Month: May 2009

The Jackass Effect

by digby

Here’s a little tid-bit worth musing about:

In the days leading up to Obama’s announcement of his Supreme Court nominee, polling suggested voters were not very focused on the potential candidate’s gender or race. According to a CNN poll released over a week ago, very few said it was important to have a Hispanic or black nominee. And almost as many women (58%) as men (65%) said it was not important for Obama to pick a woman. A Gallup poll from around the same time showed similar results.

But, now that Sonia Sotomayor has been named, a new Gallup poll shows a gender gap has emerged. Of the last four nominees, she has the largest gender gap in support. There isn’t male animosity toward Sotomayor, as they are evenly divided on her nomination. However, women are overwhelmingly supportive (54% excellent/good idea, 25% only fair/poor), with three times as many finding her an “excellent” pick as a “poor” one.

Gallup suggests this gap could stem from gender differences in party identification. But the gender gap in party identification has been consistent for some time, yet only Alito also evoked a gender gap (a smaller one, in the opposite direction). And it is not simply the nomination of any woman that spurs a gap, as Harriet Miers was not any more popular with women. It is likely the combination of both the nomination of a woman, and women’s Democratic proclivities that produce the gap.

I wouldn’t discount The Tweety Effect. All the rancid talk about her alleged racism has been accompanied by a strong dose of sexism, particularly the whisper campaign about her “unseemly” temperament. As Greenwald says, federal judges are often anything but shrinking violets. They tend toward the imperious, as authority figures with lifetime tenure tend to do. When Scalia treats lawyers to a thorough grilling, he’s just putting them through their paces and demonstrating his own strongly held convictions. When a woman does it, she’s just a domineering bitch on wheels. This is a familiar double standard for working women everywhere.

A lot of the criticism toward this highly accomplished, qualified woman has run along those familiar lines. There’s been no dearth of those who say she isn’t all that bright starting with the Jeffrey Rosen blind gossip piece. Pat Buchanan put it most pithily: “the lady is a lightweight.”

He also called her a racist so the soup of derision and contempt from the right gets all mixed up with their various hatreds and insecurities. But it’s also quite telling that the thing that has everyone of all political stripes up in arms is that she once mused that she thought an Hispanic female would make better decisions than a white male because of her life experience. That comment is considered so outrageous that she’s being compared to David Duke. In my mind, the fact that all these elites are so upset over something that is impossible to quantify since there are almost no Hispanic females in a position to prove whether or not it’s true is far more interesting than the fact that she said it.

Obviously, there is also no way to know if any of this discussion is affecting the gender gap in the polls. It probably stems mostly from a feeling of pride in her achievements and gratitude that she’s willing to fight the good fight. But I would guess that a lot of women also instinctively feel that the mere fact that there is only one woman on the Supreme Court and zero Hispanics demonstrates that this victimization fantasy among a group of over-privileged jackasses is a bit much.

When I see these conservative men on television bleating plaintively that the president shouldn’t have chosen a Latina federal judge but rather chosen “the best person for the job,” I can’t help but burst out laughing at the total lack of self-awareness such comments illustrate. It’s clear they believe that 96% of all Supreme Court judges having been white males simply shows that white males are more qualified than anyone else. It’s hilarious.

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Bad Company

by digby

Oh my goodness, looks like the Republicans were in bed with the Latino KKK:

Wednesday, March 9, 2005; Page A03

The National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, embraced Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales at an awards ceremony last night, breaking with other civil rights organizations that have denounced Gonzales for his role in producing the administration memo that allowed harsh treatment of detainees overseas.

Although La Raza supported Gonzales’s appointment as attorney general, last night’s ceremony marked a first, highly public step in the group’s effort to alter its image as a left-leaning organization, said Janet Murguia, its president and chief executive.

Gonzales’s appearance at the ceremony was his first before a large Hispanic civil rights group since he was confirmed last month by the Senate. La Raza hopes the warm reception will show the Bush administration that it seeks to move to the center politically and gain more access to the White House. President Bush declined to attend all of La Raza’s annual conferences during his first term, citing the group’s criticism of his policies.

“We want to make sure that people understand that we are reaching out to this administration,” Murguia said. “We think it is a unique opportunity when a president is in his second term . . . to get things done.

“I know there are some folks who’ve said maybe NCLR is leaning left in the past or choosing sides,” said Murguia, who served as deputy director for legislative affairs for the Clinton White House and as a liaison between the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign and constituent groups in 2000. “I want to make a clear point: We are reaching out to all sides, we’re going to build coalitions, build bridges and put our people first.”

[…]

Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at La Raza, said that Gonzales’s body of work with Latino organizations, rather than his contribution to the memo, motivates her organization’s position.

“Many people were not aware of Judge Gonzales’s long history with our affiliates in Texas, and moving then-Governor Bush to the right posture, from our perspective on key civil rights issues, like anti-English only requirements, like anti-immigrant ballot initiatives, bilingual education and affirmative action,” Muñoz said. “There’s a list of issues where Judge Gonzales and Governor Bush did the right thing.”

How’s that bipartisan outreach going these days?

h/t to Julia

Clear Picture

by digby

Alex Koppelman at Salon has General Taguba on the record saying that the pictures that are being withheld by the government are not those to which he was referring. Koppleman also clarifies some of the confusion by showing that some of the pictures under discussion are among those that have already been released. So, that seems to clear up the question of whether or not the pictures are worse than what we’ve seen before — and whether or not the administration is covering up some crimes which have gone uninvestigated. The pictures are not the lurid images the Telegraph said they were.

Of course, this raises the most important question again (for me at least) which is why anyone thinks the withheld pictures will cause some sort of firestorm if they are actually less incendiary than what we’ve seen before. The logic of that just escapes me. If the new pictures showed people being raped with objects, then I can see why the military wouldn’t want them out there. If they are just pictures of something similar to what Graner and the crew did, or something more mundane, then it’s ludicrous that they will cause any trouble overseas at this point. I’m not sure anyone would even know the difference between these new ones and the ones already there if that’s the case.

Whatever. The whole thing has always stunk to high heaven because the only people who are doing time for any of this are some lowly grunts when it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that much of this stuff was a result of Cheney ordering the gloves to be taken off and General Geoffrey Miller being called in to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib. Not that any of them will ever pay the price for that.

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1989, Another Summer, Sound Of The Funky Drummer

by dday

Aside from asking why anyone would do a rap parody 30 years after Grandmaster Flash hit the turntables, I’m actually going to have to give mad credit to the Young Conservative Rappers in this bit for managing to wedge in every talking point from the past 30 years into a 4-minute song.

I don’t speak lies, I just spit out da facts
28% the new capital gains tax

Actually, considering that white male conservatives are the real oppressed, persecuted minority these days, it makes perfect sense to hit the streets (of a university library), put on their representin’ clothes (suits without ties) and get in the struggle. Fight the power, my brothers.

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Give ‘Em An Inch

by digby

One of the things that used to drive me nuts about Bill Clinton was his propensity to concede points he didn’t need to concede, thus moving the ball down the field for the other side. Over and over again, his White House succumbed to overwrought harassment by the worst elements of the Right Wing Noise machine by making incremental “admissions” out of a misplaced belief that doing so would cool the shrill shrieking craziness. (I’m pretty sure they figured they would gain allies among the allegedly saner establishment Republicans, which was also foolish because they play their own role in the loony pageant.)

It never works very well. The political press inevitably begins to look differently at the debate once the president validates the complaint in any way and it takes on a salience it would never have had if the White House simply held and let the other side fulminate and froth like the kooks they are. Unfortunately, Obama made a move in that direction today, and the press is featuring it in a way that should make everyone a little bit queasy:

The White House says Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor acknowledges she made a poor word choice in a 2001 speech in which she said that a Latina judge would often reach a better conclusion than a white male judge who hasn’t lived the same life.

That’s according to presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs. He says he has not talked directly to Sotomayor about it but has spoken to people who have.

Shuster led off Hardball with this:

Shuster: President Obama addressed a controversial choice of words by his nominee for the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor. In a 2001 speech, Sotomayor said a wise latina woman with her experiences would often reach a better conclusion than a white male. The president spoke about that remark a short time ago with NBC’s Brian Williams:

Obama: I’m sure she would have restated it, but if you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what’ clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going throughthbat will make her a good judge.

Shuster: Still, this is a concession by the white house. We will talk about with MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman and MSNBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

[…]

Shuster: We begin with a dramatic White House concession on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor confirmation battles, lets go to political analyst Howard Fineman and NBC news correspondent Chuck Todd. Chuck, let’s start with youi. It may too much to say it’s a dramatic concession, but the fact that they are walking this back even slightly that is fairly dramatic news. Explain what’s going on at the White House.

Todd: It is because the last two days, you had supporters of Sotomayor and the White House themselves, today Robert Gibbs quoting Samual Alito during his confirmation hearing talking about how his own life experiences can serve to influence his decisions in some of the cases that come before him. So there were a lot of attempts of Sotomayor’s supporters to do that, and I’ve even seen some quotes of Clarence Thomas trying to use the empathy thing.

But I think the White House realized that what she said, that a Latina woman would be better than a white male, that by itself, no matter how you slice it, it just came across poorly, so clearly there was a decision made to do some damage control. We saw it a little bit today with Robert Gibbs at the press briefing and then the president just now with Brian Williams.

Look, my guess is the next thing you’ll see is Sotomayor herself telling this privately to Senators and this probably means at the confirmation hearing itself, she’ll say the same thing, “that isn’t what I meant” and she’ll put it back to having her own life experiences and this and that. But they realize it was taking on a life of its own no matter how poorly it was being attacked by some on the right. I think the choice of words, obviously, created a toxic situation for the Republican Party, it still, they realized was something that wasn’t playing very well.

It was toxic for the Republican Party to have wingnuts call her a racist all day long but the White House thought it wasn’t playing very well so they had to do damage control. For the Republicans? Huh?

Here’s Fineman telling us all what’s really going on:

Shuster: Howard, this is a cave of some sorts to the Republicans, even if you hate the language they’re using, the Obama White House is now caving the point to a certain extent.

Fineman: Yeah and it’s for the reason that Chuck said. It’s because she wasn’t just saying in that quote, “I can add something to the court. I can add something to justice because of my background.” She was saying, “I am better than. Because I am a Latina with my experiences, I am better than a white man. I will make better judgments and decisions.” That became indefensible.

And it’s true that a lot of the Republican attacks were crude. But the conventional wisdom around here and including right here with me too,until last night, was that these attacks were having no effect, the administration was doing a pretty good job defending them. Well, they realized that they weren’t and they were going to have to walk back this quote. And it is a victory for the conservatives.

Fineman says that the question going forward will be “is this somehow a window into her judicial soul?” Oh God…

Look, this is a very typical Noise Machine tactic. The bad boys talk trash and the “statesmen” reject the “tone” while “raising questions.” But ultimately, more in sorrow than in anger, they simply have to conclude that the president made a mistake in nominating this controversial person with this record of racism. After all, even he admitted that the appointee (or statment/policy) was wrong.

Clinton made a habit of this sort of thing when he had a Democratic majority too, so the fact that he also did it because there was a Republican congress never held water as far as I was concerned. This reflexive desire to quiet one of these trumped up controversies was actually an attempt to control the Villagers, which never worked, but they never stopped doing it. I don’t get why this White House would follow that lesson, but it’s a bad sign. If you give any ground with these people on things like this, it only emboldens them.

As Shuster said:

The one thing about it is, there’s blood in the water whether the Democrats want to acknowledge that or not.

That’s mainly because they threw themselves into the shark’s maw for no good reason. They had the better of the argument — Republicans were acting like crazed, freaks, alienating Hispanics by the thousands and making women hate them even more, and the whole country was aghast. Why they gave them validation on this, I don’t really understand.

I wouldn’t expect this to affect her nomination — all they were ever going to get was a handful of Republican votes at the most anyway. But this controversy will make it necessary for Sotomayor to bow and scrape before Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch. The wingnuts have been hoping for a chance for some payback for Thomas and maybe they’ll get a pound of female flesh this time.

Update: Scarecrow shows more Democrats fanning out to apologize for Sotomayor’s comments. That’ll work out just great.

*transcripts by me —- d

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Bush’s Turn

by dday

I guess Cheney and Bush switched undisclosed locations for a week, and now the former pResident delivered the talking points about the torture regime.

In his largest domestic speech since leaving the White House in January, Bush told an audience in southwestern Michigan that after the September 11 attacks, “I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you.”

Although he did not specifically allude to the high-profile debate over President Obama’s decision to halt the use harsh interrogation techniques, and without referencing Cheney by name, Bush spoke in broad strokes about how he proceeded after the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

“The first thing you do is ask, what’s legal?” he said. “What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, ‘I’ve done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.’ I can tell you that the information we got saved lives.”

Well, those are two different things, aren’t they? “What’s legal” does not necessarily equal “What do the lawyers say is possible.” Especially depending on the sequencing of those events. If “what do the lawyers say is possible” comes first, and it’s more “what can we get the lawyers to say is possible,” then “what’s legal” becomes fairly irrelevant, right? Especially when combined with “I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you.” That sounds like a vow irrespective of the law.

Then there’s this unprovable “the information we got saved lives” statement, and considering that George Bush himself signed the executive order barring public disclosure of specific information gained through torture, and furthermore, he could have released them himself at the time if he wanted to be vindicated. For his part, Carl Levin has called B.S.

Regarding Cheney’s claim that classified documents will prove his case — documents that Levin himself is also privy to — Levin said: “But those classified documents say nothing about the numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction.”

Pretty unequivocal. But the last thing that Bush and Cheney want would be declassification. Because their tough-guy stance that torture saves lives works out better for them than chalking intelligence up to sugar free cookies.

This got to me:

The former president earned a noisy standing ovation when asked what he wants his legacy to be.

“Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity,” he said.

By the way, I’m willing to believe that Bush didn’t compromise his soul. He probably didn’t know about the worst stuff, and anyway I don’t think there’s much compromise available for a soul that would say this:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ “

“What was her answer?” I wonder.

“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

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Come Together

by digby

Here’s some excellent progressive synergy in action. The SEIU has pledged to donate one thousand dollars to Open Left and contribute another dollar for every person who signs up with them to join in the fight to pass health care for all Americans — including a public plan.

This one is win, win. Go sign up with SEIU and help Open Left in the process.

Huzzah to SEIU for stepping up to help an excellent blog.

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Good God

by digby

Think Progress listened to the radio and heard this:

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.

Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Finally, Liddy disputed the entire idea that there’s anything wrong with the paucity of women and total lack of Hispanics on the Court:

LIDDY: And everybody is cheering because Hispanics and females have been, quote, underrepresented, unquote. And as you pointed out, which I thought was quite insightful, the Supreme Court is not designed to be and should not be a representative body.

As Jonathan at ATR reminded me a while back when I was musing on these undemocratic attitudes among the wingnuts, founder John Jay famously said, “those who own the country ought to govern it.” So Liddy is just being an “originalist” like Antonin Scalia. Of course, his originalism when it comes to women and minorities actually goes back to original cave paintings rather than the constitution, but it’s still fairly consistent.

Rave on wingnuts, it only helps our ball team at this point .

Update: Limbaugh is working himself up into an aneurysm:

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A Phony Soldier Speaks Out

by digby

The Man Called Petraus isn’t towing the GOP party line. Will they say he betrayed them?

Amato has a rush transcript:

MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, it’s not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.

MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.

Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.

MacCallum: So you’re confident that they will never go free.

Gen. Petraeus: I hope that’s the case.

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)

Gen. Petraeus: ….T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them — those techniques work, that’s our experience in this business.

MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

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Update On Cover Up?

by digby

Updating my post of yesterday about the Abu Ghraib pics, Scott Horton is reporting that the pictures are the awful pics described in the Telegraph and which General Taguba confirmed were those which he’d described in his report.

The Daily Beast has confirmed that the photographs of abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which President Obama, in a reversal, decided not to release, depict sexually explicit acts, including a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation, forced exhibition, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.

These descriptions come on the heels of a British report yesterday about the photographs that contained some of these revelations—and whose credibility was questioned by the Pentagon.

The Daily Beast has obtained specific corroboration of the British account, which appeared in the London Daily Telegraph, from several reliable sources, including a highly credible senior military officer with firsthand knowledge, who provided even more detail about the graphic photographs that have been withheld from the public by the Obama administration.

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released…

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

The photographs differ from those already officially released. Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed.

Here’s Obama’s statement at the time he decided to withhold the pictures:

Now, let me also say a few words about an issue that I know you asked Robert Gibbs about quite a bit today, and that’s my decision to argue against the release of additional detainee photos. Understand, these photos are associated with closed investigations of the alleged abuse of detainees in our ongoing war effort.

And I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib, but they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual.

That’s precisely why they were investigated — and, I might add, investigated long before I took office — and, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied.

In other words, this is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.

It’s therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.

Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse. And obviously the thing that is most important in my mind is making sure that we are abiding by the Army Manual and that we are swiftly investigating any instances in which individuals have not acted appropriately, and that they are appropriately sanctioned. That’s my aim and I do not believe that the release of these photos at this time would further that goal.

I wrote before that his last point implying that the Army won’t investigate if pictures are released, is an abdication of presidential leadership. The military is not allowed to decide whether or not they will investigate abuses based upon their anger or fear that they might become public. Just as the previous administration and members of congress should not be validating the threat that the CIA will refuse to keep the country safe if they’re not given immunity for their crimes, neither should the president in any way sanction the idea that the military has the power not to investigate crimes if they might become public.

Be that as it may, the pertinent part of his comments are those before that, in which he says that there is nothing new in the photos and that they’ve all been investigated and properly dealt with. If these pictures are those which Horton describes — and which the military seems to be most anxious to withhold from the public — then he was either duped by the Pentagon or he was not being truthful with the public. Nobody can find a record of prosecutions for those crimes.

The Pentagon and the White House have been very, very clumsily denying this story, lashing out at the British Press and denying the pictures even exist. They have also explicitly said that the pictures do not depict anything other than what was already seen in the earlier pictures and then used that as an excuse for not releasing them. This does not add up.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that these particular pictures will inflame anti-American hatred. If they are what Horton says they are, they are of a magnitude worse than what we’ve seen already. But that also raises the question of cover-up of the crimes they depict. Either there’s nothing new, in which case the pictures should be released because the excuse that they would inflame the middle east is nonsense — or the pictures are far worse than what we’ve seen before in which case the administration has to come clean about what’s in them and what specific actions have been taken by the Pentagon. They can’t have it both ways.

Update: just to be clear — I am aware that there is a dispute about which photos are being discussed, which I indicated in my earlier post. My post said that confusion about that was part of the problem.

Horton is saying they ARE the same pictures. I do not have independent knowledge that they are.

This is the problem with lack of transparency. The withholding of the pictures naturally led to this speculation because of the administration’s idiotic excuse: that they were not as bad as the earlier photos, but nonetheless would cause an uproar in the middle east. That excuse did not make sense. If they were no worse then there’s no reason to believe that they would cause an uproar. It’s only if they depict these other far worse (and unprosecuted) crimes that you can justify holding them back for that reason.

They created this problem themselves.

Update II: And yes, I realize that many of these incidents have been described in the past. The problem, again, is that Obama said these pictures are actually not as bad as earlier ones and that the incidents had been legally dealt with, which certainly indicates they are not the same pictures that are being discussed here.

I don’t know the facts about that, but there are many questions that aren’t answered by merely asserting that this is old news. Ignoring the logical contradiction between what’s described and what the administration says is in the photos is failing to be properly skeptical.

There’s one way to straighten this out. They need to come clean about what photos exist and the disposition of the investigations into them. They don’t even have to release them to do that. But this dancing around only raises suspicions.

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