but the “I deplore their behavior” pose runs a little stale when nothing is done to stop it, and there will be diminishing returns to this trick as McCain spends all his time denouncing and rejecting yet doing nothing substantial to stop the smear campaigns. He’s actually in a bind over that as well.

Hell of a week. One thing that is getting lost in this primary fight is that John McCain is a pretty terrible campaigner and general election candidate. The only thing going for him is media interference, but even they can’t hide the contradictions and the gaffes and the essential conservatism he’s boxed himself into.

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A Very Special Job

by digby

Joe Conason has a good column today in Salon about GOP bottom feeder Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame, who has, unsurprisingly, emerged from the slime to work on behalf of John McCain. It’s an excellent rundown on where Brown comes from and shines a light on a very useful but largely hidden corner of the wingnut welfare system.

… the Bush campaign had encouraged the makers of the Horton ad and certainly never made any serious effort to punish or even discourage the group. Two years later, in fact, significant evidence emerged that indicated possible collusion between Brown’s gang and the official Bush cohort, specifically between Bush media consultant Roger Ailes, the future boss of Fox News Channel, and Larry McCarthy, the consultant hired by Brown to make the Horton ad. Ailes indignantly denied working with Brown’s group, which would have been a serious infraction of election law. Responding to a Democratic Party complaint, the FEC opened an investigation that was eventually killed by a party-line vote of the commissioners before any real conclusions could be reached.

Soon Brown found a new cause in the destruction of the Clintons — and a new mentor in the person of Jim Johnson, the Arkansas segregationist whose hatred for the progressive young Southern governor dated back to the ’60s. Known as “Justice Jim” because he had served on the highest court in the state, Johnson earned permanent status as a symbol of unreconciled racism for his role in the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock Central High School, where “patriots” like him brought worldwide shame to the United States. For years he sought to intimidate blacks and liberal whites in Arkansas as the leader of the White Citizens Council, a country club version of the Ku Klux Klan, whose official newsletter unashamedly referred to “ni**ers” and threatened violence against integration. He tacitly accepted the endorsement of the KKK’s “grand dragon” when he ran for governor in 1966.

“You make me ashamed to be from Arkansas,” said Bill Clinton when they met for the first time in 1968. Years later, Johnson made it clear that the feeling was mutual.

To seek out someone like Johnson to plot against Bill and Hillary Clinton revealed a profound flaw in Brown’s character. When Brown’s Presidential Victory Committee published “Slick Willie,” a vicious “biography” of Clinton that accused him, among other sins, of coddling Arkansas blacks, promoting witchcraft and fostering blasphemy, the acknowledgments included a “special thanks” to the aging segregationist. With still more help from Johnson, Brown and David Bossie went on to concoct and promote the Whitewater scandal, reaping immense publicity (and lots of money) from gullible network reporters eager to score a scoop on the supposed corruption of the new president. Few of those correspondents revealed that the inside dope on the Clintons was coming from the dubious authors of the Willie Horton ad and their racist mentor.

Conason urges McCain to repudiate Brown. I expect that he will, in no uncertain terms. He is, after all, a straight shooter who disapproves of incivility in politics. And Brown will keep on doing what he’s doing.

Perlstein caught both Human Events and Newsmax fundraising for him. Will McCain repudiate them too?

Update: in case you wonder what John McCain’s base (the media) have done so far in this race on his behalf, Jamison Foser has a nice compendium. And to think it’s only April!

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Rallying Around Habeas Counsel

by digby

The Talking Dog has conducted another interview with one of the Guantanamo lawyers. I recommend reading the whole thing, but I thought one question and answer was particularly interesting.

Lawyers are everybody’s favorite whipping boys and girls in this culture, but there are a lot of them who really do important work. I’ve written about the JAGs who stood up to the military brass. And we know many in progressive politics who work for the causes we believe in.

The civilian lawyers who defend Guantanamo prisoners are among the good guys in this story as well. And you’ll remember last year that the Bush administration made a not so subtle threat to those who agreed to do it:

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

As it turns out that threat didn’t work one bit:

The Talking Dog: We’re a little more than a year or so after the unfortunate remarks made by former Defense Dept. official Cully Stimson. Can you tell me if the Government’s periodic ostracism of pro bono habeas counsel has effected your legal practice in any way, and how your Guantanamo representations have effected your overall legal practice? Wesley Powell: Cully Stimson, if anything, proved ultimately beneficial to habeas counsel. My firm was among those listed in the Wall Street Journal editorial and then on the radio show on which Stimson spoke. The management of my own firm went out of their way to commend me for my representations, and were very offended that this guy would try to intimidate firms into dropping these clients. There are a number of prominent Republicans in my firm and the team I work in, and they have all been very supportive and offended by this as well. So, Stimson’s remarks, if anything, caused a rallying around of the habeas counsel, at least as far as I am aware. No one has had a negative word to me; my corporate clients have been very supportive and think it is cool that I am doing this work. Other than taking time that might otherwise be spent for more business development and more billable hours, this has not effected the remainder of my practice. It’s one of those things– we all make personal sacrifices to be in this profession to begin with– taking on this kind of representation just means more of them.

it gives you a little hope, doesn’t it?

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