Month: May 2008

What Attack Machine?

by dday

Democrats have picked up a seat in deep-red Louisiana.

In a close race featuring millions of dollars in bruising television ads, Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins on Saturday, winning another House seat for Democrats that had been long held by Republicans.

The National Republican Congressional Committee and several conservative groups poured nearly $1 million into the race in an effort to tie Cazayoux to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The ads called the state representative “too liberal” for the district, which had been held by Republicans since 1974. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and labor unions responded with their own million-dollar ad blitz bashing Jenkins, a former state representative.

So, this was a seat that went 59% for Bush in 2004. Let me show you some of the ads that outside groups ran in this race, the ones that are supposed to make us shiver and contemplate suicide because the mighty Republican attack machine will steamroll any Democrat.

The NRCC ran this trying to link Cazayoux to higher taxes:

Here’s another, linking Cazayoux to the “Obama-Pelosi radical agenda”:

Again, this is a seat that Republicans have held since 1974. If anyone would be receptive to these messages, it’d be here.

The dog clearly does not hunt anymore.

If the Mississippi seat comes through in a couple weeks, we will have virtually swept the contested seats in special elections leading up to November. Now, Cazayoux isn’t going to be everybody’s favorite Democrat on social issues (though he won with a populist message on economics), but the optics are absolutely terrible for Republicans. They may end up with less than 200 seats in the 110th Congress.

What an embarrassment George Bush and the Republicans are. And the most important lesson here is that they can’t win seats by scaring people anymore, so worrying about “the Republican attack machine” is officially nonsense. I hope Democrats understand this. I hope the Chicken Littles who fret about “what they’ll do to us in November” understand this.

UPDATE: Apparently, winning a Republican-held seat means that “this should come as a warning shot to Democrats,” according to the NRCC. Yeah, keep trying with that one.

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The Wall

by digby

Onward Christian Soldiers:

Maybe the reason the misperception persists that there are no atheists in foxholes is that nonbelievers must either shut up about their views or be hounded out of the military.

Just ask Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, who is making a splash in the news because of the way his atheism was attacked by superiors and fellow soldiers while he was risking his life in service to his country.

Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, winning the Combat Action Badge. But he’s now stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned stateside early because the Army couldn’t ensure his safety.

[…]

Hall’s atheism became an issue soon after it became known. On Thanksgiving 2006 while stationed outside Tikrit, Hall politely declined to join in a Christian prayer before the holiday meal. The result was a dressing down by a staff sergeant who told him that as an atheist he needed to sit somewhere else.

In another episode, after his gun turret took a bullet that almost found an opening, the first thing a superior wanted to know was whether Hall believed in Jesus now, not whether he was okay.

Then, in July, while still in Iraq, Hall organized a meeting of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. According to Hall, after things began, Maj. Freddy Welborn disrupted the meeting with threats saying he might bring charges against Hall for conduct detrimental to good order and discipline, and that Hall was disgracing the Constitution. (Err, I think the major has that backward.) Welborn has denied the allegations, but the New York Times reports that another soldier at the meeting said that Hall’s account was accurate.

Hall claims that he was denied a promotion in part because he wouldn’t be able to “pray with his troops.” And of course he was returned from overseas due to physical threats from fellow soldiers and superiors. Things became so bad that he was assigned a full-time bodyguard.

[…]

Beyond the mincemeat being made of church-state separation and religious liberty, it seems particularly combustible for our armed forces to be combining “end-times” Christian theology with military might. That’s no way to placate Muslim populations around the world.

But there’s no will for change. The military’s virulent religious intolerance could be eradicated tomorrow with swift sanctions against transgressors. Instead, it’s winked at and those caught proselytizing suffer no consequence. It appears that brave men like Hall, who simply wish to follow the dictates of their own conscience, will be needing bodyguards for a long time to come.

I grew up in a military family and I can tell you that it wasn’t always this way. I don’t know that they had Freethinkers meetings, but they didn’t force anyone to attend prayer meetings and you could openly be an atheist without facing threats.

I respect religion and I think it should be practiced freely and virtually without limits in a free society. But this kind of coercion, if true, is fundamentally un-American and that it’s being practiced in the US military under the direct auspices of the government is mind boggling.

It would be very nice to think that a Democratic president would issue orders to change this, but I suspect that he or she will actually do nothing. less than nothing. Their new embrace of religiosity in public life will have to be constantly affirmed in some way and considering the existing suspicion in the military of all Democrats, I would be very surprised if a Democratic administration would pursue this particular issue.

There will be many things in a new administration that are going to disappoint us. I would suspect that those of us who would like to see less religiosity in civic life are going to be among the most disappointed. Indeed, it’s likely that the Democrats are going to give the Republicans a run for their money. There will be less social conservatism, which is the most important thing, but the pressure to conform to a religious norm is likely to be just as strong, if not stronger, than under the Republicans.

Normally, this kind of thing would be left to the courts, which would logically decide that the government could not coerce citizens to be religious. Perhaps that will happen. But considering the fact that the Republicans have packed the courts with right wing hacks, it’s unlikely.

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And Still We Have No Voice

by tristero

In the Times’ News of the Week in Review – the Sunday editorial section – is a huge spread entitled How to See This Mission Accomplished :

For the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked nine experts on military affairs to identify a significant challenge facing the American and Iraqi leadership today and to propose one specific step to help overcome that challenge.

And who, pray tell, are those nine “experts” on miltary affairs, as if you couldn’t guess?

Exactly one (1) current member of the military and one (1) retired Army general (presumably one that was not part of the Pentagon’s propaganda initiative). It is unclear how many of the others ever actually served. My guess: less than 3. Perhaps much less. Maybe one (1).

L. Paul Bremer, the brilliant, sober-minded military expert who, flying in the face of the commonest of sense, all but unilaterally disbanded the Iraqi military, one of the most critical, if not the most critical blunders of the occupation (aside from being there in the first place, of course).

Three (3!) I-use-the-term-loosely scholars at the American Enterprise Institute including Surging Fred Kagan, the conistently wrong Danielle Pletka, and Richard Perle, a man so geographically challenged he once wrote that the United Nations was located on the banks of the Hudson.

Kenneth M. Pollack, about which the less said, the better. Suffice it to be said that I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that once in his life he was partly right about something.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the liberal hawk’s liberal hawk.

Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, who advocates phasing out most aid “by the middle of the next presidency.” presumably 2011 and withdraw 2/3 of the troops “over the next few years.”

Cordesmann and the retired general are the only two who discuss withdrawal or diplomacy with anything remotely approaching seriousness. The current officer essentially urges the McCain line, ie for the Shi’ite and Sunni to cut the bullshit. The rest are – there is no other phrase that’s appropriate – equally stupid.

And I am left wondering where are those who were right all along, who watched in shocked disgust as Bush vogued on that carrier in his codpiece, because even then, they knew nothing had been accomplished except the start of the worst foreign policy debacle in living memory (and that includes, yes, Vietnam) – where are the experts?

Bill Moyers

by tristero

Summarizing what needs to be said:

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the warmongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins.

But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.

After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America.

This is crazy and wrong — white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.

Which means it is all about race, isn’t it?

Indeed it is.

In case you think Hagee and Wright are not comparable in their nuttiness, Matt Taibbi provides this description of the climax of a retreat run by Hagee’s church:

Fortenberry began to issue instructions. He told us that under no circumstances should we pray during the Deliverance.

“When the word of God is in your mouth,” he said, “the demons can’t come out of your body. You have to keep a path clear for the demon to come up through your throat. So under no circumstances pray to God. You can’t have God in your mouth. You can cough, you might even want to vomit, but don’t pray.”

The crowd nodded along solemnly. Fortenberry then explained that he was going to read from an extremely long list of demons and cast them out individually. As he did so, we were supposed to breathe out, keep our mouths open and let the demons out.

And he began.

At first, the whole scene was pure comedy. Fortenberry was standing up at the front of the chapel, reading off a list, and the room was loudly chirping crickets back at him.

“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of incest! In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of sexual abuse! In the name of Jesus. . . .”

After a few minutes, there was a little twittering here and there. Nothing serious. I was beginning to think the Deliverance was going to be a bust.

But then it started. Wails and cries from the audience. To my left, a young black man started writhing around in his seat. In front of me and to my right, another young black man with Coke-bottle glasses and a shock of nerdly jheri curl — a dead ringer for a young Wayne Williams — started wailing and clutching his head.

“In the name of Jesus,” continued Fortenberry, “I cast out the demon of astrology!”

Coughing and spitting noises. Behind me, a bald white man started to wheeze and gurgle, like he was about to puke. Fortenberry, still reading from his list, pointed at the man. On cue, a pair of life coaches raced over to him and began to minister. One dabbed his forehead with oil and fiercely clutched his cranium; the other held a paper bag in front of his mouth.

“In the name of Jesus Christ,” said Fortenberry, more loudly now, “I cast out the demon of lust!”

And the man began power-puking into his paper baggie. I couldn’t see if any actual vomitus came out, but he made real hurling and retching noises.

Now the women began to pipe in. On the women’s side of the chapel the noises began, and it is not hard to explain what these noises sounded like. If you’ve ever watched The Houston 560 or any other gangbang porn movie, that’s what it sounded like, only the sounds were far more intense.

It was not difficult to figure out where the energy was coming from on that side of the room. Some of the husbands glanced nervously over in the direction of their wives.

“In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!” said Fortenberry.

“Oooh! Unnh! Unnnnnh!” wailed a woman in the front row.

“Bleeech!” puked the bald man behind me.

Within about a minute after that, the whole chapel erupted in pandemonium. About half the men and three-fourths of the women were writhing around and either play-puking or screaming. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I raised my hand for one of the life coaches to see.

“Need . . . a . . . bag,” I said as he came over.

He handed me a bag.

“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!” shouted Fortenberry.

Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.

“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!” Fortenberry continued. “In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!”

Cough, cough!

The minutes raced by. Wayne Williams was now fully prostrate, held up only by a trio of coaches, each of whom took part of his writhing body and propped it up. Another bald man in the front of the chapel was now freaking out in Linda Blair fashion, roaring and making horrific demon noises.

“Rum-balakasha-oom!” shouted Fortenberry in tongues, waving a hand in front of Linda Blair Man. “Cooom-balakasha-froom! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!”

Philosophy?

…

The whole thing — the demonic expulsions, the trading of miraculous wives’ tales, the crazy End Times theology based on dire predictions that come and go uneventfully once a year or so — it’s all a con that is done with the consent of the conned. Which is what gives it strength. If everybody agrees to believe, it is real.

The hooting and howling went on seemingly forever. It was nearly an hour and a half before Fortenberry was done. He had cast out the demons of every ailment, crime, domestic problem and intellectual discipline on the face of the Earth. He cast out horoscopes, false gods, witches, intellectual pride, nearsightedness, everything, it seemed to me, except maybe E. coli and John Updike novels…

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place, you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you’ve gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no “anything else.” All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this “our thing,” a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that’s all.

Saturday Night At The Movies

The Comedies Of Terror

By Dennis Hartley

They say that tragedy plus time equals comedy. In the 2005 film,The Aristocrats, a documentary about the “filthiest joke in the world”, there is a fascinating bit of footage, excerpted from the 2001 Friar’s Club Roast for Hugh Hefner. The event took place just after 9/11. Comic Gilbert Gottfried was taking his turn at the podium, and started to do a bit about the attack. Within moments, he was being roundly catcalled by many in the audience and was soon drowned out by cries of “Too soon!” Mind you, this was a room full of professional funny people, who make their living off of irreverence. But that was then. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry myself to sleep over the fact that, seven years later, we currently have two mainstream comedy films in theaters, glibly incorporating Guantanamo Bay and Osama Bin Laden into their titles: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Has the War on Terror really been slogging on for that long? Wait, let me check my calendar. Yes, it has.

Back in 2004, a modestly-budgeted stoner comedy, sporting a juvenile-sounding title and featuring two unknown leads, became an unexpected cult phenomenon. Arguably, the most surprising thing about Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was that, between the bong hits, sex gags and scatological references, there lurked an undercurrent of sharp socio-political commentary about racial stereotyping in America (for the uninitiated, Harold and Kumar are portrayed by a Korean-American and Indian-American actor, respectively) The movie was gut-busting funny, and in a fresh way. The film’s co-creators, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Scholssberg, now officially turn their baked slacker heroes into a sort of “Cheech and Chong” franchise for the new millennium with the release of a politically topical sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

The new installment picks up literally where the previous escapade left off (the events of the first movie are referred to as having occurred just “last week”). Roomies Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are excitedly packing their bags for a dream European vacation in weed-friendly Amsterdam. Unbeknownst to Harold, Kumar has smuggled his new invention, a “smokeless” bong, on board their flight. Since it is a homemade, cylindrical device containing liquid, it resembles a You Know What. When a “vigilant” passenger, already eyeballing Kumar with suspicion due to his particular ethnic countenance, accidently catches a glimpse of him attempting to fire up his device in the bathroom, all hell breaks loose. Before they know it, Harold and Kumar have been handcuffed by onboard air marshals, given the third degree back on the ground by an overzealous, jingoistic government spook (played to the hilt by The Daily Show alumnus Rob Corddry) and issued a pair of orange jumpsuits, courtesy of the Gitmo quartermaster.

Through a serendipitous set of circumstances that could only occur in Harold and Kumar’s resin-encrusted alternate universe, they manage to break out, and hitch a boat ride to Florida (don’t ask). Thus begins a series of wacky cross-country misadventures, mostly through the deep South (imagine the possibilities). As in the first film, the more ridiculously over-the-top and unlikely their predicament gets, the funnier it becomes (it’s kind of like, umm, being really, really stoned, now that I think about it; I mean, from what I’ve been told-ahem). Also, as in the previous movie, the duo’s Doogie ex machina appears just in time to lend a much-needed hand, in the person of “Neil Patrick Harris” (played with winking, hyper-hetero exaggeration by, erm, Neil Patrick Harris).

I will admit that my unabashed enjoyment of Hurwitz and Schlossberg’s oeuvre (if I may call it that after only two movies) is a guilty pleasure. Okay, so we’re not talking Coppola or Scorcese auteur theory here. And I’ll grant you, their films can be crass, even vulgar at times; but it’s somehow good-naturedly crass and vulgar, in a South Park kind of way. I see a lot of parallels between Hurwitz and Schlosberg’s work and the output of South Park creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Both teams serve up their social and political satire slyly cloaked by the generally silly behavior of their (literally and figuratively) cartoonish protagonists. You can get away with quite a bit of subversive anarchy when your polemic is delivered “from of the mouth of babes”. At the end of the day, Harold and Kumar are classic “innocents” at heart, as are South Park’s little potty-mouthed darlings (or the young siblings on The Simpsons, baby Stewie on The Family Guy, etc. etc.). Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay may not be everybody’s bowl of Columbian, but I’ll be goddamned if it ain’t the funniest film I’ve seen so far this year.

I wish I could say the same for the latest from documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), who I like to refer to as “Michael Moore lite”. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? is an admirably earnest, if flawed attempt by the likeable Spurlock to reach out to the “everyday folks” living in the Middle East and show Americans that they’re really just like us, after all; you know- “people are people”, and all that. Oh, and while he was there, he thought he might get some leads on where Osama’s bin hidin’.

Spurlock’s concept for his new film was inspired by his wife’s pregnancy (their first child). While brainstorming proactive steps he could take to ensure a “safe world” for his unborn, he thought he might start by doing his part to end the war on terror-by helping our hapless government locate You Know Who. Using the gimmicky framing device of an ersatz videogame to introduce film segments, we follow Spurlock’s progress as he travels to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco in search of the vox populi (and the slippery tall dude with the walkie-talkie).

With the exception of a few extra-cranky customers, like a genuinely scary radical Muslim cleric with a vitriolic demeanor and a Charlie Manson glare to match, most of Spurlock’s subjects seem to be expressing a variation on “You know, I really don’t have any truck with the American people, but I do hate your government with the intensity of a thousand suns.” Proving of course, that they really ARE like us (well, those of us who have been paying close attention for the last seven years). And, naturally, the response to queries on bin-Laden’s whereabouts is usually a shrug and a laugh, or a vague point in the direction of the border they share with a neighboring country. My favorite answer to that question comes from an aged, hard-scrabbled Afghani tribesman who counters with “Whose ‘Osama’?” When the interpreter tells him: “He’s the one who destroyed the buildings in America”, the old codger thinks on that for about five seconds, then testily snaps: “Fuck him.” Then, as an afterthought, before turning on his heel to dive back into his motley hut, he adds: “And fuck America”. That’s my kind of guy, a real pragmatist.

There are some other genuinely funny moments that temper the underlying grimness of the volatile situation in the region. For instance, a high ranking official in Tora Bora (location of the infamous subterranean HQ for bin Laden in Afghanistan) speaks enthusiastically of his proposed plan to turn the caves into a tourist attraction (I think there’s an idea for a Mel Brooks movie in there somewhere). Spurlock is to be admired for keeping a straight face throughout this particular interview.

Unfortunately however, Spurlock’s credibility goes out the window for this viewer in two specific scenes. The first takes place in Tel Aviv, where Spurlock and his crew are stonewalled (and nearly stoned) by a group of ultra-orthodox Jews (Haredim, I believe, from their clothing). Spurlock mugs an annoyingly self-righteous “why are they persecuting me?” look at the camera while he’s being shoved about; as if he assumes that the viewer will find these angry men with hats very amusing. Some sects of orthodox Jews are a very strict, closed society and wary of strangers (not unlike the Amish and the Mormon polygamist sect), so naturally they are not going to be too crazy about an outsider shoving cameras and microphones in their faces. What did he expect? I’d like to think Spurlock is smarter than that, especially when the message of his film is allegedly about reaching out to bridge cultural misunderstandings, as opposed to creating new ones.

The other scene that tends to cancel out any good will that precedes it occurs during the Saudi Arabia segment. Spurlock interviews two teenage male students. After giving us the disclaimers that the two interviewees were essentially handpicked (and assumingly pre-briefed) by the school staff, and that two school officials insisted on being present during the interview, Spurlock precedes to pepper the boys with incendiary questions anyway. The anxiety and fear is quite palpable on the young men’s faces; they nervously glance off camera where the school observers are obviously positioned before answering each question with a variation on “I have no opinion on that.” OK, maybe that is Spurlock’s point; but by this time in the film, he has already firmly established that Saudi Arabia is a draconian ogilarchy; what’s he going to prove by shooting fish in a barrel?

So I suppose you could call this a mixed review. If you got a kick out of Super Size Me, or you are a fan of his TV series 30 Days, you may be more forgiving of Spurlock’s trespasses in the film. Maybe I’m just being over-sensitive, and others may not glean the same subtext from the particular scenes I found objectionable. To be fair, I did laugh a lot, and as I stated earlier, I applaud the inspiration behind the film. Let’s call it a draw.

Turban contemporary: Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World , Fahrenheit 9/11, Borat – Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , Three Kings, Charlie Wilson’s War, Team America – World Police , South Park – Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Lil’ Bush – Resident of United States(TV series), That’s My Bush!(TV series), Little Mosque on the Prairie (TV series), The War Against Terror: The Musical (short film)

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Resist The Urge

by digby

I realize that a lot of people find the symbolism of this both exciting and hilarious, since Clinton said “bet on the filly.” And maybe the metaphor will be perfectly fulfilled next week as Clinton comes in second and breaks both her metaphorical ankles and is metaphorically euthanized right on the metaphorical track, but the classy thing to do would be to leave it alone. It’s sickening on many levels.

Resist the impulse to be cute about this. The horse died. You’ll like yourself better for it.

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Never Question The Premise

by digby

I don’t know the name of the CNN week-end freakshow (CNNWFS )who hosts “This Week In Politics” but whoever he is, he’s been very attentive in Village brainwashing class:

CNNWFS: The Democratic Party comes out swinging with ad ad this week hitting very hard on this issue of Iraq

Video:

Voice: President Bush has talked about out staying in Iraq for 50 years

McCain: Maybe 100. That’d be fine with me…

CNNWFS: Chris this ad is very hard hitting and a lot of people would say it is very unfair. McCain has explained over and over again what he meant. You know what he meant and I know what he meant, he meant a military presence for a hundred years. Should your party be doing this? Does it make him look bad or you look bad?

Chris Kofitis (Democratic strategist):Listen John McCain has chosen to bear hug George Bush in the war. You just saw this week that he was for withdrawal, now he’s against withdrawal. His problem, I think is that he is supporting a war that the American people one, clearly believe should not have been fought and two, is incredibly unpopular and is costing this country every day an enormous amount of lives

CNNWFS: Your party has lost traction on that issue though. This makes it look like you’re trying to extend it to something that’s untrue and say let’s argue on something we really have a lot of traction on, let’s raise something that he’s already explained.

Chris Kofinis: Yeah, but in fairness what he said, the 100 year argument was the notion of presence. He made the analogy to Korea,and also Germany and Japan as well, Here’s the problem, in the post war period, after the so-called Mission Accomplished in those specific states, there were no casualties, there was no insurgency. We’ve lost 3900 lives since …

CNNWFS: We’re not opposed to … Leslie jump in here

Leslie Sanchez (GOP strategist): I think the Democrats are trying to appease their anti-war movement to keep them engaged, it’s an unfair characterization of what John McCain said, third party entities have come out and said that, the really interesting part is the only piece of ammunition, if you can use that word, that the Democrats seem to do, is that they’re trying to tie John McCain to George Bush even though we know he’s independent, even though we know he talked separately about the surge. It’s not a realistic argument, but it’s an emotional one.

I realize that’s a fair amount of gibberish from everyone. The CNNWFS is particularly incoherent, obviously forgetting the details of what he overheard somebody say in the men’s room earlier. But I question the Democratic strategist’s answer as well.

Why aren’t Dems just saying, “Why should Americans stay in Iraq for a hundred years under any circumstances? Let’s assume McCain meant that we should stay there indefinitely once the violence has ceased. What right would we have to do that? Aren’t they a sovereign nation? Why should Americans pay for that?”

This Germany and Japan argument is going to take hold unless Democrats begin to make the proper arguments. As much as the keyboard commandos would like to pretend they are fighting the War Of All Wars, it isn’t. It’s a colonial war like Vietnam, not WWII. And as one of the main forces behind normalizing relations with Vietnam the past decade or so, McCain must know that if we had stayed there it would be violent still.

Colonialism left its awful mark on that country and there was a terrible fallout after the US left, but staying wouldn’t have helped matters, it would have made it worse. Just as staying in Iraq will make it worse. Maybe this time, we can do a little bit better and normalize relations with the country in a reasonable amount of time after we leave it in flames. But the truth is that if you make a mistake like we made in both Vietnam and Iraq, you have to leave. You will not be forgiven. Your presence prolongs the war. No self respecting native will allow an invader to occupy their land indefinitely.

Once the “liberation” fantasy was exposed for what it was, the idea of permanent military presence was no longer operative. Republicans should not be allowed to shift into that argument. A hundred years in Iraq is a hundred years in Iraq — spending billions of American tax dollars while they tell us we can’t afford universal health care here at home and people are dying of starvation in other parts of the world. Is it too much to ask that they consult us about whether we think it’s actually something we want to do? And explain what its purpose is?

In fact, in a culture where reason was held in even the slightest esteem, we would also be talking about whether we should be keeping those bases in Germany and Japan after 60 years. Did Americans know they were signing on to permanent military empire even after the cold war ended? I don’t think so. Why is the fact that we are still in Japan and Germany used as a perfectly reasonable example of American foreign policy in the first place?

How about we invade Denmark next time and stay there for a hundred years? I really love those butter cookies.

Meanwhile, back on The Week in Politics:

CNNWFS: later we’ll talk about Hillary Clinton’s brewing problems over coffee and president Bush’s burger bash…

Update: I just found out that CNNWFS’s name is Tom Forman.

How Many Years Until 100 Years?

The unstoppable whine from the RNC over Democratic message dominance on John McCain’s “100 years in Iraq” comments has now morphed into “you stole footage from a terrorist Michael Moore!”

[T]he Republican National Committee has learned that the ad features footage from Michael Moore’s 2004 conspiracy theory, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

According to ABC News, the ad features “an IED blowing up near US soldiers,” an image ABC confirms that was used in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” It is no coincidence that the same Democrat [sic] advertising firm that produced this ad also was responsible for producing over $6.5 million worth of Democrat [sic] political advertising using themes from “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in 2004.

Since the RNC doesn’t produce ads with anything but that one shot of a gay immigrant terrorist performing an abortion while filing a lawsuit to prevent wiretapping (I think Zapruder had it on one of his old reels), they might not know that there’s such a thing as stock footage libraries, and anyone can buy clips from them, and that’s what Moore did, and that’s what the DNC did. Actually the one time the RNC did experience the purchase of stock footage, they appeared to get it from Osama’s Terrorist Training Video & Tackle Shop.

If one were so inclined, one could point to the RNC ad from 2006 that used footage of Osama bin Laden taken from Al-Jazeera and use it to question whether the RNC is too closed aligned with Al-Jazeera. That would be silly, but one could do so, right?

“Looks like the shoes on the other footage,” e-mailed Mike Gehrke, self-described “DNC Research Director and Joke Plagiarist.” “We won’t be intimidated by a candidate desperately trying to avoid his own record — or his lawyers.”

Of course, focusing on trivialities like footage origins is just what the RNC would like to do, as a way to deflect the impact of McCain’s comments. As much as they’d like to spin them into some fantasy of a 100-year peaceful presence in the heart of the Middle East (you know, like Korea or Japan or Germany), the bottom line is, as Ron Brownstein notes in an excellent piece, McCain hasn’t explained what all those troops would be doing in Iraq, and how long he’d be willing to keep combat forces there until such a peaceful presence would be reached.

First, if McCain doesn’t envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of “a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state.” […]

McCain has not said when, but he has pledged that Iraqi units will eventually assume the major combat responsibility. That prompts the next question McCain should address: What would then become the mission for the U.S. forces he wants to maintain in Iraq? McCain hasn’t specified. But he has suggested that their job would be to deter external aggression, much as in South Korea where our troops “served as a buffer against invasion from North Korea.”

In that example, however, the U.S. and South Korea agreed that North Korea posed a threat. The American troop presence in Germany and Japan long rested on a similar agreement about the potential danger from the Soviet Union, notes Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow in foreign policy.

Although the U.S. considers Iran the most pressing external danger to Iraq, “the overwhelming majority of Iraqis don’t see Iran as a threat,” Daalder says. “They see it as a partner.” If a threat from Iran isn’t the motivation, Al Qaeda might provide the most likely justification for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. But if Al Qaeda remains a threat there, conditions would likely not meet McCain’s standard that American troops are no longer at risk.

McCain and the RNC’s explanation is gobbledygook, and while a significant portion of the traditional media has lapped it up, Brownstein raises the crucial questions. McCain wouldn’t have combat forces leave Iraq until it was stable, and won’t say what would meet the standard of stability, so until he does, it’s natural to assume he would spend 100 years there or more trying to find the pony. He spins the comments by describing a desired end state without explaining how we get there or when. Oh, and the price tag for such a commitment? A couple trillion dollars.

And this of course is almost the least troubling of McCain’s foreign policy stances, the fact that he finds it OK to go to war for oil and the fact that he wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and essentially restart the Cold War are just as dangerous. And also fantastical.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it’s popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

”It’s not even a theoretical discussion. It’s an impossible discussion,” said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “It’s just a dumb thing.”

McCain ’08: It’s just a dumb thing.

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Creating Jobs

by digby

The soulless gasbags of the Fox News moneypig shows are arguing this morning that the rebate checks should be “put into the wallets of the wealthy because they’ll spend it on discretionary items while the poor will just turn around and just spend it on filling their gas tanks.” You see, “the rich create jobs” which is how you stimulate the economy:

Never mind the gyrations on Wall Street or the subprime mortgage and equity crisis. There’s still plenty of money out there and an unquenched appetite for art. At least that seems to be the verdict after a two-week round of auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Company, with bidders paying record prices for everything from a rare Matisse to a red heart sculpture by Jeff Koons.

Matisse was very grateful for the job.

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This Week In Torture

by dday

Some notable developments in the torture “debate” this week. Yes, there are some people out there who think that torturing other human beings is up for debate, people like Bill O’Reilly and Justice Antonin Scalia. Oh, and Karl Rove, though he comes down on a side that probably he didn’t even envision.

Rove writes, “Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours.” So, wait, now putting prisoners in stress positions is torture?

Whoops!

At the beginning of the week, we learned that the Justice Department is perfectly happy with undermining international law with the fig leaf of “fighting terrorism”.

The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.

The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees […]

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

This is the Scalia argument, that the context of torture somehow matters for its legality. I would like to ask Mr. Originalist, who believes that the words of law are concrete and set in stone, if there is any other law in America or abroad that is mutable based on the context. The answer is pretty much no. And it’s the argument of a scoundrel.

But it shouldn’t be overlooked that this power is even being discussed due to the Military Commissions Act, which allows for the President to decide whether or not a specific action is in violation of the Geneva Conventions. See Glenn on this and how John McCain enabled this incredible offering of power to the chief executive.

It turns out that there are thousands of other documents relevant to the CIA’s use of torture, secret detentions and rendition that the CIA doesn’t want to give up, claiming that many are covered by a “presidential communications privilege”. And yet later in the week, the White House offered disclosure of additional documents.

In a partial concession to Congressional pressure, the Bush administration agreed on Wednesday to show the Senate and House Intelligence Committees secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying harsh interrogation techniques that critics call torture.

The decision, announced at a Senate hearing where Democrats sharply criticized the administration’s secrecy on legal questions, did not satisfy other members of Congress who have pushed for the documents for several years, notably Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said officials were discussing whether to share part or all the opinions with Mr. Leahy’s panel.

Plus, David Addington, Cheney’s Cheney, the Cardinal Richileu of this Administration, after first having said that Congress has no constitutional power to investigate the Vice President’s role in authorizing torture, suddenly turned tail and agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

Today, the Vice President’s office sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Committee’s request for testimony from David Addington, Chief of Staff to the Vice President. The letter is attached.

A committee spokeswoman had the following response: “We acknowledge the Office of the Vice President’s response. Pursuant to their request, we expect the committee to meet next week to authorize a subpoena. We look forward to coming up with a mutually acceptable date for Mr. Addington’s testimony.”

Addington clearly doesn’t believe he’s wrong about this, and it’s unclear whether he’s appeared on the record in any public setting. If that hearing goes through, it’d happen in a matter of weeks.

The Senate Intelligence Committee also again banned the CIA from using any techniques not proscribed by the Army Field Manual, from outsourcing torture to private military contractors, and from withholding detainee information from the Red Cross (ending the practice of “ghost detainees”).

In the space of a few weeks, there has been a subtle shift on this issue, with some definitive movement. Will it amount to much? The final answer won’t come as long as this Administration remains in power – it will come afterwards, in a Democratic Administration, when we discover whether or not Team Torture will be brought to justice and held to account. Until then, we can only keep up the pressure.

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