Month: June 2008

The Grand Hissy Redux

by digby

I suppose everyone remembers waiting for The Man Called Petraeus to come home from the front and give us all a report on the Grand Surge Campaign of The Great Iraq War. We were told for months in advance that all judgment in Iraq vested in him, The Man who Knew Everything and for whom we must show our Utmost Reverence. He was a General, which according to the gasbags was only slightly less worthy of worship than Jesus and Tim Russert. In fact, when Move-On ran an ad criticizing the General, the senate took up a resolution that called for the body to “strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.” Seventy Five senators voted for it.

The point of that hissy fit wasn’t to uphold the honor of General Petraeus or even the armed forces. It was shut down any criticism of the war in Iraq. That’s what today’s hissy fit against Wes Clark is all about too, with the added bonus of shutting down all criticism of John McCain’s truly embarrassing ignorance on foreign policy in general.

The idea that Clark doesn’t respect the military or was dishonoring a POW’s service is absurd. The man spent a lifetime serving his country. He, of anyone, has the standing to combat this ridiculous conventional wisdom that says John McCain is a great world leader because he was a POW. It doesn’t take anything away from his war record to to point that out. But now Clark has been repudiated. I’m sure the full spectrum of very serious people, from David Broder to David Brooks, are greatly reassured.

This was a case where the Art Of The Hissy Fit became a thing of enduring, classic beauty — the Mona Lisa of fits, the Parthenon of hissies. They so cowed the political establishment around that General Petraeus pageant that now even a retired four star general and former CIC of NATO can’t call McCain’s military leadership credentials into question without the entire village media reflexively calling for the smelling salts. (And the Democratic leadership helped them do it, which makes it all the more lovely and perfect.)

Wes Clark is a very special person in the Democratic Party and should be highly valued. They don’t have many people like him. He not only brings national security credibility and experience in a unique way, he has proven himself to be a tireless worker for Democratic candidates and causes for the last four years. He is very, very smart and would be an asset in any Democratic administration. Indeed, I think it was assumed that he would be in any Democratic administration. Certainly, one would think any Democrat would want him.

As I wrote yesterday, I think the Obama campaign is working overtime to prove to the Village that he isn’t “dangerously” radical. At least that seems to be the campaign’s overriding message at the moment. I have little doubt that everyone who’s anyone has decided that Clark “screwed up” and that he had to be cut loose. The gasbag reviews are sure to be glowing. Everyone knows that you are not allowed to assail the military record of a war hero, right? (Oh wait …. only certain war heroes. I forgot.)

Again, it’s all very convenient for Republicans. There’s one less super smart,liberal military expert to contend with, paving the way, no doubt, for someone a little more … reliable.

It’s depressing, but predictable.

For those who need to come up to speed on what Clark said and how the hissy fit was written, Media Matters has the whole sordid rundown. And Columbia Journalism Review also looks at the right’s phony meme pulling the media’s strings.

I’ll just put this up again so that everyone can see what a real fighting Democrat looks like for what might be the final time in this campaign. I would have thought the Democrats could use a fellow like this. Apparently not:

Update: I wonder if Rand Beers is going to have to be cut loose too?

Update II: Bowers has a similar take on why this is happening: to discredit an important liberal foreign policy and national security voice.

Update III: For those of you who insist that this is some kind of super-duper jiujitsu, well — if it is, it’s not very effective. When you have a “surrogate” go out and say something which you want to “repudiate” but need to get “out there” you don’t send one of the most important and credible voices on the left. You send some lowly factotum or political operative whose job it is to be publicly slapped down and whose credibility is irrelevant. You don’t repudiate someone of Clark’s stature unless you are prepared for him to be damaged and undermined in the future.

I don’t believe the Obama campaign sent out Clark to say this. I think Clark was speaking for himself as a Democrat and respected four star General. And what he said was perfectly reasonable and uncontroversial. The establishment reflexively turned it into one of their little pearl clutching pageants. It isn’t real. One of these days Democrats will learn that the hissy fit is designed to make them look weak and unprincipled.

Here’s Clarks statement:

Statement by General Wesley K. Clark (ret)

“There are many important issues in this Presidential election, clearly one of the most important issues is national security and keeping the American people safe. In my opinion, protecting the American people is the most important duty of our next President. I have made comments in the past about John McCain’s service and I want to reiterate them in order be crystal clear. As I have said before I honor John McCain’s service as a prisoner of war and a Vietnam Veteran. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. I would never dishonor the service of someone who chose to wear the uniform for our nation.

John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country – but it doesn’t include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions. And in this area his judgment has been flawed – he not only supported going into a war we didn’t have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn’t have sound judgment when it comes to our nation’s most critical issues.

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St. John Is Absolutely Right

by tristero

McCain is 100% right. The nature of his wartime service “doesn’t reduce the price of a gallon of gas by a penny” or, as the Times put it, “do anything else to help Americans.”

Indeed.

Oh, did I possibly misconstrue what St. John was talking about? Imagine that!

Don’t Want to Say I Told You So…

by dday

…but I told you so.

I was pretty sure that the press would deliberately misinterpret, intentionally clip and generally get wrong Wes Clark’s statements about John McCain’s military service. Egged on by the conservative noise machine, they ginned up this controversy and set their outrage meters to 11. There must be a run on pearls in Washington today with all of them being clutched. Joe Klein actually went ahead and called it “bad manners.” In a political campaign. Good Jeebus. Josh Marshall sums it up pretty well.

The McCain campaign’s claim that there’s any attack here on McCain’s war record is simply a lie — a simple attempt to fool people. This is an essential point to this entire campaign — does McCain’s military record mean that even the Democrats have to concede the point that he’s more qualified to be commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, that his foreign and national security policy judgment is superior to Obama’s? It’s simply a fact that McCain has a record of really poor judgment on a whole list of key foreign policy and national security questions.

This is one of those moments in the campaign where the nonsense from the chief DC press sachems is so palpable and overwhelming that everyone who cares about this contest needs to jump into the breach and demand that they answer why no one can question whether McCain’s war record makes him more qualified to be president and whether he has good foreign policy and national security judgment.

What I wanted to see was how the Obama campaign would handle this. McCain and the conservative outrage machine wanted to pick a fight, divide Clark from the Democratic Party, make his comments radioactive and allow his opponent to once again fold like a cheap suit. They didn’t disappoint.

Sure enough, just as I was about to publish this blog post, I got an email from Obama spokesman Bill Burton: “As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark.”

And this is why people get upset with politics. Wes Clark makes a perfectly legitimate statement and can’t find a single national Democrat to back him up because they’re all a bunch of scared little kittens. They got used by the combination of the conservative outrage machine and the media. It’s a filthy little game and they fall for it time after time, and seemingly never learn. Even if we have a victorious Presidential election and a larger majority in Congress, we’re going to be dealing with this. As long as conservatives can flip a switch and get Democrats to crumble, whatever the context, the idea that we can make any progress legislatively is laughable.

…even richer, apparently the head surrogate McCain sent out as an attack dog on this today was Bud Day, one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Surely he’s completely fit to judge anyone’s military service.

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“I think we’ve all been demeaned.”

by tristero

Indeed we all have,, whether or not we ever saw a Swift Boat. But this is what movement conservatives do with emotionally weighty situations or actions. They demean everyone involved.

In Schiavo, they took one of the worst moral dilemmas a family has to face – a decision which clearly must be private and for which definite legal guidelines are established – and put the family and the country through hell in the most cynical fashion imaginable, running roughshod over the Constitution for no reason whatsoever except to make the point that they had the power to do it. They took Katrina – where the fault was clearly an incompetent federal government, ie the Bush administration – and blamed the victims for their own suffering, even while they were still up to their necks in sewage. They characterized the tortures endured at Abu Ghraib as mere schoolboy pranks, demeaning the suffering of numerous totally innocent men, women, and children.

And they regularly demean the achievements of heroes, dismissing or laughing at them when they don’t like their politics and dragging everyone into the mud in their desperate, psychotic propensity to do anything and everything to gain power.

I have no doubt, by the way, that during the heyday of the Kerry swiftboating, many of these guys were trying like hell to get their objections heard, but no one in the press would listen to them. And that many more were intimidated into silence, unwilling to subject their families to the raging, Rovian fury of O’Neill’s thugs.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times. Whatever the faults of American politics – and they are numerous – there still is simply no excuse for goons like the self-styled Swiftboat Veterans for “Truth” to have national influence. The typical explanation for their gaining such power in the public discourse is that occasionally the US goes a little mad, especially when it becomes fearful. But that’s wrong, or rather, that’s the least of it. Among other things, we liberals were grossly underprepared for the assault on American values that the extreme right unleashed in the fall of 2000 and following.

Well, as far as this liberal is concerned, never again. That is one reason why none of us here in the liberal blogosphere put any stock in the notion that McCain is some kind of moderate. We’ve seen all this before and it smells like Bush.

Get Ready For The Mother Of All Hissy Fits

by dday

So Wes Clark went on Face The Nation today and “went there” – challenging John McCain’s constant referrals to his wartime biography which are standing in for his doctrinaire ideological stances on foreign policy. Let’s first give the snippet that you’re going to be seeing crawl across the screen and on the lips of every Republican strategist tomorrow:

“I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”

Now, let’s add one sentence of context:

CLARK: He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, “I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not, do you want to take the risk, what about your reputation, how do we handle this publicly? He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say, Barack Obama hasn’t had any of these experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.

CLARK: I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.

So Schieffer kind of led him in that direction. Furthermore, Clark has been saying this for a few weeks now; Digby highlighted it on June 16.

The right is going to go after Wesley Clark tomorrow with everything they’ve got. The press releases from the McCain campaign have already started flying.

If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to question John McCain’s military service, that’s their right. But let’s please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he’s proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain’s military service record.

John McCain is proud of his record of always putting the country first — from his time in the Navy, in Vietnam and through to today.

Rick Sanchez apparently termed it “Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today.”

Just so you know what’s coming. A couple points:

1) Clark is right. He’s not blatantly lying about McCain’s political service or even disparaging it. Earlier in the interview he called McCain a hero to “all of us in the service.” He’s making the simple point that military service and executive experience aren’t the same thing. Because we’ve been saturated with this “commander-in-chief” stuff for the last 7 years, and this false notion that criticizing the President’s policies equals “criticizing the troops,” this dangerous blurring has occurred.

2) I seem to remember a post about the media seeing in McCain a certain honor that they recognize as lacking in themselves and that’s why they constantly feel inadequate in his presence and continuously looking up to him. That’s what this is going to be about. Bob Schieffer literally couldn’t believe anyone would take on McCain’s perceived strength, and now that Clark has done so the rest of the media herd will take it the same way.

3) I have few doubts that Clark will handle this head-on. Let’s see how the rest of the Democrats handle it. Will they run for the hills screaming? Undercut Clark at the knees?

Should be an interesting Monday.

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Some Nerve

by digby

Fergawdsake:

It was probably inevitable that John McCain would abandon his pledge to focus exclusively on the issues, and steer clear of personal attacks, I just didn’t expect it as early as June.

John McCain, in his sharpest attack yet against rival Barack Obama, said the Democratic presidential candidate’s word “cannot be trusted.” “This election is about trust — trust in people’s word, McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told several hundred donors at a $2 million GOP fundraiser in Louisville, Kentucky yesterday. “And unfortunately, apparently on several items, Senator Obama’s word cannot be trusted.” McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, said Obama has gone back on his word by pledging to take public financing during the general election and then deciding not to do so. Obama on June 19 announced he won’t accept public financing for his presidential campaign, calculating that he can raise far more than the $84.1 million he would get in government funds. […] [U]ntil yesterday McCain hadn’t accused Obama, 46, a first-term Illinois senator, of being untrustworthy. “I’ll keep my word to the American people. You can trust me,” McCain said.

Mr Straight Talk seems to be daring the Democrats to get nasty. And with McCain it’s not that hard. Seems the maverick isn’t all that trustworthy about paying taxes:

When you’re poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you’re rich, it’s hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It’s a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

Oh, and did you know that the McCains own “at least seven homes through a variety of trusts and corporations controlled by Cindy McCain.” Seven?

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God Save This Honorable Court!

by dday

The Washington Post has an article today about the implications of a McCain victory on the federal judiciary. I don’t think they needed to write it, they could have just used the same amount of column inches and printed this graphic:

(h/t CAF for the graphic.)

The federal bench has been overwhelmingly appointed by Republicans because they’ve held the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. And while there are exceptions, Republican Presidents have used the Federalist Society and conservative legal organizations as a judge factory. Everyone knows this and it’s very clear. However, I don’t think one truly appreciates the shift to the right of the judiciary on one of the signature issues they end up deciding in bulk – corporate issues. The lead editorial in today’s LA Times is about the “return to consensus” on the Roberts Court, despite the high-profile 5-4 decisions. That’s true, but it’s a function of what cases the Court is selecting to decide. It has nothing to do with, as the LAT suggests, some sort of judicial comity or bipartisanship. It’s because forty percent of the cases this term involved business interests, and the Republican – actually, all – appointees on the Court are of one mind on them.

Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned reputation for divisiveness, it has been surprisingly united in cases affecting business interests. Of the 30 business cases last term, 22 were decided unanimously, or with only one or two dissenting votes. Conrad said she was especially pleased that several of the most important decisions were written by liberal justices, speaking for liberal and conservative colleagues alike. In opinions last term, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter each went out of his or her way to question the use of lawsuits to challenge corporate wrongdoing — a strategy championed by progressive groups like Public Citizen but routinely denounced by conservatives as “regulation by litigation.” Conrad reeled off some of her favorite moments: “Justice Ginsburg talked about how ‘private-securities fraud actions, if not adequately contained, can be employed abusively.’ Justice Breyer had a wonderful quote about how Congress was trying to ‘weed out unmeritorious securities lawsuits.’ Justice Souter talked about how the threat of litigation ‘will push cost-conscious defendants to settle.’ ” […]

Business cases at the Supreme Court typically receive less attention than cases concerning issues like affirmative action, abortion or the death penalty. The disputes tend to be harder to follow: the legal arguments are more technical, the underlying stories less emotional. But these cases — which include shareholder suits, antitrust challenges to corporate mergers, patent disputes and efforts to reduce punitive-damage awards and prevent product-liability suits — are no less important. They involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for the economy and can have a greater effect on people’s daily lives than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars. In the current Supreme Court term, the justices have already blocked a liability suit against Medtronic, the manufacturer of a heart catheter, and rejected a type of shareholder suit that includes a claim against Enron. In the coming months, the court will decide whether to reduce the largest punitive-damage award in American history, which resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

And they did reduce that punitive-damage award, as we know. David Souter, one of the court’s “liberals,” wrote the opinion.

The hot-button issues of gun rights and Roe get all the ink, but ex-corporate lawyer John Roberts has really revolutionized the nation’s highest Court, and on issues with business interests at the forefront he have shown himself and his Court extremely willing to ignore precedent and to act in an activist fashion. This is the real agenda of any Republican nominee – you have to look past the so-called “litmus tests” to get to the meat.

As for Sen. Obama’s opinion on these issues, he’s (surprise, surprise) kept it pretty close to the vest. But we can look to why he opposed both Roberts and Alito:

Obama, like Clinton, voted against both Bush nominees to the Supreme Court, citing their tendencies to favor government and corporate interests—”bullies” in Obama’s words—over the rights of individuals.

He wrote, “The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’s nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope … that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch. I hope that he will recognize who the weak are and who the strong are in our society.”

Casting his vote against Alito, Obama noted similar concerns about the nominee’s voting record, “The Judicial Branch of our government is a place where any American citizen can stand equal before the eyes of the law. Yet, in examining Judge Alito’s many decisions, I have seen extraordinarily consistent support for the powerful against the powerless, for the employer against the employee, for the President against the Congress and the Judiciary, and for an overreaching federal government against individual rights and liberties.”

In his votes against Roberts and Alito, Obama shared much of the same reasoning with Clinton, noting that the nominees’ steadfast support for government and corporate powers—and disinterest in the rights of individuals—concerned him. One point he emphasizes more than Clinton, however, is Roberts’s and Alito’s tendency to favor the “unitary executive” theory, which supports fewer limitations on presidential authority.

We know that McCain would appoint a corporate whore. I think past precedent suggests otherwise for Obama – and certainly 4-8 more years of Federalist Society knockoffs throughout the judiciary is unacceptable. But the Supreme Court’s ideology on corporate issues is pretty rigidly set for perhaps the next generation, and barring a massive change in personnel I don’t see that changing. Building progressive power outside of government that will hit businesses in the wallet and hold them accountable to their customers – BuyBlue.org and the stock sell-off of Sinclair Broadcasting in 2004 being some recent examples – may be more effective than relying on John Roberts and his cadre.

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The Center Fetish

by digby

Glenn Greenwald takes on the beltway conventional wisdom which says that Democrats must move to the center on national security or risk being painted as weak. He summons all the evidence from the 2006 election which shows that “the center,” that political nirvana, isn’t where the pundits say it is. Moreover, he points out that poll after poll shows that voters are less concerned with how closely a candidate hews to the conventional line on these issues, than whether the candidate has strong convictions.

Back in 2005, I wrote:

As much as I appreciate all these Republicans offering us advice about how we are endangering our political prospects by not supporting illegal NSA spying, I have to wonder if they really have our best interests at heart. I just get a teensy bit suspicious that it might not be sincere.

The truth is that I have no idea where the NSA spying scandal is going and neither do they. The Republicans would like it to go nowhere for obvious reasons and so they are trying to psych out timid Dems. What I do know is that the most important problem Democrats have is not national security; it’s that nobody can figure out what we stand for. And when we waffle and whimper about things like this we validate that impression.

In Rick Perlstein’s book, “The Stock Ticker and The Super Jumbo” he notes that many Democrats are still reeling from the repudiation of the party by the Reagan Democrats. And while they continue to worry about being too close to African Americans or being too rigid on abortion or too soft on national security, they don’t realize that the most vivid impression people have of the Democrats is this:

“I think they lost their focus”
“I think they are a little disorganized right now”
“They need leadership”
“On the sidelines”
“fumbling”
“confused”
“losing”
“scared”

The reason people think this is because we are constantly calculating whether our principles are politically sellable (and we do it in front of God and everybody.) We’ve been having this little public encounter session for well over 20 years now and it’s added up to a conclusion that we don’t actually believe in anything at all.

Democrats are no longer the party that needs leadership or the party that is disorganized or on the sidelines. The Republicans are imploding and the country has turned its desperate eyes their way. So why are we still hearing so much about how the Democrats have to “move to the center?” It seems as though the country’s center has moved to the Democrats.

Glenn marshals all the facts that prove the country isn’t really moved by national security scare mongering. It’s there for anyone to see, and one must assume that it’s there for all the best minds in Democratic politics as well. And yet High Broderism still reigns even at the risk of perpetuating that toxic notion that Democrats have no values or principles. Why is that?

I think there are two things at work and I think they have nothing to do with the issues themselves. The first has to do with the well known propensity for Democrats to pay far too much attention to the gasbags. Neal Gabler has an op-ed in today’s LA Times that will warm the heart of all blogging liberal media critics. Quoting from Nixonland (about Joseph Kraft and this phenomenon), he also discusses the way the press became self-conscious and adopted entertainment values — turning itself into “the media,” a celebrity business. He homes in on something important about that:

So what does this have to do with an illiberal streak in liberal journalists? Just this: One of the surest paths to stardom in movies, television and politics has always been the guise of Everyman — the person who purports to be one of us and with whom we can readily identify. That guise became even more effective once Nixon had successfully rebranded the Democratic Party from one that protected the working class to one that seemed increasingly elitist and divorced from American mainstream values. Combine the two and the result seems almost inevitable: the Everyman journalist for whom career advancement trumps political loyalty.

The sainted Tim Russert, the Everyman from Buffalo, owned a seven million dollar vacation home on Nantucket. Chris Matthews makes five million dollars a year. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But they are hardly the voices of average Americans and I fear that an awful lot of powerful Democrats, similarly situated, turn to such “salt of the earth” millionaire celebrities as their touchstones to the “regular” people.

And that raises an important question: if these rich, pampered celebrities are spokesmen for the Everyman, then who are the elites? Well, they’re us, the liberal base of the Democratic party. And that’s what this “run to the center” is really all about — putting as much distance between the politicians and us as they can. It’s not about being “serious” on national security or crime or family values. It’s not even about appealing to swing voters. It’s about repudiating liberalism. You can have a right wing zealot on the team who is so out to lunch that he writes books recommending you beat your children like he beats his dog. But associations with anything remotely culturally liberal or politically progressive are considered poisonous if you care to be taken seriously by the likes of Target shopper Brian “Everyman”Williams or the policeman’s daughter Maureen “Everywoman” Dowd.

Repudiating liberalism is a symbolic gesture required of Democrats by the political establishment to prove that they are not elitists. And it goes beyond mere posturing on gay marriage or abortion. The national security challenge is always not to appear to be “an appeaser.” The way you prove that is by refusing to appease the Democratic base. The economic challenge is to walk very carefully on taxes because it “costs jobs” for the hard working man and the struggling businessman alike who are in this thing together against the liberal elites. The cultural challenge is to not appear to be too friendly to blacks or too unfriendly to socially conservative religion in order to prove that that you are not beholden to the “extremists.” The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.)

That being the case, I’m not sure it’s ever been realistic to expect Barack Obama to be the guy to challenge all this. He carries with him the strongest cultural signifiers a Democrat can carry to make the political establishment freak out: he’s young, he’s from big city politics, he’s elite educated and, of course, he’s black. As much as the “Everymen” like to think of themselves as beyond something silly like race, unless a black person is a Republican like Powell or Rice, he is automatically suspect. As a Democrat whom they’ve already successfully, and erroneously, labeled as super liberal (and closet terrorist, which amounts to the same thing) Obama must work twice as hard as an older white male would have to do to prove to the gasbag elites that he can “connect” with Real Americans.

Under the system as it exists today, you can hardly be surprised that the first black Democratic nominee would be reluctant to break much more new ground than he already has. (The same would be true of the first woman president, by the way, so there would have been no advantage for Clinton — indeed, less of one, since she inherited president Clinton’s baggage as well.) Indeed, I always assumed that the first black or female presidents would have to be Republican for just that reason — only a Republican can go to China and all that rot.

As the Republicans fall back and regroup, Democrats have decided to use some of their political advantage of the moment to advance something important: the full equality of African Americans. In America, with our history, the symbolism of that means something quite real. But there is a trade off involved. He has less freedom of movement than someone like a John Edwards might have had.

I wish that he would use some of his rhetorical gifts to challenge conservative assumptions more and I’m hopeful that he will, as president, work to redefine the conventional wisdom. I’m also hopeful that his approach on the big issues will not be reflexively compromising. But as of right now, there remains a strong belief among all the Democratic players that liberals are losers — and they want to win. I don’t think we’re going to change that in the next four months.

We chose serious symbolic change that has deep cultural meaning over serious ideological change that has deep political meaning. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that — the effects of such things are far reaching and incredibly important for the advancement of our society. You can’t forget that Barack himself was born at a time when Jim Crow was still enshrined in the south. This is huge. But nothing comes free and having a politically moderate president at a time when a more explicit progressivism might have gotten a boost is the price we pay. The Village will only tolerate so much change at one time. If we want real political change, it’s time to change the Village.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

In memory of George Carlin: 7 movies you can’t see on TV

By Dennis Hartley

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck-George Carlin

As I am sure you are aware by now, one of the last living legends of American comedy went up to the roof last Sunday…and got stuck. I’m still reeling (and he’s still stuck).

I can’t really add much to what was already said here on this site earlier this week in a couple of heartfelt posts by digby and dday, or to the eloquent comments they prompted from Hullabaloo readers. For what it’s worth, here was my gut reaction to dday’s post:

No, not Carlin. It’s been a while since I actually teared up and got the lump in the throat upon hearing of the demise of an entertainer. It feels like the end of an era.

As a former stand up comic myself, I consider Carlin one of the Holy Trinity (along with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor). I once had the pleasure of doing a phone interview with him when I was working at a radio station up in Fairbanks AK; he was pleasantly surprised and genuinely flattered when I asked him about his very close association with the legacy of Lenny Bruce. He seemed to feel that many of his younger fans didn’t “get” that part of his gestalt.

Not only a comic genius, but a true wordsmith.

71 was too soon.

One obvious recommendation would be to immerse yourself in a marathon of his HBO specials, but I thought I would do something a little different this week. I’ve assembled a “George Carlin memorial film festival”. As a tribute to his most well-known routine, I’ve chosen seven feature films for your viewing pleasure, and in his memory. Carlin only actually appeared in three of my selections, but I feel that these are films that capture some of the spirit of what he stood for (or stood against). So here are “7 movies you can’t see on TV” (as in “free” TV-where you will never to be able to view them uncensored.)

Lenny-Carlin on comedians: I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

Dogma– Carlin on organized religion: I have as much authority as the Pope; I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

Fuck-A Documentary– Carlin on obscenity: Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. (Reviewed in a previous post)

The People vs. Larry Flynt– Carlin on freedom: I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

Idiocracy– Carlin on ignorance: Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. (Reviewed in a previous post)

Grass– Carlin on toking up: Being a very bound-up, Irish Catholic tight-assholed person, I’ve often thought that whatever negative effects pot had on me, it probably saved me from being an alcoholic and a complete fucking brainless idiot by the time I was 25. (Reviewed in a previous post)

The Aristocrats– Carlin on the art of comedy:

…And a programming note: Depending on your age (ahem) you may or may not know that George Carlin was the guest host for the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live back in 1975. NBC is going to be airing that show in its entirety this evening as a tribute.

BTW that first show also featured Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Michael O’Donaghue, Andy Kaufman, Billy Preston and (the hands and voice of) Jim Henson; I have a feeling it will be a bittersweet viewing experience.

The end of an era, indeed.

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She’s My Mother And My Sister

by digby

Conservatives are very confused these days:

HANNITY: The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way? Joining us now for analysis, former ambassador to the U.N. and a Fox News contributor, John Bolton. What do you think this means?

BOLTON: I think it’s actually a clear victory for North Korea. They gain enormous political legitimacy…In return, we get precious little. I think this is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the U.S. without raising a sweat.

HANNITY: Boy I tell you they’ve done it time and time again, and I’m sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven’t kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan’s “trust but verify”?

Bless his heart. He doesn’t know which way to turn anymore. Is the line, “Bush is a great leader for making this deal with North Korea and nobody acknowledges it” or “He just sold the country out to the commies?” Unfortunately, his first choice was the wrong one, at least as far as John Bolton was concerned. So, he just did an immediate 180, apparently assuming that nobody would notice. Wingnut central needs to have a retreat or something and get their talking points together. It’s starting to get embarrassing.

(And isn’t it amazing to think that John Bolton was ever in important jobs in the US government? It’s like a fast fading nightmare where you can’t remember all the details but your sense of fear and foreboding is still with you. Creepy.)

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