Month: September 2010

Out of Control General

by digby

Andrew Sullivan is worried about The Man Called Petraeus:

Bryan Curtis’s excellent review of Woodward’s book is disturbing in its portrayal of how out of control David Petraeus is getting:

[Woodward] demonstrates convincingly that the men in uniform—that would be David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, and Mike Mullen, along with Bob Gates—dangled very few battle plans in front of Obama, and used bureaucratic jujitsu to make sure he didn’t see others. For example, Obama never had a fully fleshed-out proposal for sending fewer than 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan. And even the final proposal he crafted himself, lowering the military’s demands a tad. As Petraeus says, after being informed of a slight from Pennsylvania Avenue, “They’re fucking with the wrong guy.”

He goes on to point out that the canonization of the military has morphed itself into a virtual veto power by the brass over civilian rule. This is true. But that probably wouldn’t have happened if the entire political establishment hadn’t started rending their garments at the tiniest criticism of the military and restrained themselves from treating Petraeus himself like a conquering God. He’s now an untouchable — and Obama brought him into Afghanistan after the McChrystal mess, virtually guaranteeing that he would be Petraeus’ bitch. If Petraeus says we’re staying, we’re staying. They won’t be fucking with that guy.

The question still remains about his political ambitions. He may turn out to be like Colin Powell a retired General with his own army, a thorn in the side of the civilian leadership as long as he wants to be. Or he could run for president.

.

Going All The Way

by digby

The Obama administration’s overnight assertion that presidential assassination orders of American citizens should be treated as a state secret, and thus not reviewable by any court anywhere, the most shocking assertion of unfettered presidential power we’ve seen since John Yoo argued that presidents have the right to order torture as long as they don’t cause pain equivalent to organ failure. As Greenwald says, when Cheney worshiping neocon headcase David Rivkin thinks you’ve gone too far with the executive power, there’s not much more to say:

Just for the moment, I’ll note that The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage, two weeks ago, wrote about the possibility that Obama might raise this argument, and quoted the far-right, Bush-supporting, executive-power-revering lawyer David Rivkin as follows:

The government’s increasing use of the state secrets doctrine to shield its actions from judicial review has been contentious. Some officials have argued that invoking it in the Awlaki matter, about which so much is already public, would risk a backlash. David Rivkin, a lawyer in the White House of President George H. W. Bush, echoed that concern. “I’m a huge fan of executive power, but if someone came up to you and said the government wants to target you and you can’t even talk about it in court to try to stop it, that’s too harsh even for me,” he said.

Back when everyone naively thought that electing a Democrat would end these obscene royalist decrees, it was argued by a few of us that once given, these powers are rarely given back. But I don’t think anyone expected the Democratic constitutional scholar would actually double down on the dictatorial powers. I confess, I’m fairly gobsmacked.

Oh, and this too:

F.B.I. agents executed search warrants Friday in Minneapolis and Chicago in connection to an investigation of support of terror organizations. The searches in Minneapolis took place early in the morning at the homes of people who have helped organize demonstrations against the war in Iraq and protests held two years ago during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. “It is rather patently political,” said Ted Dooley, a lawyer who represents Mick Kelly, a food service worker at the University of Minnesota and one of those whose homes was searched. “My client denies any wrongdoing.” Steve Warfield, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Minneapolis, said the agents executed six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago. “They were seeking evidence related to an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation,” Mr. Warfield said. “They are looking at activities connected to the material support of terrorism.” He said no one in Minneapolis had been arrested while the warrants were executed. He added that agents in Michigan and North Carolina had also questioned people in connection with the investigation. Mr. Dooley said the F.B.I. broke down Mr. Kelly’s door around 7 a.m. and gave a search warrant to his companion. The warrant said agents were gathering evidence related to people “providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support” to terrorist organizations, and listed Hezbollah, the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The warrant also authorized the agents to look for information connected to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and to unnamed “co-conspirators” and allowed them to seize items including electronics, photographs, address books and letters.

If you build it, they will use it.

The good news is that Homeland Securitate General Napolitano apologized for including right wing extremist gun nuts in their list of people to keep an eye on. These anti-war protesters are obviously much more dangerous.

.

Grayson Calls Out The American Taliban Who’s Running Against Him

by digby

It looks like Alan Grayson has his fundamentalist cult member opponent on the run. And the local press smells blood:

As I wrote last week Webster is a hardcore Christian Reconstructionist who holds views that are way, way outside the mainstream of even your average evangelical. And he doesn’t want people to know about it.

I’m sure people will call for the smelling salts over this ad — it’s quite shrill after all, but it’s finally got the local press looking into Webster’s extremist views. This is what’s known as aggressive, hardball progressive politics. It’s not something you see every day.

Here’s Grayson’s ad in its entirety. There’s not an untruth in it:

.

Blue America Chat With Ed Potosnak At 11 AM

by digby

Howie explains why Blue America is endorsing Ed Potosnak:

This year there are several Democrats running for Congress who are openly gay and Blue America has had several inquiries about why we haven’t endorsed them. A couple of gay organizations have done so and I think the DCCC is getting behind one or two as well. But Blue America isn’t a gay organization that endorses based on someone’s gender preference and we’re certainly not the DCCC. We’re looking for smart, honest progressive leaders and we don’t care what color they are or what gender they are or how they look or who they sleep with. When we decided to endorse Ed Potosnak in New Jersey this week, the young high school science teacher running against Wall Street shill Leonard Lance, it was because of his stands on the issues important to working families and because of the strength of his character, not because he’s an openly gay man. But he is…

Ed will be joining us this afternoon in the comments forum for a wide-ranging blogger session, not especially about his sexual orientation. In fact, it was his hammering on the importance of education policy that first got our PAC interested in his candidacy. That said, we had several long conversations about what it means for a member of the LGBT community to run for Congress. Remember, out of 435 congressmembers and 100 senators, we only have three openly gay Members of Congress– all Democrats– plus a dozen or so closeted Republicans. Ed made it clear that he’s grateful that the trail was blazed for him by Tammy Baldwin, Barney Frank and Jared Polis.

Please consider helping Ed get his message out by contributing what you can at the Blue America ActBlue page. The first 10 people who contribute at least $25 to Ed’s campaign will get autographed copies of Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets.

Join us at Crooks and Liars at 2pm edt and 11am pdt.

NY Times Miss Manners Hints At Truth

by digby

The New York Times features an interesting story this morning about a move across teh country to remove judges by people who don’t like their decisions:

After the State Supreme Court here stunned the nation by making this the first state in the heartland to allow same-sex marriage, Iowa braced for its sleepy judicial elections to turn into referendums on gay marriage.

The three Supreme Court justices on the ballot this year are indeed the targets of a well-financed campaign to oust them. But the effort has less to do with undoing same-sex marriage — which will remain even if the judges do not — than sending a broader message far beyond this state’s borders: voters can remove judges whose opinions they dislike.

Around the country, judicial elections that were designed to be as apolitical as possible are suddenly as contentious as any another race.

In Kansas, anti-abortion activists are seeking to recall a justice. In Illinois, business interests are campaigning against the chief justice after a case that removed a cap on malpractice liability, prompting him to run a television ad that opens with the declaration, “I am not a politician.” And a conservative group called Clear the Bench Colorado is citing a host of decisions in seeking to oust the full slate of justices on the ballot there, urging voters, “Be a citizen, not a subject.”

It goes on to point out that the laws many of them were using were designed to remove corrupt or incompetent judges but are now being used to send a message that judges who do not adhere to certain views will be kicked out of office.

It also points out that there is big money involved, with the campaigns being underwritten by corporate interests and wealthy Christian groups.

But they forgot to connect the dots in this story. Do you notice something that all these cases around the country have in common? Yes, I knew that you could — they are all being waged by right wingers. This “trend” is decidedly one-sided, run by a minority faction in America who have decided that their interpretation of the laws and the constitution will be imposed upon everyone.

Far be it for me to suggest that intimidating judges and replacing ones you don’t like with social conservatives might be just a little bit theocratic and surely nobody can believe thatcorporate sponsored removal campaigns are designed to make it impossible for moderate or conservative judges to compete against business friendly judges. It would be very impolite to point any of that out, which is why, I’m sure that the New York Times didn’t bother to do it.

They simply left some little hints for the discerning reader to sift through:

Brian S. Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which has spent $230,000 on television ads criticizing the Iowa judges, said he understood that removing the three judges would not change the same-sex marriage ruling. (It was a unanimous ruling by the state’s seven justices.) But Mr. Brown said he hoped the judges’ ouster would help prevent similar rulings elsewhere by making judges around the nation aware that their jobs are on the line.

“It sends a powerful message,” he said, “That if justices go outside the bounds of their oaths, if the justices go outside the bounds of the U.S. and state constitutions they’re going to be held accountable.”

Bob Vander Plaats, who made opposition to same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his unsuccessful run for governor in Iowa, is leading the ouster campaign on behalf of the political arm of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian organization based in Tupelo, Miss.

“My bigger fear isn’t about injecting politics into judicial retention elections. The bigger fear is that we don’t hold them in check,” he said, warning that gun and property rights could be at risk.

Make of that what you will dear reader. But never say that the NY Times stooped to the level of shrill bloggers who suggest that the far right might have a radical agenda. Let no one say that the old Gray Lady is anything but well mannered.

.

Just Get A Job At A Galt’s Gulch Starbucks And STFU

by digby

I just love it when young, well paid elites tell older middle class workers who have spent 30 years building a career that they should have planned better for finding themselves unemployable in their 50s. I especially love it when they tell them to go get a job at Starbucks if they have a hard time finding a new job — so they don’t get “depressed” and prove to their spouse that they aren’t just being lazy fucks. That 10% unemployment rate is no impediment to gainful employment for 57 year-olds who have never served a fucking latte in their lives… they’re handing em out to anyone who asks. (Personally, I think they should just move to Galt’s Gulch and do necessary parasite jobs that serve our productive 1%, like garbage collector and dominatrix.)

My only solace is that they too will one day be in their 50s (if they’re lucky) and I will be fervently hoping that this happens to them and they will be able to go through this character building experience for themselves. If they’re lucky they won’t have to listen to people who know absolutely nothing about what it’s like to be in that position, the economic pressures, the psychological pain, the fear that they are going to lose everything they have as spoiled twits drawl on about how it’s their own fault for failing to better prepare and now they just have to accept that they need to work for peanuts serving frappucinos to snotty yuppies. We’ll see how “helpful” they find this advice.

.

The Beltway Quilting Bee And Ladies Pearl Clutching Society

by digby

Oh dear. It appears that Stephen Colbert offended the delicate sensibilities of the Beltway Quilting Bee and Ladies Pearl Clutching Society:

Comedian Stephen Colbert commandeered a hearing on migrant farm workers with lewd one-liners Friday morning, creating a public relations pile-up at the tail end of a legislative session that is limping into a pre-election recess.

It was lost on no one that the Comedy Central faux news anchor delivered his off-color rant against the backdrop of the House canceling floor votes for the rest of this week as Democratic leaders struggle to reach consensus on how to move a simple stopgap spending bill that will prevent the government from shutting down on Oct. 1.

“I would like to submit a video of my colonoscopy into the Congressional Record,” he told mortified lawmakers at one point. “Sorry for saying cornpacker, I know it’s an offensive term for gay Iowans,” he told conservative Iowa Rep. Steve King. He made reference to getting a “Brazilian” — a wax-based hair-removal service in a very delicate area of the body — from a Chilean at a spa serving tomatoes sliced by a Guatemalan.

Colbert’s comedic rant was also a sleight of hand – his “prepared” testimony was passed out to the media before he spoke, and it was a bland, seemingly straightforward speech on migrant workers in America.

Asked about whether the comedian’s appearance before a House panel Friday morning was appropriate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hadn’t seen it but applauded him for testifying before Congress…

[I]t’s not as if some Democrats on the committee couldn’t see the disaster coming.

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) implored Colbert to simply enter his testimony into the record without speaking.

Some in the room gasped. Colbert muttered into the mic: “No hablo Ingles,” before straightening up and asking Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the subcommittee chairwoman, if she’d prefer if he left the room.

@Chuck Todd has been wringing his hands for hours. Rough translation:

Lawdy, lawdy lawdy!! Bring me the smellin’ salts Miss Mellie, I almost like to daaaah! Ah have nevah been so appalled in mah laaaahf! Why, po Aunt Pittypat fainted dead awaaay!

Of course in a world where Glenn Beck is considered a serious political figure, I suppose you can’t blame them for not getting the joke.

Via Peter Daou, here’s the testimony along with a trip back in time to the best moment of the dark years of the Bush administration:

.

Political Blow Jobs

by digby

Who says the conservative media are Republican Party whores?

But skittish rank-and-file members were reassured at a Wednesday night caucus meeting by leadership aides who distributed a National Review editorial praising the “Pledge.” The National Review editorial had been prearranged, however, by Neil Bradley, a top Boehner aide who is close to April Ponnuru, the executive director of the National Review Institute, and Kate O’Beirne, NRI’s president.

“It was a political blowjob,” one Republican aide said of the National Review editorial.

If there’s one person who knows how to deliver a political blow job, it’s Kate O’Beirne:

Rush’s angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the “facts.” We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.

The National Review is always there with some nice political fellatio as needed. It’s pretty much their specialty.

.

Libertarian Southern Strategy

by digby

I don’t know whether or not Rand Paul is personally a racist. But it is a little curious that he’s so darned popular among white supremacists. I guess you can’t help who supports you, but it does raise questions about why these extremists find him and his father so attractive. Until you read this about daddy Paul:

The letters published between Paul’s first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are another story—replete with claims that Martin Luther King “seduced underage girls and boys,” that black protesters should gather “at a food stamp bureau or a crack house” rather than the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers “enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

I guess it’s not much of a mystery, is it? In looking for that little snippet, I came across this question from LA Times libertarian blogger, written at the time of those revelations:

[I]t’s weird that a philosophy of non-aggression, ownership of self and property, individual choice, free trade and so on is so attractive to people whose greatest passion is arguing that Abraham Lincoln was the foulest butcher in American history, that black people are stupider than white people, that Mexicans are naturally inclined to favor a welfare state, that our culture is being undermined by the feminization of boys, and so on. Folks of this stripe are present in not-inconsequential numbers in both small-l and big-L libertarianism. I can understand why drag queens, pot smokers, gun lovers and entrepreneurs are libertarians. I comprehend why localist, traditionalist, Chestertonian Christian types gravitate toward the movement. But why are Confederate apologists attracted to a philosophy that draws so much of its thinking from either abolitionists (Lysander Spooner, Robert Green Ingersoll, Henry David Thoreau and others) or market-based freedom types (Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, etc.)? Why is Lincoln — whose one-liner “As I would not be a slave so I would not be a master” could easily be the motto of the Libertarian party — not given the same warts-and-all historical courtesy that is extended to Thomas Jefferson? Why does Woodrow Wilson’s support for Jim Crow laws not get more attention among the many other particulars that cause libertarians to view him (rightly in my view) as the worst president of the twentieth century? Why the fascination with how different ethnic groups score on standardized tests if you believe in an individualistic, non-averaged universe?

This is actually very easy. It’s the same reason why many conservatives are conservatives: because they deeply resent the government (and the greater society) forcing them to stop being bigots. Taxes are anathema because the government takes their money and gives it to people they hate so they hate taxes. Civil rights laws make them go to school and do business with people they hate so they hate civil rights laws. Federal laws make it impossible to escape laws that benefit people they hate so they hate the federal government. With these neo-confederates and anti-government bircher tea party types it’s all about resentment that they aren’t allowed to freely exercise their hate in every given situation. (The first amendment isn’t enough.)The “freedom” these people love is the freedom to enslave or marginalize others.

When Rand Paul says he doesn’t think it’s fair to ask a business owner to accommodate blacks that’s music to their ears. And while Rand may very well have philosophical grounding for his beliefs that have nothing to do with America’s centuries long problem with race, people can be forgiven for thinking it does given the fact that his daddy seems to have been quite cozy with these racists over the years. After all the attention Ron Paul got for his ties to white supremacy during the 2008 presidential cycle, it’s fair to surmise that Rand knows exactly who he’s appealing to.

Update: Are all libertarians racist? Of course not. Are all conservatives racist? No. But their philosophies are welcome to those who harbor resentment at having to accommodate loathed “others.” Or put more simply: not all conservatives and libertarians are racist, but all racists are conservative or libertarian.

.

Swearing Allegiance To The Pledge

by digby

I don’t think I need to ask what’s wrong with this picture.

The pledge is one of the lamest political documents ever written. It makes the Perot vote bait, the Contract For America, look like the Declaration of Independence by comparison. It’s a testament to just how wounded the party establishment really is — they would have been better off letting the Maine Tea Party write it. It may be radical but at least it was intelligible. This one might as well say, “if you loved George W. Bush, you’re going to love the new Republican majority.”

But then, this election isn’t really about them. It’s all about teabags and secret Muslims and scary socialists bailing out Big banks. Making sense would only hurt the ball club.

.