Month: October 2008

Appeasement Club

by digby

Does this creep you out as much as it does me?

They neocons are still at it. They’ll always be at it. “Appeasement” is the foundation of their worldview — the notion that everything bad that happens in the world is the result of relying on pansyassed diplomacy instead of delivering a swift kick in the chops at the first sign of trouble. (In fact, the biggest disappointment in their lives was being unable to launch the codes against the commies, which is why the GWOT sent such a huge thrill up their legs.)

But I think even creepier than the fact that this anti-appeasement fetish manifests itself in $1000.000 a plate galas and video presentations by dead people, is that just a couple of years ago, this stuff was being openly bandied about in the highest reaches of government and the salons of the political cognoscenti as if it were perfectly normal.

Mr Bush is known to keep an Epstein bust of Churchill in the Oval Office, and in the wake of the September 11 attacks New York’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, invoked the Churchillian spirit of the Blitz. This week, in a speech to 3,000 marines at a military base in California, Mr Rumsfeld recalled Churchill’s rejection of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy at Munich in October 1938: “It wasn’t until each country got attacked that they said: ‘Maybe Winston Churchill was right. Maybe that lone voice expressing concern about what was happening was right.”‘

There are rumours that Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s most prolific biographer, was called in to the White House to give Mr Bush a private lecture. And talking to Murdoch-owned Fox TV last week Mr Rumsfeld took up the familiar analogy: “Think of all the countries that said, well, we don’t have enough evidence. Mein Kampf had been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. Maybe he won’t attack us. Maybe he won’t do this or that. Well, there were millions dead because of the miscalculations.”

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz had persuaded the conservative intelligentsia that we were already fighting WWIV:

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine is no more dead today than the Truman Doctrine was cowardly in its own early career. Bolstered by that analogy, I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a President who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

This was considered normal, mainstream discussion not two years ago. As was, shockingly, this:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

This may have been the low point:

On Friday, November 19, the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with the Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner in Los Angeles at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

The whole country went crazy for a while there. And maybe it still is. But I can guarantee you one thing — they may be quiet for the moment, but old neocons never die, they just lurk in the dark until they get their next chance at power. In the meantime, they’ll be keeping the dream alive, waiting for the next Neville Chamberlain or sell-out at Yalta or “Who lost China” — or the new one, a liberal “stab in the back” on Iraq. It’s how they organize their world.

H/t to batocchio
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Missiles Of October

by digby

Up until now, McCain has been running a kinder gentler campaign. Now, he has no choice but to take the gloves off:

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama‘s character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat’s judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain’s team has decided that its emphasis on the senator’s biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan’s campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.”We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This is what heroes with honor and integrity do. A true patriot will always try to change the subject by smearing his opponents character, particularly during time of crisis.

If you wonder exactly how these things work, McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, even wrote an op-ed about smear campaigns in the Boston Globe a while back:

The anatomy of a smear campaign

By Richard H. Davis | March 21, 2004

Every presidential campaign has its share of hard-ball political tactics, but nothing is more discomforting than a smear campaign. The deeply personal, usually anonymous allegations that make up a smear campaign are aimed at a candidate’s most precious asset: his reputation. The reason this blackest of the dark arts is likely to continue is simple: It often works.

The premise of any smear campaign rests on a central truth of politics: Most of us will vote for a candidate we like and respect, even if we don’t agree with him on every issue. But if you can cripple a voter’s basic trust in a candidate, you can probably turn his vote. The idea is to find some piece of personal information that is tawdry enough to raise doubts, repelling a candidate’s natural supporters.

All campaigns do extensive research into their opponent’s voting record and personal life. This so-called “oppo research” involves searching databases, combing through press clips, and asking questions of people who know (and preferably dislike) your opponent. It’s not hard to turn up something a candidate would rather not see on the front page of The Boston Globe.

It’s not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate’s political weakness.

Nothing personal. Just business.

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Saturday Funnies

by digby

From Bob Geiger’s Saturday cartoon round-up:

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My Sweet Coconut

by digby

Judging from the reaction among the beltway fanboys, it appears that Sarah W. Palin may have a potent weapon in her arsenal. Here’s Wolcott:

Roger Simon, whose brains seem to have been leaking through a sieve ever since he joined Politico, was one of those smitten with her eyelash action.

But if people thought she was going to look like a dumb bunny for 90 minutes, they were disappointed. She said what she wanted to say, and she was so relaxed she even winked at one point. Really! An actual wink during a national debate, when she said she was going to try to get John McCain to change his mind about not drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I hope that wink wasn’t a lurid signal that Palin plans to bestow oral sex on her running mate to get him to change his mind about ANWR, breathily promising him that she’ll show him the true meaning of drilling in Alaska if only he’ll say yes. That would be so wrong on so many levels.

Perhaps she intends only to “wink him off,” to paraphrase the famous joke told by Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail. But even that would be a dismayingly inappropriate way to further the cause of domestic oil exploration, in my opinion.

Perhaps this explains why McCain was jubilantly shouting “viva barracuda!” apropos of nothing. Of course, he may have been thinking about that “dish in Rio,” the former flame about whom he used to reminisce with the boys on the Straight Talk Express. And don’t think those ramblings weren’t deep deep policy discussions:

Sen. John McCain’s senior foreign policy advisor cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate’s decades-long interest in Latin America.

Speaking at an Americas Conference panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president’s Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain’s, who recently emerged in the press.

”Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years.” Fontaine said. “In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She’s a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region — in the most positive terms.”

If you know what I mean…

Fontaine was referring to former model Maria Gracinda Teixeira de Jesus, who recently gave an interview to O Globo saying the former sailor was quite the kisser. According to McCain’s memoirs, `Faith of My Fathers,` they met in 1957, when his ship, the USS Hunt docked in Brazil.

”I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,” she said. “He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss myself.”

I don’t think Sarah W’s little winkies are any competition for that, do you?

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Act One

by digby

Krugman wonders if the bailout has already failed:

OK, I know that’s premature. And I place no weight at all on the fact that the Dow plunged after the vote.

But it is interesting that short-term Treasury yields are down — only 0.13% on one-month — suggesting that the flight to safety continues unabated. Against this, John Jansen reports some signs that money markets are unfreezing, slightly.

Why do I keep getting the sickening feeling that this is another of those Shock Doctrine big cons? There’s certainly a problem and it needs to be fixed. But the logic of the Doctrine is that the “fix” actually makes things worse — on purpose.

Krugman says we’ll know more next week but that we’ll likely be asked to consider Bailout Part Deux even before January 20th. Too bad we don’t have a president at a time like this.

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In 10 Years, This Will Still Be The Creepiest Commentary In American Political History

by dday

Rich Lowry loses it on his laptop.

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.

Get a room, Rich.

Is this the guy who watches porn and thinks the actresses are looking at him, too?

(FWIW I had other things going on, but I didn’t notice the winking at all. If you desperately need to know what I did notice, audio of my radio appearance is here.)

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While You Were Sleeping

by digby

… they quietly tore off another piece of the constitution:

New FBI guidelines governing investigations were released today after being signed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. The guidelines replace existing bureau guidelines for five types of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations. The ACLU has been vocal in its disapproval of the overly broad guidelines, citing both the FBI’s and DOJ’s documented records of internal abuse.

The new guidelines reduce standards for beginning “assessments” (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, meaning the threshold to beginning investigations across the board will be lowered. More troubling still, the guidelines allow a person’s race or ethnic background to be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes may institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.

“The attorney general today gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “The new guidelines provide no safeguards against the FBI’s improperly using race and religion as grounds for suspicion. They also fail to sufficiently prevent the government from infiltrating groups whose viewpoints it doesn’t like. The FBI has shown time and time again that is incapable of policing itself and there is good reason to believe that these guidelines will lead to more abuse.”

The FBI originally adopted internal guidelines in the mid-1970s after investigations showed widespread abuses and violations of constitutional rights by the agency, including the politically-motivated spying on figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. Ironically, these newly revised guidelines could open the bureau up to exactly that kind of abuse once more. Though the DOJ and FBI Director Robert Mueller have consistently claimed that the new guidelines would not give agents new authority, the previous guidelines governed very different types of investigations, and tearing down the walls between them will invariably mean that new powers will be applied where they were not before.

There are quite a few outrageous lame duck executive actions that a new Democratic administration is going to have to reverse. I sure hope somebody is keeping a list.

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Betraying Normal

by digby

Has there ever been a person more unctuously hypocritical than Peggy Noonan? Today, she claims that Palin’s ignorant vapidity is a triumph of celebrity culture as if that’s a good thing, and then has the utter gall to write this:

I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America—small towns, sound values. “It’s time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency,” Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents “backwoods types,” or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun. I’m not sure the McCain campaign is aware of it—it’s possible they are—but this is subtly divisive.That is the authentic sound of the aggression, and phony populism, of the Bush White House. Good move. That ended well.

I’m speechless. So, I’ll just let Noonan’s own words explain why that’s so

I was asked this week why the president seems so attractive to the heartland, to what used to be called Middle America. A big question. I found my mind going to this word: normal.

Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He’s not exotic. But if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help. He’ll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, “Where’s Sally?” He’s responsible. He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, “I warned Joe about that furnace.” And, “Does Joe have children?” And “I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it’s formidable and yet fleeting.” When the fire comes they talk. Bush ain’t that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain’t that guy. Americans love the guy who ain’t that guy.

Someone said to me: But how can you call him normal when he came from such privilege? Indeed he did. But there’s nothing lemonade-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-links-at-the-country-club about Mr. Bush. He isn’t smooth. He actually has some of the roughness and the resentments of the self-made man. I think the reason for this is Texas. He grew up in a white T-shirt and jeans playing ball in the street with the other kids in the subdivision. Barbara Bush wasn’t exactly fancy. They lived like everyone else. She spoke to me once with great nostalgia of her early days in Texas, when she and her husband and young George slept in the same bed in an apartment in Midland. A prostitute lived in the complex. Barbara Bush just thought she was popular. Then they lived in a series of suburban houses.

George W. Bush didn’t grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else. That’s a gift, to think you’re just like everyone else in America. It can be the making of you.

Mind boggling. This is the woman who made a fetish out of “Joe Six-pack” to the point where she was nearly drooling in public over Playgirl’s annual Fireman’s calendar. For years, I expected her to say she was giving up New York and Washington to move to Topeka and marry a wheat farmer. (“They’re so very real, so bold, so authentically, turgidly masculine.”)

Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker and some of the other cosmopolitan conservatives got a snoot full of wingnut rage when they expressed reservations about Palin these last couple of weeks. And they deserved it. They are the people, after all, who wrote garbage like that above for years and nursed the belief in the Republican base that the only thing required for world leadership is being as mediocre as possible. What did they expect?

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The Ig Nobels And The American Economy, Maybe

by tristero

The Ig Nobels:

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely won an Ig Nobel for his study that found more expensive fake medicines work better than cheaper fake medicines.

Could that be the reasoning behind the bailout? To this layperson, it sometimes sure sounds like it…

George W. Palin

by digby

According to David Brooks, Palin’s “mom next door” schtick last night was just what the doctor ordered. She loathes and despises Washington and that’s the most important qualification for any Vice President. It always amuses me when Washington insiders like Brooks wildly applaud people who hate them.

Last night Palin appeared to have mastered the art of George W. Bush style gibberish — obnoxious, confident and dumb. And the conservative elite are all relieved. They were afraid they had a real problem on their hands — a candidate who was timorous, insecure and dumb and that is a sure loser.

I’m going to start referring to her as George W Palin. She has every one of the characteristics that people thought were so refreshingly “authentic” when he ran in 2000 and which led us to disaster. This arrogant, empty, anti-intellectual faux populism has just proved itself to be inadequate for the presidency and yet they’ve put up another one.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had varying responses to this person. At first I thought she was a professional wingnut politician, well indoctrinated in conservative movement politics. It turns out she isn’t that at all. She is exactly what she says she is, a socially conservative hockey mom, who fell into a job with a big title, but which is obviously done by her staff. She gets by on her folksy demeanor, her massive ego and her prodigious energy (the only thing she doesn’t have in common with Bush.)

She isn’t a politician at all. She’s a caricature of a politician, as he is. They are both figureheads who represent something important to voters who believe that the biggest problem in the world is that pointy headed elites are incompetent because they lack comm on sense. And the funny thing is that it’s the product of one of the harshest conservative criticisms of liberalism over the years —- the self-esteem movement. Both George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are self-esteem symbols, put forth to prove to people who have been convinced that liberal elites are ruining everything, that the world would be better led by someone just like them. It’s the ultimate social promotion. That people like David Brooks would celebrate Palin’s mastery of its aggressive know nothingness, says that the conservative elites, even after Bush, are still committed to using this for their own cynical, Straussian ends.

Ed Rollins just said that Sarah Palin is now the front runner for the GOP nomination in 2012.

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