Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

They Made A Funny

by digby

This is so exciting! The producer of that fab torture fest “24” has created a new comedy show and it’s hilarious. Just listen to the wildly enthusiastic “laughter” if you don’t believe me:

I think Joel Surnow has kind of missed the mark, though. While I, a cowardly, flip-flopping liberal loser might find this “fake news” concept amusing, surely the codpiece-grabbing, testosterone-overdosed REAL MEN of the right need something .. more.

How about some witty waterboarding of teenage Muslim boys or a hilarous look at a shark feeding frenzy? And they are really missing the boat if they don’t include some of these. Should it be difficult to find them, they could always commission some Minutemen to shoot some Mexicans or put some firecrackers inside frogs and light ’em up like George W. Bush used to do when he was a kid. A good lynching is always cause for a chuckle.

They think they will succeed by apeing the left but they are being very short sighted. The right has a “differnt kinda humor.” Just ask their president:

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the 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.”

Now that’s funny..

So’s this:

That lameass schoolboy “BO” stuff won’t cut it with the manly men and women of the right. They need RED MEAT!

C’mon, Surnow, you can do better than this.

Update: It has been argued in the comments that Surnow’s little Obama fest is a racist grand slam, and that’s true. All that’s missing are some subliminal cuts of cannibals with bones in their noses to drive the point home. But I still maintain that it isn’t real rightwing humor. There has to be violence and/or humiliation to really call forth a wingnut belly laugh.

H/T to Attytood
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International Bush League

by digby

Quiddity catches a very interesting choice of words by both the Iranian Ambassador last night on Charlie Rose and President Bush in his press conference today.

First the Ambassador:

The evidence that has been produced, in fact fabricated, is preposterous. The dates. If you look at the evidence, the dates that are used in this mortars are written in American date format, putting month first and date second. Whereas nowhere in the world people use month first and date second. Everywhere in the world except for the U.S. And those who fabricated this evidence should listen and learn. Everybody else in the world uses date, month, year. That is the order.

CHARLIE ROSE: That says what to you?

That this evidence is fabricated, as was the evidence that was fabricated before the Iraq war in order to launch an aggression. This evidence is fabricated and it points to a very dangerous policy that is being pursued by this administration.

CHARLIE ROSE: What is that dangerous policy pursued by this administration?

That dangerous policy is to create a crisis, to escape forward. That is, to blame somebody else for the results of their adventurism, which everybody knew would lead to this disaster.

And then there was the following exchange in Bush’s press conference this morning: (emp add)

Q: What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time will be accurate?

BUSH: Ed, we know they’re there, we know they’re provided by the Quds force. We know the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. I don’t think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, go do this, but we know it’s a vital part of the Iranian government. What matters is, is that we’re responding. The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous.

Quiddity asks:

Interesting. When questioned about the accuracy of the intelligence, Bush did not reply by saying that the collection of evidence was by reliable parties, or that the analysis was thorough. Instead, he spoke about manufacturing evidence, denying that it took place.

I suspect that’s what came up at his morning briefing and he just blurted it out because he’s an idiot.

Still, it’s hard for me to believe that even these people can be this inept, but it appears they can. There can be no reasonable explanation for the “bad coordination” between Baghdad on Sunday and Pace and now Bush today. And the “proof” is so suspicious that you honestly cannot take it seriously.

When a great nation has proved to everyone in the world that its leaders are liars and bumblers and its intelligence services are, at best, toadies and at worst totally incompetent, you not only have to reach the normal threshold of proof, you have to be unassailable. This government has zero credibility.

It’s almost as if they are trying to make fools of themselves. Maybe they think if they behave like inept amateurs over and over again it will entice the Iranians to make a mistake. It’s the only thing that makes sense at this point. No adminstration can be this incapable.

Can it?

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Welcome To Our World

by digby

The other night TRex at FDL paid me a very nice compliment and I’d like to return the favor by pointing out that this very funny, but important, post of his should be read by one and all. The DC punditocrisy has not just been craven and opportunistic, although they have been that. And they haven’t just been servants of power, although they have been that too. Apparently, they have actually been frozen for the last two decades and the blogosphere has caused them to melt. Via TRex, here’s Joe Klein:

As a newcomer to this blogging business, I’ve been interested in the Edwards dust-up. As readers know, I’ve been critical of the tone of the left-wing blogosphere in the past. But I think that Yglesias raises an important point here and anyone reading the comments section of any Swampland post knows that troglyditic right-wing cavedwellers fester there, in a vomitously vile manner, too. And I’d add this: Radio. I was driving into Springfield, Ill last night for the Obama festivities and caught the ever-vile Sean Hannity “interviewing” the even-more-vile Dick Morris about Hillary. Just disgraceful…and they were mild compared to the crap I’ve heard from Rush and others over the years.

It’s obvious that the current level of vitriol on the left is a reaction to nearly twenty years of sewage emanating from Rush et al. …The intemperance on the left has three other sources (1) justifiable fury over the Bush adminstration (2) justifiable fury over the way the media treated Clinton and, to a certain extent, Bush and (3) ideologues of any sort tend to be obnoxious.

Now I recognize that Klein goes on to make a number of predictable lukewarm water points about playing nice-nice. But, nonetheless, this is a breakthrough. Indeed, it is a sign of an important sea change in the punditocrisy’s worldview. For years they have been living in a Republican establishment bubble headed by society mavens pretending to be journalists — people like Cokie Roberts and David Broder. These are people who spent the decade of the 90’s aiding and abetting a GOP character smear of epic proportions, either because they felt the need to pretend that they were living in Bedford Falls instead of the ruthless capitol of the most powerful nation on earth — or because they are foolish and shallow people who enjoyed the sophomoric tenor of the rightwing machine. Either way, they were (and are) a symptom of a very sick political culture.
For years the allegedly liberal pundits willfully ignored the horrific eliminationist rhetoric of the right and instead focused their attention on tabloid scandalmongering and outdated liberal stereotypes. They pretended that people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were, at worst, rodeo clowns whose angry violent swill was some sort of a joke. They shrugged their shoulders when Coulter wrote a bestselling book called “Treason” that opened with this passage:

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don’t. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence. The Left’s obsession with the crimes of the West and their Rousseauian respect for Third World savages all flow from this subversive goal. If anyone has the gaucherie to point out the left’s nearly unblemished record of rooting against America, liberals turn around and scream “McCarthyism!”

They looked away when Rush Limbaugh, feted by both the president and the vice president and everyone in between as a highly valuable member of the Republican coalition said things like this:

I mean, if there is a party that’s soulless, it’s the Democratic Party. If there are people by definition who are soulless, it is liberals — by definition. You know, souls come from God. You know? No. No. You can’t go there.

When Limbaugh made his famous inappropriate and bizarre sexual statements about Abu Ghraib, the flagship magazine of the American right came to his rescue with this essay by FDL fave 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. For millions of us, David Brock is firing blanks against a bulletproof target.

The allegedly liberal press and the allegedly liberal pundits were silent. We could only assume they agreed. In fact, as time went on, they became angry with the newly minted liberal blogosphere because we were aghast, as we had been for years, that this was considered acceptable. From Limbaugh to the Gang of 500 to Drudge to Joe Klein to Richard Cohen, it seemed that everyone agreed that liberals and Democrats were fair game for the worst sort of fascistic language imaginable. Liberal bloggers who objected were served up as proof of the right wing’s smears that the left was “unhinged.” As far back as 2000, Bob Somerby and the late Mediawhores Online pioneered this media critique, which was admittedly often harder on the so-called liberals than on the others. It had to be — these people were allegedly speaking for us and they would go on television and parrot rightwing cant at every turn. They railed about the “angry left” and they cried to their friends in the rightwing media when we insulted them. We wrote and wrote and wrote about it, documenting the atrocities and making the case. But nothing changed until these liberal pundits and journalists started blogging. This piece by Rick Perlstein spells out what happened to Klein’s colleague Jay Carney when he thoughtlessly repeated rightwing spin disguised as history on the TIME blog:

Chalk up 7:22 a.m. EST on Tuesday, January 23, 2007, as the moment a milestone was passed. On Time’s new blog, Swampland, D.C. Bureau Chief Jay Carney posted a pre-assessment of the State of the Union address comparing President Bush’s political position to Bill Clinton’s in January of 1995. Like Bush, “President Clinton was in free fall. … His approval ratings were mired in the 30’s, and seemed unlikely to rise.” Moments later, a writer identifying himself as “TomT” pointed out an error in Carney’s “nut graf” that would have earned a failing grade for a first-year journalism major: “Clinton’s approval rating in January [of 1995] was 47 percent. It was not mired in the 30s.” At 9:12, the blogger Atrios, also known as Duncan Black, alerted his readers to the gaffe, and they descended on the Time blog like locusts–and, to mix the Biblical metaphor, served Jay Carney’s head up on a charger. […]

At which Carney snapped back so churlishly (“the left is as full of unthinking Ditto-heads as Limbaugh-land”) that, for a moment, it was hard even to remember–why was it, again, that we were supposed to defer to the authority of newsweeklies (and the mainstream press) in the first place? Carney was rude and wrong. The barbaric yawpers of the netroots were rude and right.

Joe Klein has suffered many such incidents since he started blogging, as have other journalists who entered the fray and subjected themselves to the wild and wooly world of the blog comment section. And he didn’t like it one bit. But as other journalists who are entering the online writing world are finding, the feedback from readers is a bracing splash of reality that makes them take a new look at the world they’ve been writing about for decades. Joe Klein is seeing the current state of politics through new eyes. And for the first time he’s understanding that we are angry for a reason. I don’t expect him to give up his vaunted “centrism” which is his very special view of himself as being above it all. But if blogging means they can see even a tiny little speck of light about the right’s decades long jihad against their fellow Americans, then I say let them all blog. (Hell, make them all blog.) I think I speak for all of us out there who’ve been mixing it up with readers and trolls and critics for years, that while it may be somewhat harsh and disconcerting at first, it keeps you honest. And that is something the political punditocrisy has needed for a very long time. Welcome to the blogosphere, Joe.

X-posted at FDL

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Dear Kevin

by tristero

Dear Kevin,

You are making the exact same mistake you made in 2002/2003. I would have thought that by now you knew better than to engage seriously the “ideas” of fascist thugs. I guess not.

You are treating the lunatic Glenn Reynolds and his cheap-tv-series-style fantasies to murder Iranian civilians as if he is important and as if they are a serious proposal that needs to be parsed and understood rather than deplored, utterly condemned, and mocked. No matter how inadvertent your actions and well-intentioned you may be, you are providing him – and worse, his sick, insane, idiotic proposals – with crediblity. And believe me, Reynolds knows it.

Back in 2002/03, this is precisely how Bush et al built up support for the utterly ridiculous idea of invading Iraq without reason. Incredibly, people who should have known better felt, well yes, it’s a “breathtaking” idea, even an “audacious” one, but let’s look at it and not, you know, just reject it out of hand. Riiiight. We all know how that’s turning out, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

But there you were, in the runup to Bush/Iraq, when it was patently obvious that it was to be the worst foreign policy decision in US history, still opining that if Bush could get it right – hah! – then maybe it’s worth the risk. It wasn’t. It was a crazy idea and no one as intelligent and savvy as you should ever have been bamboozled.

And here you go again, reasonably entertaining notions that are sheer madness. You write there there is some kind of heavy-duty ethical conundrum at stake. There isn’t, not to Reynolds and his ilk. You talk about “moral knots” and definitions of terrorism. But Kevin, don’t you see, these terms have no meaning outside of the social philosophy of liberalism, which Reynolds and his fellow brown-shirts emphatically reject.

Talking about implied moral knots in Reynolds’ ideas is not sober commentary on your part, even if it sounds like it. Given what you are trying to take seriously – running the world, the real world, as if it were a 1 dimensional cable-tv thriller – you are talking sheer nonsense. There is a failure on your part to recognize what is really going on. Reynolds gleefully interprets your willingness to take him seriously and talk about moral dilemmas as a victory. And he is right. It is his victory.

Sure, sure, sure, I know you’re appalled at what Reynolds said. I know you don’t agree with any of it. But that’s not the point. You think there’s a moral knot where there is nothing but Reynolds’ stupid, ignorant, and utterly naive totalitarianism. Remember, Kevin, you are not dealing with liberals. You are dealing with people who do not accept the proposition that if they do the same thing al Qaeda does, it is terrorism by definition. You are dealing with people who do not believe in concepts like equal justice, liberty, or fair debate.

Please Kevin, for heaven’s sake, think before you discuss the utterly deranged ideas of people like Reynolds in a sober fashion. The only thing to take seriously about Reynolds and the rest of Bushism is their will to power and you have failed once again to recognize one important way they do it. They fool people like you into permitting them a place at the table.

love,

tristero

Payback

by digby

I hope that all of you Pacific Northwest readers keep this in mind as we look toward the next election:

McKay, who stepped down recently, said in an interview that his positive review in May 2006 didn’t explain his ouster, nor did the phone call he received in December from a Justice Department official who ordered him to resign.

The 65-page evaluation described McKay’s relationship with most of the federal judges in his area as “excellent” and praised the quality of his office’s work.

McKay “is an effective, well-regarded and capable leader,” the evaluation stated.

The review had some criticism, including descriptions of several administrative problems in McKay’s office.

But the issues were apparently minor because the director of the executive office for U.S. attorneys later wrote McKay, praising him for his “very positive” evaluation.

“I understand that the recent evaluation of your office went well,” director Michael Battle told McKay in a letter dated April 7, 2006.

Despite the praise, Battle called McKay and other U.S. attorneys in December to ask them to step down.

Supporters said they believed McKay may have been removed because he was seen as a maverick.

McKay came under fire when right-wing organizations in his state claimed that he wasn’t aggressively pursuing voter fraud allegations against Democrats in the 2004 governor’s race. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, was eventually declared the winner by a margin of 129 votes.

I love how someone is seen as a “maverick” for refusing to “find” voter fraud where there wasn’t any.

This is reason number 2,862 that Republicans must be removed from power. Giving cronies positions to the best political stepping stones is probably not unprecedented. But removing federal prosecutors from office because they didn’t agree to overturn an election is something else entirely.

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Remember That Helicopter Crash In Iraq? Seven Dead, Due To “Mechanical Failure?”

by tristero

Recently, I expressed skepticism that the cause of this helicopter crash in Iraq was due to mere “mechanical failure.”* In comments, several folks disagreed, describing in detail that these machines are more complex than one might think, implying that my skepticism was misplaced.

It wasn’t:

A Sea Knight helicopter that crashed last week northwest of Baghdad was shot down, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The Marine CH-46 helicopter went down northwest of Baghdad, killing all seven people on board, and an al-Qaida-linked Sunni group claimed responsibility and aired a video.

But military officials initially said they did not believe it was downed by insurgents.

“Initial evidence indicated that the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter went down as a result of mechanical failure. After further investigation using all available means, the cause of the incident has been confirmed to be hostile fire,” said Maj. Jeff Pool, a spokesman for the Multi National Force—West.

Yup, that’s how it happened. They just didn’t want to tell you when it was on the front pages.

More misinformation. More time wasted arguing the patently obvious. Of course it was shot down. And of course the US military knew it when the tragedy was first reported.

But hey! Y’never know! It’s possible, after all, that a deadly helicopter crash in an area crawling with bastards just dying to bring that chopper down crashed by accident, mechanical, failure, or pilot error, isn’t it?

No, my friends. It is not possible. You want to talk mathematics, then alright, yes, there’s a small possibility it could happen. But in the real world, when a helicopter crashes and burns in a war zone, it’s because it was attacked. Especially when the Bush military hastens to tell the media that it wasn’t an attack. **

The Bush administration has played this game over and over and over. It’s high time people stopped falling for it. They lie, prevaricate, distort, procrastinate, cover-up, and hide. Did I forget to mention that they also lie?

My God, to be the loved ones of the people that got killed and have to listen to your government’s bullshit about their deaths…

* If the link is bloggered, do a search for “mechanical failure” and you should find it.

** Of course I know that accidents are common in war zones. But I also know that the Bush administration manipulates the press and public opinion with cynical ruthlessness. It really didn’t take too many street smarts to perceive this was one of them.

[Updated after posting.]

Destroying The Brand

by digby

Following up on my post from last night about how the Republicans have been exposed as total frauds, I see that my pal Tom Schaller has a new column in the Baltimore Sun making the same point:

According to the latest Gallup survey, Republican self-identification has declined nationally and in almost every American state. Why? The short answer is that President Bush’s war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.

That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can’t privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority. The war demolished all four claims.

They’ll just lie and pretend it was all the fault of the hippies, but still, it’s a moment to savor.

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706 Days Left

by digby

Dear God, it’s painful watching the empty codpiece blather on incoherently. I can hardly wait until we have a president, any president, who can appear before the public and speak extemporaneously on higher than a 9th grade level.

And it’s even more painful to watch him repeatedly say things like “I think people who disagree with me can be patriotic” as if he’s granting some sort of dispensation. But by far the most painful thing is watching the press corps laugh and laugh when he treats them like children and makes unfunny, puerile jokes at their expense. It’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen and that includes many decades in a business where brownnosing the boss has been raised to the level of religion.

Sickening.

Update:

On Iran:

What matters is, we’re responding. My job is to protect our troops!

Lotsa people say “meet!” but I want results.

“This is one of the issues where people would say ‘why didn’t they see the impending danger?'”

He really believes that history will vindicate him.

And he believes he’s regained his credibility because of North Korea and insists everyone is supposed to believe him when he says he wants diplomacy to work.

Oy.

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By Comparison, The “Young Lincoln Portrait” Has Far More Cred

by tristero

Let’s not waste your time trying to be polite about it. It’s just a simple fact that neo-conservatives are ignorant fucks that make shit up. And they do it over and over again. They cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Ever.

Incredible. Anyone who has ever bothered to read Lincoln or learn about his life (and once you do, you realize it’s the opposite of a bother) should have known he never would have advocated the hanging of members of Congress.

And this is no isolated incident of the rightwing making an accidental attribution. There are numerous “quotes” from the likes of Thomas Jefferson floating around advocating a “Christian nation,” totally fabricated and disseminated by christianists.

These people have as much business gaining regular access to the mainstream public discourse as Charlie Manson, even in a filthy rag like the Moonie Times. And in terms of the number of people who have been killed and maimed in Iraq directly due to their lies and distortions, they have proven themselves far more dangerous. And this is before Iran.

Maybe Dinesh D’Souza And His Pal Bin Laden Are Right

by tristero

Had Clinton and the liberals in this country set a better example, Scalia’s daughter wouldn’t be a drunk driver.