What’s Wrong With This Picture?
by digby
CW: Democratic Congress Edition
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
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We’ll Meet Again: Duck and Cover Redux
By Dennis Hartley
The pending invasion of Iran and the recent “seismic event” in North Korea are a wake-up call that the Cold War never completely thawed out; it just went a little tepid. It also made me all misty-eyed for the last golden era of anti-nuke films, circa 1980-1984 (a veritable flurry of cautionary tales, spurred on, no doubt, by the dreaded thought of Evil Empire hatin’ Ronnie R’s itchy trigger finger wagging ever more perilously close to The Button).
One of the best of the bunch (and as timely as ever) is 1983’s Testament
Whoopee we’re all gonna die! Here’s a few more nuclear horror shows (I’m excluding post-apocalyptic sci-fi-that’s a whole other bailiwick): Dr. Strangelove, 
And for some actual historical perspective, check out these docs/docudramas: The Missiles of October
Update: Digby here. There have been a few comments/questions as to why we link to Amazon since they are a soulless, hegemonic fascist corporation and all. First, let me be clear that I am the one doing the linking, not Dennis, and I do it because if one of you fine folks decided to purchase one of these films, Amazon kicks back a couple of sheckles and it helps support the site. I know that nobody who reads this blog believes that I have any magical power to compel people to buy things against their will so I feel quite confident that everyone can make their own decisions in these matters. There are, needless to say, many fine places to buy DVD’s or rent them. The public library even lets you check them out for free! (The good news is that all the money we’ve made from this scam project makes us almost as well paid as 9 year old rug makers in Bangladesh, so we’re very grateful.)
The idea of this feature was simply to spark some interesting conversation about the intersection of movies and politics on the week-ends when everyone gets a little bit worn out from the news cycle. Popular culture is some powerful mojo on our society and I don’t think we talk about it enough or use it enough. Plus it’s fun.
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Woody Allen Has Nothing To Worry About
by digby
Atlas Shrugged tries to be a comedian. As with most shrieking wingnut attempts at humor the only people who find her amusing are those who get turned on watching those disgusting animal snuff films.
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Eason On Down
by digby
Many great bloggers have already written definitive posts about the rightosphere’s Jamail Hussein witch hunt so I won’t go into the particulars. It’s an ugly story all around and I’m hoping that it shows, once and for all, the difference between the “angry left” who boisterously criticize the media and the truly pernicious lynch mob mentality of the right. They go for journalistic scalps, and in this case, they may have literally gotten one.
One of the more sickening aspects of this awful little story is the Eason Jordan sideshow in which the former president of CNN, who was scalped earlier by a rightwing mob for saying that the military may have been targeting journalists, has been using this story to gain credit and linkage from the same wingnuts who took him down. I had wondered in the beginnning if perhaps he wasn’t playing some sort of advanced jiujitsu to get revenge, but that’s obviously not the case. He’s clearly trying to curry favor with the wingnuts. Even today, he continues his pathetic quest to become Michele Malkin’s man in Bagdad. (“The controversy likely will linger in this area, with third party reporting being done to determine the accuracy of Captain Hussein’s statements to the AP.”) The man has become a living example of the battered media wife.
There are many fascinating takes on this all over the blogosphere that are worth reading. But I think one by Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution may offer the most intriguing way of looking at this:
Most people looked at Iran’s Holocaust Denial conference and thought: wow, that place is really screwed up. And rightfully so. How crazy does a country have to be to host that kind of poisonous nonsense?
But…here in America we don’t have much grounds to criticize. Because we take lots of people with the exact same moral and intellectual standards as Holocaust deniers, and then—rather than consigning them to complete obscurity, as sane cultures do—WE PUT THEM ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Michelle Malkin and the Saga of Jamil Hussein.
Click over to find out how closely Malkin and her crew hew to the same methods and logic as the holocaust deniers. It’s amazing to see it in real time, though. With modern technology and instant communication, one would think people would be especially cautious of such things and terribly vulnerable to exposure and embarrassment. But as we’ve seen so frequently these past few years, the right has developed a capability of creating an alternate reality as it happens which means that today, the first draft of history is being written in two dimensions. They don’t have to airbrush history, they are editing in the camera.
Sadly, the mainstream media seems mostly incapable of battling this back properly — if they even want to. (I suspect that where there isn’t social or political bias, in a busy world it’s cheaper and simpler to regurgitate the pre-digested rightwing narrative.) The AP fought back hard and prevailed, but it remains to be seen if the lesson they take is to be overly cautious with its war reporting or beat the hell out of the wingnutosphere when they come after them.
This particular incident is just one of many and it’s what allowed so much of what’s happened over the last few years to happen. The right’s professional noise machine is creating a disorienting inability on the part of many journalists and citizens to be able to distinguish reality from fantasy — and it’s making it possible for someone like the president to be completely unresponsive to the people.
We keep expecting that reality is going to change things. For instance, we logically thought that the president would have to begin to withdraw in Iraq once his popularity tanked to unprecedented lows and his party lost the election. Instead, he just carries on, no matter what happens out here in the real world, because in the world the right wing has created, this last election shows that he has a mandate to escalate the war.
Likewise, I would have thought that Michele Malkin would be compelled to issue a mea culpa for her jihad against the AP once it was proved that they didn’t make up their source. Nothing. In fact, Eason Jordan chastizes the AP for its attitude rather than the relentless “critics” many of whom commonly accuse them of being in league with terrorists.
The AP erred in part by responding in a hot-headed, antagonistic way to questions about the existence of Jamil Hussein and the credibility of AP reports featuring comments from Captain Hussein. The AP’s harsh statements fueled the suspicions of critics and those who otherwise would give the AP the benefit of the doubt.
The AP is a professional news organization which is subject to criticism like every other news organization, but there are very few people who think that the violence in Iraq is being fabricated for political reasons and they are the only “critics” who fail to give the AP the benefit of the doubt in its war reporting. These “civil war deniers” are centered in the most feverish quarters of the right wing blogosphere and talk radio.
This incident is just one of many (as Greenwald lays out here) in which the rightwing blogosphere has been caught making these kinds of errors. But if Eason Jordan is any example, they have not only failed to lose credibility, the more obvious the error, the more credibility they actually gain. This is new and I don’t think we fully understand the ramifications of it yet.
The only thing you can compare it to would be if holocaust denial were to be considered perfectly acceptable. Just as the right continues to emulate its great enemy the Soviet Commies, it’s morphing before our eyes into its own version of its new enemy, Iran. The irony is that the violence they are so intent upon denying is violence perpetrated by the Mahdi Army — Iran’s kissin’ cousins. What a tangled web we weave when we try to operate in complicated situations with nothing but a lizard brain.
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More Healing
by digby
Next thing you know, stuff like this will be happening all over the country.
Via Newshounds, h/t to Bill
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McCain Watch
by digby
Finally, a questioner lays it all on the line: “The war’s the big issue,” he says, adding, “Some kind of disengagement—it’s going to have to happen. It’s a big issue for you, for our party, in 24 months. It’s not that long a time.” McCain replies, “I do believe this issue isn’t going to be around in 2008. I think it’s going to either tip into civil war … ” He breaks off, as if not wanting to rehearse the handful of other unattractive possibilities. “Listen,” he says, “I believe in prayer. I pray every night.” And that’s where he leaves his discussion of the war this morning: at the kneeling rail.
On the way to our next stop, McCain tells me, “It’s just so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can’t make the next step.”
There you have it. So because St John and Junior and the rest of these macho Republican heroes can’t “face” failure, with or without an escalation, more Americans will have to die in the Iraq meatgrinder for their vanity. Jesus H. Christ.
Here’s today’s dispatch from the rabbit hole:
The 2006 election has not changed Sen. John McCain’s support for victory in Iraq one iota.
While some Democrats have interpreted their party’s triumphs in last November’s balloting as a call by voters to end the U.S. deployment in Iraq, McCain, a leading contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, made it clear Friday he doesn’t see it that way.
McCain seems to be launching his 2008 campaign by taking the role of foremost advocate of sending significantly more troops for long-term deployment to Iraq.
“There are two keys to any surge of U.S. troops: to be of value, it must substantial and it must be sustained,” he declared in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank that is home to some of the most hawkish strategists on Iraq.
Just to make sure everyone in the overflow audience got the point, McCain repeated that phrase: “it must substantial and it must be sustained.”
[…]
In their comments at AEI both McCain and Lieberman seemed to be concerned that Bush might shy away from a big increase in U.S. forces in Iraq.
McCain said, “The worst of all worlds would be a small, short surge of US forces. We’ve tried small surges in the past and they’ve been ineffective.”
Very brave words from a man who just read in the papers that Bush was not going to send in a sustained and substantial increase because the military doesn’t have enough troops. “If he’d have done what I wanted, we could have won.” How convenient.
Meanwhile, the two maverick lovebirds gave each other big smacking kisses:
McCain “is taking a position that is not based on putting his finger in the air and gauging the direction of the political winds,” said his ally, Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut who just won re-election. “He is doing what he sincerely believes is best for the national security and safety of our country…. John’s taking a gutsy position”
Lieberman added, pointedly, “I just finished an election campaign. If rumors are correct, he may be starting one. And he’s not taking the easy way out here.”
Not exactly. He’s taking a risk that Bush will not be able to scrape up enough troops for a “sustained and significant” surge of 20,000 or more troops so that he can throw up his hands and say that nobody listened to him. Lieberman chose another path which was to lie baldly to the voters of Connecticut and say that he wanted to end the war and bring the troops home. Both are dishonest bloodthirsty warmongers, but in entirely different ways.
McCain cited Lieberman’s decisive victory over anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont as proof that the electorate was not clamoring for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
“Of course I disagree” with the notion that last November’s election was a mandate to end the Iraq deployment, McCain said heatedly in comments to reporters. Gesturing to Lieberman at his side, McCain said, “There’s no way this guy could have been re-elected if it was as simple as that. Americans are frustrated and angry and that frustration and anger is justified. But when you ask most Americans should we get out right away, most of them say no.”
By Republican logic that means that they favor a “sustained and significant” escalation.
We are getting into a totally crazy, hallucinogenic situation here. For example, I just heard Charles Krauthammer sound almost sane, complaining that we can’t possibly secure Iraq while it’s in the middle of a civil war. That’s how nuts it is.
Thankfully, as of today anyway, the Democrats are speaking in a unified, forceful voice against this insanity, which is very good news.
Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.
Update: Don’t miss today’s “thank you” from Kate O’Beirne to the people of Connecticut. They must be very proud.
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Governing By Tantrums
by digby
It seems to me that one of the defining characteristics of the Bush administration is a sort of stubborn, spoiled reaction to his critics. I think it comes from two things. First it is a reflection of Bush’s personality which, in a position as powerful as the presidency, is bound to color everything.
I’ll never forget this odd little anecdote from a family friend who knew the Bush family back in the day and knew the hellraising Junior quite well:
[In] December, during a visit to his parents’ home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go “mano a mano,” as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”
From the moment he took office, he has been doing this sort of thing. He won the election in 2000 under very unusual circumstances in the closest election in American history. After running as a “compassionate conservative” in the first place and then taking office as a result of a divided Supreme Court decision, everyone at the time assumed that he would govern humbly, seeking the input of the opposition and running a very moderate administration. Instead he did exactly the opposite, insisting he had a mandate for extreme conservatism.
Similarly, he ran for re-election in 2004 and won a narrow victory predicated almost entirely on his wartime leadership. Yet, first thing out of the box he announced he would destroy social security. This election, which he outright lost on the basis of his lying and mishandling of Iraq, brings an escalation of the war.
This era has been marked by its unusual up-is-downism and the media’s inability to sort this out. (We are right now seeing them parrot republican talking points that say the Democrats ran on a platform of bipartisanship when in fact it was a platform of in-your-face opposition.) The president has embodied this with the way he does exactly the opposite of what the nation consistenly signals it wants him to do. It’s almost as if he does it simply because he can. And that, I think, is the key to understanding it.
It was a terrible stroke of luck that brought that man together with Dick Cheney, who had actually developed an entire political philosophy based upon the president have the power to do whatever he wants to do. It may be that pairing that has brought us to this point. A spoiled little boy who can easily be persuaded by a megalomaniacal grey eminence that there is virtue in defying the American people and the constitution.
Which brings us to today. Bush is going to escalate the war. And he’s probably going to escalate it in a way that is even more provocative than anyone is anticipating. he will send in the ‘surge” but he won’t just do that. He’s going to go for it.
The “new way forward” team is taking shape. Robert Gates is in as Secretary of Defense. John Negroponte will move from Director of National Intelligence to Assistant Secretary of State. Retired Vice Admiral Michael McConnell will take Negroponte’s old job as DNI. Raw Story reports that Lieutenant General David Petraeus, the former day-to-day commander in Iraq, to replace General George Casey as the overall commander of U.S. forces in that country.
The news that has everyone a bit agog is that the head of Central Command, General John Abizaid, will be relieved by Admiral William J. Fallon.
ABC reports that “Fallon, who is in the Navy, is currently head of Pacific Command; he will be overseeing two ground wars, so the appointment is highly unusual.”
I think ABC is missing the point.
It seems highly unusual for a navy admiral to take charge of CENTCOM until you consider two interrelated things. First is that Bush needs a senior four-star in the CENTCOM job who hasn’t gone on record as opposing additional troops in Iraq. Second is that Fallon’s CENTCOM area of responsibility will include Iran.
A conflict with Iran would be a naval and air operation. Fallon is a naval flight officer. He flew combat missions in Vietnam, commanded an A-6 Intruder squadron, a carrier air wing and an aircraft carrier. As a three-star, he commanded Second Fleet and Strike Force Atlantic. He presently heads U.S. Pacific Command. His resume also includes duty in numerous joint and Navy staff billets, including Deputy Director for Operations with Joint Task Force Southwest Asia in Riyahd, Saudi Arabia.
If anybody knows how to run a maritime and air operation against Iran, it’s “Fox” Fallon.
Let’s just say that considering the Bush administration history, this would be a predictable way for them to act. For reasons of personal temperament and political philosophy, they not only ignore all critics and dissenters they go even farther and become obnoxiously defiant. They’ve always gotten away with it. Why would they stop now?
Update: A commenter tipped me to this interesting post by Arianna discussing the possibilities of an impending Iran operation with Wes Clark:
“I’m worried about the surge,” he said. “But I’m worried about this even more.”
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Ready For His Close-up
by digby
Can I just say that watching Arnold Schwarzenneger on crutches being sworn in to the sound of (badly played) trumpets in a huge auditorium is one of the weirdest damned things I’ve ever seen? (Jesus — after he took the oath a choir started singing “Hallelujah!” like the angels are celebrating or something.)
It’s still disconcerting to me to see this bizarre looking and sounding fellow as a serious leader. I want to giggle everytime I see him. But there he is.
That “American-born president” provision in the constitution may be an anachronism, but the country should be very glad of it. At least we Californians won’t be able to foist this Republican on the rest of the America. Hallelujah, indeed.
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Saving Tomorrow
by digby
Back in the prehistoric era, BB (before blogs) there were very few witty, liberal political observers with a public platform. One of the few was the great strip, Tom Tomorrow, which I used to look forward to (and still do) like a five year old on Christmas. It was one of the things that kept me sane and is still the sharpest, most precise rendering of the current political scene around.
The Village Voice, which has recently been taken over by cretins, has decided not to carry Tom Tomorrow anymore in the print version, which is ridiculous.
“Tom” is collecting signatures on a petition to try to get the Voice to reinstate his strip. I urge you to sign it. If Tom Tomorrow isn’t in the Village Voice, the terrorists have won.
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Firing Wildly
by digby
Josh Marshall wonders the same thing I did last week:
And does this perhaps get us toward an answer to our earlier question, Why the Rush? We know that Maliki is highly dependent on al Sadr and the Mahdi Army (the folks the ‘surge’ is supposed to crush). If it’s really true that Saddam was handed over to MA fighters to be executed rather than Interior Ministry officials, was that the rush? Did al Sadr and Co. make Maliki an offer he couldn’t refuse? Did they demand that Saddam be turned over to them — and now — for execution? Was that why he was pulling so many strings and cutting so many corners?
In my earlier post I quoted a passage from Juan Cole’s analysis which makes me think that Maliki wasn’t exactly coerced.
Here’s my question. If that’s the case, and The McCain Republicans and Connecticuts for Lieberman’s are going to send in 20,000 more troops to “secure” the country, doesn’t that mean Americans will be fighting the personal army of the prime minister of Iraq? The same prime minister who was duly elected with all those fabulous purple fingers?
I hate to get all literal about this and upset Tony Blankley, but shouldn’t we at least know whether this escalation is designed to kill insurgents/terrorists/extremists or make war on the current government of Iraq? And is there any difference?
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