Fun With Wingnuts
by digby
Mike Stark went to the Values Voter “Summit” and chatted up the participants about John Ensign, Mark Sanford and David Vitter. They were not amused:
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The Best And The Brightest: Millenial Edition
by digby
Read these and weep. First you have Bob Woodward reprising his earlier role as warmongering hagiographer. Then you have an excellent piece written by the man who wrote Imperial Life In The Emerald City (which, now that I think about it, was the cartoon version of The Best And The Brightest.)And then, dear God, there’s this bucket of cold water, which makes me think we are dealing with a whole new level of hubris. Finally, here are two pieces by Spender Ackerman, who you need to bookmark right now if yo0u haven’t already.
If you haven’t gotten out your dog eared copy of TBATB, do it now and read it through. We are about to go through the looking glass with a man named McChrystal.
The military is obviously turning up the heat in Washington to get us into a much bigger war in Afghanistan and it’s being done the usual way, with lies and leaks and back stabbing and grandstanding. And the politics are as confused as ever.
For me, this one is easy. Afghanistan is the most unlikely place to win a war on the planet. To apply the lessons learned in Iraq (such as they were) to this country seems insane to me — especially the concept of “counter-insurgency,” so beloved by the McChrystalites, which is being bizarrely misapplied. But more important than that: whenever you hear people saying that the primary purpose in continuing a war is because “to leave would send the wrong message” and declaring that “perceptions” are the reasons for continuing a slaughter, you know you are in Pentagon NeverNever land.
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
Update: Oh what fun. NRO sent over a bunch of robots who thought it was fun to swing their tiny little appendages around in the comment section (which is now closed and the insults deleted. My house, my rules, no urinating on the furniture.) You didn’t miss much other than a bunch of bullshit about Dhimmicrats etc.
I have always believed that The Good War was a myth and that the Democrats used it as a political weapon. I’ve written about it plenty in the past. But why these bloodthirsty wingnuts should take issue with that and conclude that I’m therefore responsible for the deaths of American soldiers is beyond me.
After all, the Democrats were all for the war — just like they were. The only problem the right had with it was that the Democrats criticized George W. Bush for not being enough of a warmonger on Afghanistan. They weren’t pacifists. They were just liars and political opportunists. And now the Republicans and the Democrats are all potentially on the same team, pulling for a bigger and better and longer war in Afghanistan. Huzzah! Post partisan comity is at hand.
But these people are apparently confused about what they are supposed to believe under these new circumstances. Do they want to escalate the war or do they want the Democrats to “come clean” and get out? I can’t really tell. They’re so programmed that they launch into Bushian gibberish at the mere mention of the Democrats not “really believing” in the war, like that makes some sort of substantial difference. Am I to conclude that these wingnuts therefore disagree with the Democrats and want to withdraw? Or do they think we should stay? (Or is it that they only want wars to be supported by Republicans, who “really believe” in what they are doing? Heh.)
These right wingers are a lost and defeated little minority these days so I suppose it’s to be expected that they make no sense, but this is ridiculous. Here I put out the hand of friendship and agree that the Democrats are just as full of it as the Republicans when it comes to Afghanistan and they call me a traitor. There’s just no pleasing some people.
The conclusions they come to about Democrats not liking shooting wars and hating the soldiers and the rest is truly laughable when you look at the record. The fairer characterization is that Democrats back every stupid war that comes down the pike. The only question is whether or not they are doing it for craven political reasons or if they really believe in it. Either way, the idea that Democrats are reflexively anti-war is nuts. If there’s one thing you can almost always count on is that they will be there smartly saluting whenever the military establishment says boo.
As for Afghanistan, I knew we were going in no matter what the minute the World Trade center was hit and didn’t waste my breath arguing against it. It would have been like arguing against the sun coming coming up. And I suppose I could have guessed that we’d still be there eight years on, but it seemed unlikely after the Soviets got their asses handed to them there just a few short years ago.
But God help me, whatever happened, I didn’t think I’d have to listen to the same tired crap about “hearts and minds” and “sending messages” and “dominoes falling” for yet another time in my life. But here we are again, with the wingnuts screeching incoherently about treason and hating the troops like they just invented the argument and the Democrats trying to figure out ways to deal with the whole mess on the margins. It’s groundhog day, except that people actually die …
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Winger Wizardry
by digby
Over at Red State, some right wing Alaskan pol thinks politics were invented the day he read Saul Alinksy and tells quite a heroic tale about how he personally destroyed Democrats for fun and profit. He seems to think this is particularly brilliant:
We really won’t have to off many Members of Congress before they begin to distance themselves from Comrade Obama. Safe districts make some of them ideologues and they can get away with it, but Pelosi and Obama can’t assemble a majority from the true lefties in Congress. We have to target the vulnerable Members from red and purple districts.
I don’t think anyone’s thought of that before, so I sure hope nobody sends that to Michael Steele or we could be in real trouble.
Now this, this, is a plan:
It would also be a good thing to find some true Lefty member with some personal vulnerability and hound him or her from office.It would be well if some governors would recognize that we are in an existential battle with these people, so maybe some state law enforcement in states we control can take an interest in any Democrat Members of Congress from that state. Hear me, Southern governors?
I’m sure Ex-Alabama Governor Siegelman would be happy to consult.
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2 Old 2b A Kewl Kid
by digby
But that doesn’t stop privileged village insider Ron Brownstein from being a snotty little twit:
“Howard Dean is becoming living proof that health care reform should offer a universal entitlement to Valium.”
Hahahahahahaha! Dean is just so stupid, getting all excited about stupid stuff like wars and health care and stuff. Doesn’t he know that the only thing that wealthy elites are supposed to get upset about is torture prosecutions and blow jobs?
h/t to bb
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Close Your Eyes And Think Of Gary Bauer
by digby
According to Tom Coburn’s chief of staff, if you are turned on by naked pictures of the opposite sex it means you’re gay. Of course, if you’re turned on by pictures of the same sex it also means you’re gay. I guess that means that if you are turned on, you are gay. And we know that’s bad. So basically they say you shouldn’t get turned on.
Now, I may be getting politically incorrect here. But one — It’s been a few years, not that many, since I was closely associated with pre-adolescent boys, boys who are like 10 to 12 years of age. But it is my observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. They don’t want to fall into it. And that’s a good instinct. After all, homosexuality, we know, studies have been done by the National Institute of Health to try to prove that its genetic and all those studies have proved its not genetic. Homosexuality is inflicted on people.
I had a very good friend who was in the homosexual lifestyle for a long time and then he had a religious conversion in the eighties… And he and I had good conversations about, about the malady that he suffered. And one of the things that he said to me, that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark. He said, “all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. Now think about that. And if you, if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.” You know, that’s a, that’s a good comment. It’s a good point and it’s a good thing to teach young people.
So, if you don’t want your son to be gay, tell him that reading Playboy is something only gay boys do. And since boys don’t want to be gay, they won’t read it. And then they will be straight. Or something.
These people are very, very confused.
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The Purpose Driven Ratfuck
by digby
I haven’t written about the ACORN thing because the fact is that some ACORN workers got punk’d by a couple of preppie GOP ratfuckers and until the smoke cleared, there wasn’t going to be any point in discussing the larger issues at stake. And after ACORN’s credibility had been attacked non-stop for years, people were all too ready to look at that footage and draw the conclusion that the organization was some sort of lowlife criminal enterprise.
It was utterly predictable that CNN would belatedly “report” this morning that there are a lot of questions about the videos and that there are many examples of people who behaved differently when the ratfuckers approached them, but that after so many people have seen the videos, the damage is done. (see Cokie’s Law.)
It’s easy to blame ACORN employees for their bad judgment — the videos are embarrassing — but it’s also important not to throw in the towel and grant the conservative ratfuckers the moral high ground. The reason they did this wasn’t to excuse “lawbreaking” at ACORN. It was to discredit an organization that successfully registers black and Hispanic citizens to vote. We’ve discussed the Republicans’ sophisticted vote suppression program at length on this blog over the years and with their new minority status, I would assume this is more important to their hopes for an electoral resurgence than ever since they have little hope of enticing racial and ethnic minorities to their side, (particularly after their behavior of the past couple of months.)
The problem, as usual, is the Democrats, who are simply incapable of protecting their own political futures. Per Howie:
Huge victory for Glenn Beck! Only 75 Democrats had the guts to stand up for ACORN today when the not-so-hapless Republican minority forced through a motion by GOP crook Darrell Issa (R-CA) to defund the organization. This is so pathetic– and a true vision of the Republican idea of bipartisanship (even worse, if you can imagine than the rancid kind of bipartisanship corrupt Democrats like Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson are always pumping for). I want to especially congratulate the Blue Dog coalition, Steny Hoyer, and the freshmen we helped elect who see nothing wrong in selling out our allies in a tough time. Here’s the list of the ones who didn’t sell out. read on
And Obama backed them up today …
(I would compare this to how the Republicans reacted when the Democrats tried to disable one of their important political allies. They gathered their forces, defended their guy and the resolution went absolutely nowhere.)
In this case, I would guess this is only the beginning of a long campaign to subliminally draw Obama into some sort of “welfare queen” series of scandals that will discredit him with a bunch of “where there’s smoke there’s fire, doesn’t pass the smell test” innuendo. If they can get him caught up in legal issues, all the better. This stuff operates on a lizard brain level and it’s important to speak to the lizard brain when refuting it as well.
The Dems could have fought this out on the merits, but they didn’t. Apparently, they are so damaged from years of constantly being called unpatriotic Jesus haters that when they are called something nonsensical like “reverse racists” they just reflexively flinch and start apologizing. It’s absurd. They just do not have any capacity to stare down criticism and cut off scandal mongering no matter how much it hurts them in the long run.
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Quote Of The Day
by digby
“You know, I’m amused. I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you’d be considered a conservative.”
You don’t say?
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Defense Of Marriage
by digby
I assume it’s only a coincidence that Al Franken sent this to me on the day the National Enquirer (aka The New York Times) splashed a huge, juicy, totally unnewsworthy gossip story about someone’s marriage on its front page. (You can’t be too careful lest your personal life be turned into fodder for Sunday morning snickering and tut-tutting among the morally superior crowd over croissants and cappuccinos.)
But whatever the reason, I like the letter. Maybe you got one too:
Dear Digby,
When our daughter Thomasin was in the second grade, her teacher asked each student to write a story about how their parents met. So, she came home and asked me how I met her Mom.
I explained that I was at what was known as a freshman ‘mixer,’ what she knew as a ‘dance,’ during my first year of college. I saw Franni from across the room. She was organizing some girls to leave and I really liked how she was taking charge, which, in hindsight, is not her best quality… Also, she was just beautiful. So I asked her to dance, and we danced. And then I bought her a ginger ale.
After the dance I escorted her back to her dorm and asked her for a date.
Thomasin wrote the story up with stunning accuracy. She told her class, “…my Dad asked my Mom to dance, bought her a drink, and took her home.” Even at a young age, she had a keen grasp of the facts and a real knack for editing.
That night – the first night of the best thing that has ever happened to me – was exactly 40 years ago today. When I was running for the Senate, I used to tell people, “Franni and I are running for the Senate. If we win, I get to be the Senator.” Well, we won. And what I said proved true – I get to be the Senator.
Another thing that’s true is that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the love and support of the most amazing woman in the world.
And, as we start the next chapter of our journey together, I wanted to send supporters like you a note. A funny story from long ago in hopes that you might take a moment today, remember a funny story about someone you love, smile, and be thankful.
All the best,
Al
P.S. Happy Anniversary Franni, I love you!
He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him!
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Saturday Night At The Movies
Stalking tall
By Dennis Hartley
Limited goals: Oswalt and Corrigan in Big Fan
There are sports fans, and there are sports fans. And then there is Paul Aufiero, the protagonist of writer-director Robert D. Siegel’s new film, Big Fan. To say that Paul (Patton Oswalt) is an uber-fan of the N.Y. Giants football team is a vast understatement. The Giants are his raison d’être. Every night before he goes to bed, he doesn’t say his prayers. Instead, he religiously breaks out his dog-eared yellow-ruled tablet and furiously scrawls out a litany of devotion to his team, which he then delivers like a well-rehearsed sermon in his nightly call to a popular local sports talk radio program. Occasionally, he is compelled to offer a point-by-point rebuttal to his arch-nemesis, a Philadelphia Eagles fan who calls into the same show for the express purpose of antagonizing the Giants fans.
You see, Paul (who is sort of a cross between Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty Piletti and John Kennedy Toole’s literary creation, Ignatius J. Reilly) has a lot of spare time to devote to defending the honor of his team against evil radio trolls, because he doesn’t really have too many other distractions in his life. A 30-something bachelor who still lives with his mother, he works an undemanding job as a parking lot attendant and has virtually no social life (if this sounds like it’s shaping up to be one of those depressing character studies about empty lives of quiet desperation, I am here to tell you something…um, you’re right.) Well, Paul does have one friend named Sal (played by indie film stalwart Kevin Corrigan) who shares his undying love for the team (he doesn’t date much, either).
One night, while Paul and Sal are out and about enjoying a bit of the Staten Island nightlife (who knew?) they happen to spot one of their beloved team’s star players (Jonathan Hamm) getting into a limousine at a local gas station. The two pals, walking on air and feeling beside themselves with fan boy giddiness, decide to surreptitiously tail the player and his entourage, to see how the other half lives. Eventually, they find themselves at a pricey strip joint in Manhattan, where Paul eventually screws up enough courage to make a beeline for his hero’s booth, in hopes of a meet and greet. Unfortunately, the evening (and subsequently, Paul’s life) proceeds to go sideways from that point forward.
The film is an odd mish-mash of broad social satire and brooding neo-realism; but for the most part, it works quite well (as long as you aren’t expecting a “feel good’ experience). I suppose it has something to say about the cult of celebrity, especially as it applies to the tendency in our society to turn a blind eye to the blatantly sociopathic public behavior of some multimillionaire athletes. The story takes a few unexpected twists and turns that reminded me a lot of Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66
Oswalt is quite impressive, giving a fearless performance in this decidedly unflattering role (you are most likely to be familiar with him from his work as a standup and the myriad of quirky supporting characters he’s played on TV shows like Reno 911). Corrigan is excellent, as always (when is somebody going to give this perennial second banana a starring role?). Michael Rapaport (who appears to be the “go-to” actor when a “drunken mook” is required) is suitably obnoxious as Paul’s radio tormentor, known on-air as “Philadelphia Phil”. Gino Cafarelli is good as Paul’s brother, an ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer, and the unknown Serafina Fiore is a hoot as his wife, an orange-tanned, big-haired, high-maintenance East coast princess straight out of Sopranoworld.
This is the directorial debut for Siegel, who also wrote the screenplay for last year’s critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated The Wrestler
I really admire your work: The Fan
Previous posts with related themes:
Part II
Picky, picky, picky: It Might Get Loud
Three buskers in your hedgerow: White, Page and the Edge
“My goal is to trick these guys…” a visibly nervous Jack White confides to the camera with somewhat forced bravado as he heads for an exclusive guitar player’s confab with U2’s The Edge and the legendary Jimmy Page, “…into showing me their tricks.” As our cocky young Mr. White comes to learn (along with the viewer) during the course of Davis Guggenheim’s new rockumentary, It Might Get Loud, “tricks”…erm, are for kids.
I will confess that, despite being a huge Zep fan, I was going to give this one a pass (at least until the DVD) because it offended my sensibilities that anyone would infer that the other two (talented as they may be) deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as Pagey-but a friend shamed me into dragging my lazy ass out to the theater. White (singer-guitarist for the White Stripes and The Raconteurs), The Edge and Page may seem like odd bedfellows; but once I “got” the filmmaker’s intent, it started to sort of make sense.
Each of the film’s three subjects represents a distinct type of species within the genus of Rock Guitarist. First, you have The Primitive (represented by White). The Primitive is raw, instinctually expressive and spontaneous (any piece of wood with strings will do…plugged into something that makes noise). Then, we have The Gearhead (represented by The Edge). The Gearhead is the antithesis of The Primitive; he is controlled and precise, obsessed with hardware and perennially tweaking his settings to match the elusive Perfect Tone he hears in his head. Finally, we have The Virtuoso (Page), who can pick up any stringed instrument, from a mandolin to a Les Paul, and make it sing like a gift from the gods (or as Page dubs it, “the whisper and the thunder”).
Guggenheim cuts back and forth between separately filmed interviews, with each artist discussing his influences and techniques. The individual interviews offer a bit more insight than the summit, which feels staged and awkward at times; and when the three do play a few numbers together, the result is disappointingly pedestrian (it’s not unlike the discordant sonic wash of “Riffs ‘r’ Us” that assaults you when you stroll into a Guitar Center on a busy Saturday afternoon). At least they do a passable rendition of “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground”, which is one of the few White Stripes songs I actually like.
I suppose your reaction to this documentary will hinge on how much of a fan you are of the musicians who are profiled. For me personally, Page has the most interesting back story and could have easily provided enough fascinating material to fill the movie’s entire 97 minute running time. He’s kind of the Zelig of rock guitarists; over the course of his career he’s proved adept at nearly every style of modern pop music you’d care to mention. As a teenager he played in skiffle, blues, and R&B bands, and by the mid 60s had become one of England’s most in-demand session players, playing with everyone from Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey to The Who and The Kinks (although it isn’t mentioned in the film, one of his most recognizable solos-for-hire is that fuzz-toned psychedelic riffing on Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man”). Of course, once he joined The Yardbirds, the stage was set for the formation of Led Zeppelin, and the rest is History.
I don’t mean to belittle the fact that U2 is one of the most popular bands on the planet, or that Jack White doesn’t have his moments of inspiration; but in the context of the filmmaker’s intent, you do wonder what he hoped to achieve by bringing these three disparate stylists together. As a guitar player, I could compartmentalize what each artist brings to the table, but I was still scratching my head when it was over. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I’ll plug in and brush up on a bit of that “whisper and thunder” myself.
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“Respects The Corporate Form”
by dday
I missed this the other day.
In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.
During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.
“Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions,” said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
She may want to take whatever direction she wants now, but she’s outvoted at the moment. Still, it is possible that the latest Supreme Court Justice understands that a corporate entity given human characteristics for purposes of law but out of the reach of legal culpability for so many of its actions represents a lack of fairness and twisted logic.
This whine is priceless:
“I don’t want to draw too much from one comment,” says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it “doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded.”
Right, um, there is no corporate form. There are only corporations who have convinced enough conservative jurists over the years that they can claim personhood to protect their own wealth or strike down regulations but not when their companies break the law and those harmed seek accountability.
As I said, not the biggest or most meaningful shift now, but something to keep in mind as Sotomayor’s career on the bench continues. The biggest area in which the Court has moved to the right in recent years is on the subject of corporate law, and someday we’ll have to do something about that. Maybe Sotomayor can be the beginning of a new trend.
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