Who You Gonna Call?
by digby
Let’s say you have a problem. You have the choice of two people to solve the problem — the one who caused the problem, refuses to admit it even is a problem and won’t change anything even as the problem grows worse — or the other one. Which do you choose?
That’s the simple logic of this election.
There are, of course, many affirmative Democratic messages necessary for the future. But right now, this is it.
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The Wills Article
by tristero
Below, Digby linked to an article by Garry Wills which details the extent the US government has been undermined by christianists with the help of the Bush administration, its ranks fully penetrated by political activists whose agenda is to establish an American theocracy. The article seems, for the most part, very good. The reason I haven’t mentioned it, although I read it several days ago when my paper copy of New York Review of Books came is because there is a very unfortunate error of fact in the discussion of “intelligent design” creationism. In addition there is a minor factual error and a misleading emphasis. I alerted NY Review of these errors, and also notified a scholar of ID creationism, but the errors persist in the online version that they posted.
Wills writes
The Discovery Institute claims that it is a scientific, not a religious, enterprise, but that claim was belied when one of its internal documents was discovered. It promised that the institute would “function as a wedge…[to] split the trunk [of materialism] at its weakest points” and “replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” The institute is mainly funded with evangelical money, and its spokespersons are evangelicals—one, Philip Johnson, says he was inspired by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon to “devote my life to destroying Darwinism.”
1. In fact, it was not Johnson but Jonathan Wells who said that. As it happens, Wells is a “senior fellow” at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (which changed its name to the Center for Science and Culture).
2. CRSC is one part of the Discovery Institute but Wills conflates DI with CRSC, as do many authors. This is not a major error. I don’t know, however, if DI’s money comes entirely or mainly from religious groups (and have to rush out now before I can check). CRSC, however, has, shall we say, interesting funding (see below).
3. Unfortunately, Wills actually minimized the alarming character of the people funding ID by labelling them simply “evangelicals,” which encompasses everyone from Tony Campolo to Pat Robertson. In fact, much of the original funding for the marketing of “intelligent design” creationism came from none other than Howard Ahmanson, a disciple of Rousas John Rushdoony. Rushdoony, of course, is a “Christian Reconstructionist,” an open advocate of replacing the American Republic with a theocracy. My source is Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross’s excellent Creationism’s Trojan Horse. Forrest was one of the main witnesses in the Kitzmiller case.
As far as I can tell, the other incidents Wills discussed that I’ve heard about are accurately portrayed.
Obviously, I’m not happy drawing attention to flaws in an article by an author I admire and the thrust of whose argument I fully agree with. But they are there and readers should know about them.
We Are The Realists
by digby
Maybe I’m out of stem with other liberals but this doesn’t ring true to me. From a new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner research strategy memo on National Security:
Don’t let anti-Bush reflexes undermine Democrats’ heritage of internationalism. Over the longer term, Democrats can only retain national leadership and the public’s trust if we promote a strong, idealistic, and outward-looking vision of America’s purposes in the world. Anti-Bush passion may be enough to drive big gains in 2006. But Democrats cannot afford to let anti-Bushism morph into anti-internationalism. For example, it is troubling that, according to a poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund, a majority of Democrats — the party that helped bring down apartheid in South Africa and Pinochet in Chile — now rejects the idea of promoting democracy abroad. Similarly, there are worrisome signs that many Democrats now doubt our ability to improve the world; in the August Democracy Corps survey only a 49-46 percent plurality of Democrats agreed that “America’s power is generally a force for good in the world,” and fully 60 percent of liberal Democrats chose the alternative statement, that “America’s power generally does more harm than good when we act abroad.” As The New Republic’s Peter Beinart and others have argued, it will be important for Democratic leaders over the coming months and years to push back against such beliefs and to mobilize support within the party’s base for a serious international agenda that includes combating jihadist ideology and violence, stemming WMD proliferation, strengthening NATO and our other alliances, supporting the spread of liberal democracy and human rights, and tackling global environmental and humanitarian challenges.
I suspect there is an impulse to pause and take a breath with “democracy promotion” since it’s been so bastardized by the neocons these last few years, but I don’t get the sense that liberals want to withdraw from the world. What they want is a greater emphasis on international cooperation in dealing with these challenges instead of this militaristic (and yes, imperialistic) view that America must exert its power unilaterally. I don’t think there are very many liberals out there who don’t see every challenge on that list as something that must be dealt with — it’s the how, not the if.
After watching the Bush administration turn the US into a pariah nation in six short years we liberals recognise that we have some work to do to earn the world’s respect and regain our leadership role. We will not have national security or global stability without it. Pretending that we are the same nation that sat atop the rubble of WWII is a foolish naive dream as much as the neocon Pax Americana was.
Liberals are the new realists (in the dictionary, not policy-school sense.)We’re not about withdrawing from the world but we recognise that the Bush years have tainted our place in it so badly that the world has withdrawn from us. It’s going to take more than evoking the ghost of George Kennan to get our honor back — and we have to smart enough to be careful about how we do it.
Democrats need to dig deeper than “democracy promotion” and create a better argument if they want to prevail on national security. It shouldn’t be too hard. The whole damned world hates us now and if that isn’t a Republican failure I don’t know what is. Let’s start from there.
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The Wrong Lesson
by digby
Many bloggers have pointed out that Jim Webb’s novels are on the professional reading list of the US Marine Corps, which would indicate that the adults in the military aren’t too shocked by the sex scenes.*
But there is something disturbing on that reading list, which is that the top recomendation for staff sergeants and first lieutenants — the leaders who generally have the most face to face contact with the locals — is that piece of trash “The Arab Mind.” I had thought that it was only considered a bible by the senior brass. I didn’t know they were having the troops read it too. No wonder things have gone so badly.
This is another in a long line of errors, but it points to one of the biggest motivations for this invasion and occupation — racism. There were far too many people who were willing to believe that when it came to teaching the world who’s boss, any arab would do. This book helped create the sense that arabs are all alike and that they are just a little bit less evolved than we purebred (hah!) Americans.
This is terribly unfair to the iraqis and it’s unfair to the troops. They should remove that book from the reading list or at least provide some other books on the subject and some guidance. They should not give it to sergeants and first lieutenants and then just tell them to go forth and deal with the Iraqis. It’s akin to giving them bad body armor. (Oh wait … )
* I’m reminded of Ross Perot, who went to the Naval Academy but left the service prematurely because he couldn’t take all the cursing.
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Stepping On Our Dreams
by digby
Many people seem to be convinced that the key to this election is going to be conservative Christians staying home. I don’t think so. James Dobson and his ilk are out there telling them to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils and they will do it — at least for now. And the southern Kristallnacht Republicans will vote for their tribe no matter what.
This, in my view, is the Republican party’s big problem — the suburban, educated voters:
The M.B.A.’s have had it. The engineers are fuming.
For as long as anyone here can remember, Bellevue has been a stronghold of socially liberal Republicanism. First, it was a prosperous Seattle bedroom community, then a technological boomtown, where employees of Microsoft and Internet start-ups consistently voted for fiscal restraint and hands-off government.
But now, voters here are accusing the party in power of overspending and overreaching — and when they do, they sound like people who write manifestos, not software code.
“I’m a mild-mannered guy,” Michael Mattison, a partner in a software venture development firm, said as he stabbed a piece of halibut in the sunlit dining room of a local bistro. “But we can no longer be subdued.”
Bellevue has been growing more Democratic for several years, thanks to an influx of liberal voters and a professional class that is changing teams. This year, Bellevue may send its first Democrat to Congress. Darcy Burner, who even supporters admit is inexperienced, may unseat Representative Dave Reichert, a well-liked, longtime public servant, simply because constituents want Democratic control of the House of Representatives.
“I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,” Tony Schuler, an operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr. Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private affairs.
“The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay,” he said. “Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to interfere with those things.”
In Bellevue, the professional is political. Rather than religion or culture, what unites the diverse population — a quarter of residents are foreign born — are the values of their workplaces: technological innovation, accuracy, efficiency.
And this year, one issue incenses them above all others: restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
It is a matter of concern across the country, even across parties. But for many engineers and their ilk, restriction of stem cell research is what gay marriage is to conservative Christians, a phenomenon so counter to their basic values that they cannot vote for any candidate who supports it. After all, for Bellevue’s professionals, science is not only a means of creating wealth but also an idealistic pursuit, the most promising way they know of improving the human condition.
I think that is one of the most interesting observations I’ve read in a while (certainly in the New York Times.) The Republicans and the Christian Right are leading America on a backward march into the Dark Ages — and that is stepping on our dreams. As a culture, we have always been idealistic about progress and inspired by new discoveries to improve the lot of the human race. We’re about invention and reinvention. It’s one of our best qualities.
These people are telling us that those days are over. We have to depend upon brute force, superstition and ancient revelation. Science is dangerous. Art is frightening. Education must be strictly circumscribed so that children aren’t exposed to ideas that might lead them astray.
It’s a pinched, sour, ugly vision of America. For those who believe that their time on earth is all about waiting for The Bridegroom, perhaps that doesn’t mean much. But for the rest of us, things like scientific breakthroughs or artistic achievement are inspirational, soaring emotional connections with our country and our fellow man. It makes us proud. The dark-ages conservatives want to take that away from us.
This country has been divided at 50/50 for some time. That probably cannot continue much longer and a real majority will emerge before long. Tax-cuts have held together the GOP coalition up to now, but their dark vision of the future may be the thing that finally drives the suburban, educated voters to our side of the ledger for a long time to come. We’re the ones with the progressive dream of the future and that’s as American as a Big Mac and fries.
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They Don’t Miss A Trick, Do They?
by tristero
Please understand that I think the Dems, in reality, have no incentive to backpedal or go soft on the egregiously awful, even criminal, behavior of our Republican overlords. They should hold them accountable via robust investigations, oversights, and when called for, indictments. That said, in reality there are many obstacles to doing so. The worst, of course, is that the US has a juvenile delinquent for a president who has been double-daring his opponents to make explicit the constitutional crisis he began during the Florida election debacle of 2000, and which he has renewed over Schiavo and the filibuster “nuclear option.” Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats will not act in such a way as to force a serious public showdown over Bush’s crackpot notion of the “unitary executive” (ie, the idea that the Constitution makes a Republican president an absolute monarch).
But there is another reason the government will remain seriously dysfunctional for a long time (and for you cynics who think government ipso facto is incompetent, far more dysfunctional than it was under previous presidents, and far more dysfunctional than it has to be). This outrage is a good example of why:
Congressional Democrats say a new government publication being sent to all Medicare beneficiaries inappropriately favors private insurance plans over the traditional government-run program.
The publication, the 2007 Medicare handbook, “presents a misleading and biased view of Medicare coverage and options,” the Democrats said last week in a letter to Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services.
Beneficiaries use the handbook as an authoritative guide. It has become more important in the last few years as Medicare has become more complex, with new insurance options and a prescription drug benefit offered by scores of competing private insurers.
“The 2007 handbook strongly favors health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations and other private Medicare Advantage plans over the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program,” the Democrats said in the letter.
[boilerplate and vaguely worded denial from the Bush administration.]
Managed care plans often have networks of doctors and hospitals, and beneficiaries may have to pay higher fees, exceeding what they would pay under traditional Medicare, if they go outside the network. In traditional Medicare, patients can choose from a broader range of doctors and hospitals, although a small number of doctors say they do not take Medicare patients because they consider the payments inadequate.
Get it? Not only is this disgraceful in itself, it only one of many such incidents that we know of. There’s the advocacy of utterly bogus abstinence-only sex education (pdf) as well as false information being provided by federally funded pregnancy centers (pdf). But it’s not only health, of course. Who can forget George Deutsch insisting that NASA scientists take into account “intelligent design” creationism arguments when discussing the Big Bang? And let’s also recall that until Bush came into power, FEMA was a well-respected agency.
In short, the rightwing assault on the US government since 2000 has been comprehensive and unrelenting. The Bush administration has not only mis-managed from the top, but has deliberately degraded the efficiency and integrity of government at the midlevel as well. It will take years, many years, to remove the godawful incompetents Bush has brought into bureaucracies.
And for the libertarians out there, let me be clear. I don’t mind in the slightest having my tax dollars going to support Medicare. But I very much mind having my tax dollars wasted on ideological propaganda designed to undermine Medicare by misrepresenting its benefits and limitations in order to benefit the rich.
Update: Digby here. Sorry to intrude, but I have to add this link to Gary Wills’ phenomenal article this week-end in the NY Review of Book on this very topic: A Country Ruled by Faith. (Let’s just say Amy Sullivan won’t be pleased.)
carry on.
Pig Slap
by digby
Did he really say this?
Down in Wyoming, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin got into some hot water when, after a debate, she threatened Libertarian candidate Thomas Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair. She reportedly said to him, “If you weren’t sitting in that chair, I’d slap you across the face.”
She later apologized, saying she may have been influenced by listening to too much Rush Limbaugh. Last week, Limbaugh said he would slap actor and Parkinson’s disease sufferer Michael J. Fox, “if you’d just quit bobbing your head.”
I knew that he was a degenerate pig, and his comments have all been disgusting on this subject, but I hadn’t heard he went that far. Does anyone know if that’s true?
*And that woman deserves to lose, both for what she originally said and the idiotic excuse she came up with.
Update: Doh. That’s what I get for taking the quote from another blog and not reading the whole article. It’s a satire.
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Using Our Religion
by digby
Readers urged me to write about this today and it is worth some discussion:
The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.
The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.
The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.
The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.
Officials of both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government strongly denied yesterday that President Chávez’s administration, which has been bitterly at odds with Washington, has any role in Smartmatic.
“The government of Venezuela doesn’t have anything to do with the company aside from contracting it for our electoral process,” the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said last night.
(Right. This is worthy of investigation but the president of Diebold saying he was determined to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004 was just a figure of speech.)
The fact that the government is investigating Hugo “sulphur” Chavez’s alleged interest in election machines may very well be part of an emerging post-election GOP narrative. I have believed that Republicans might claim vote fraud in this election for some time. I wrote back in June:
The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time thye become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.
In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now, we know that it’s the Republicans who have been doing the stealing —- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is “stolen election” and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It’s like an ear worm. You don’t know the song its from, necessarily, but you can’t get it out of your head.
We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate — and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it. As I mentioned a month or so ago, Karl Rove was at the Republican Lawyers Association talking about how the Democrats are stealing elections:
QUESTION: The question I have: The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud. And we know that, in some states, some of our folks are pushing for election measures like voter ID.
But have you thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive?
ROVE: Yes, it’s an interesting idea. We’ve got a few more things to do before the political silly season gets going, really hot and heavy. But yes, this is a real problem. What is it — five wards in the city of Milwaukee have more voters than adults?
With all due respect to the City of Brotherly Love, Norcross Roanblank’s (ph) home turf, I do not believe that 100 percent of the living adults in this city of Philadelphia are registered, which is what election statistics would lead you to believe.
I mean, there are parts of Texas where we haven’t been able to pull that thing off.
(LAUGHTER)
And we’ve been after it for a great many years.
So I mean, this is a growing problem.
The spectacle in Washington state; the attempts, in the aftermath of the 2000 election to disqualify military voters in Florida, or to, in one instance, disqualify every absentee voter in Seminole county — I mean, these are pretty extraordinary measures that should give us all pause.
The efforts in St. Louis to keep the polls opened — open in selected precincts — I mean, I would love to have that happen as long, as I could pick the precincts.
This is a real problem. And it is not going away.
I mean, Bernalillo County, New Mexico will have a problem after the next election, just like it has had after the last two elections.
I mean, I remember election night, 2000, when they said, oops, we just made a little mistake; we failed to count 55,000 ballots in Bernalillo; we’ll be back to you tomorrow.
(LAUGHTER)
That is a problem. And I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, a vegetarian or a beef-eater, this is an issue that ought to concern you because, at the heart of it, our democracy depends upon the integrity of the ballot place. And if you cannot…
(APPLAUSE)
I have to admit, too — look, I’m not a lawyer. So all I’ve got to rely on is common sense. But what is the matter? I go to the grocery store and I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I’ve got to show a little bit of ID.
Why should it not be reasonable and responsible to say that when people show up at the voting place, they ought to be able to prove who they are by showing some form of ID?
We can make arrangements for those who don’t have driver’s licenses. We can have provisional ballots, so that if there is a question that arises, we have a way to check that ballot. But it is fundamentally fair and appropriate to say, if you’re going to show up and claim to be somebody, you better be able to prove it, when it comes to the most sacred thing we have been a democracy, which is our right of expression at the ballot.
And if not, let’s just not kid ourselves, that elections will not be about the true expression of the people in electing their government, it will be a question of who can stuff it the best and most. And that is not healthy.
QUESTION: I’ve been reading some articles about different states, notably in the west, going to mail-in ballots and maybe even toying with the idea of online ballots. Are you concerned about this, in the sense of a mass potential, obviously, for voter fraud that this might have in the West?
ROVE: Yes. And I’m really worried about online voting, because we do not know all the ways that one can jimmy the system. All we know is that there are many ways to jimmy the system.
I’m also concerned about the increasing problems with mail-in ballots. Having last night cast my mail-in ballot for the April 11 run-off in Texas, in which there was one race left in Kerr County to settle — but I am worried about it because the mail-in ballots, particularly in the Northwest, strike me as problematic.
I remember in 2000, that we had reports of people — you know, the practice in Oregon is everybody gets their ballot mailed to them and then you fill it out.
And one of the practices is that people will go to political rallies and turn in their ballots. And we received reports in the 2000 election — which, remember we lost Oregon by 5000 votes — we got reports of people showing up at Republican rallies and passing around the holder to get your ballot, and then people not being able to recognize who those people were and not certain that all those ballots got turned in.
On Election Day, I remember, in the city of Portland, Multnomah County — I’m going to mispronounce the name — but there were four of voting places in the city, for those of you who don’t get the ballots, well, we had to put out 100 lawyers that day in Portland, because we had people showing up with library cards, voting at multiple places.
I mean, why was it that those young people showed up at all four places, showing their library card from one library in the Portland area? I mean, there’s a problem with this.
And I know we need to make arrangements for those people who don’t live in the community in which they are registered to vote or for people who are going to be away for Election Day or who are ill or for whom it’s a real difficulty to get to the polls. But we need to have procedures in place that allow us to monitor it.
And in the city of Portland, we could not monitor. If somebody showed up at one of those four voting locations, we couldn’t monitor whether they had already cast their mail-in ballot or not. And we lost the state by 5,000 votes.
I mean, come on. What kind of confidence can you have in that system? So yes, we’ve got to do more about it.
Nobody can ever accuse these Republicans of not having balls. It’s really breathtaking sometimes. This is not an isolated remark. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Chris Matthews show:
MATTHEWS: … What did you make—we just showed the tape, David Shuster just showed that tape of a woman candidate in the United States openly advising people in this country illegally to vote illegally.
MEHLMAN: It sounds like she may have been an adviser to that Washington state candidate for governor or some other places around the country where this has happened in other cases with Democrats.
But the fact is, one thing we know, the American people believe that legal voters should vote and they believe that their right to vote ought to be protected from people that don‘t have the right to vote.
Rove was talking to the Republican lawyers association, many members of which specialize in “voter fraud,” and may very well be preparing to challenge every close race and file spurious complaints to Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department.
And even if they didn’t, be prepared to hear all of our complaints about election stealing yelled back at us if they lose. They are not afraid to take somebody elses talking point and use it to their advantage. It’s one of the things they do best and because a lot of people don’t pay close attention it will sound perfectly reasonable to them that the Democrats stole the election.
Just something to think about as we look to the morning after election day.
One other thing Rove said during that talk before the GOP lawyers:
Well, I learned all I needed to know about election integrity from the college Republicans.
I don’t doubt it for a moment.
*note: the excerpt of my original post has been altered a little bit to include more of Karl Rove’s comments.
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Bloggers In The Stretch
by digby
Bloggers from FDL, Kos, Crooks and Liars, MYDD, Down With Tyranny and others are working hard to pay for a last minute TV ad push for Tony Truppiano in Michigan with a week-end fundraiser. It’s a great ad (created in the blogosphere, btw) and the race is close. If you still have some money in your pocket, this could be where we make a difference. You can donate here to the Blue America PAC.
Here’s the ad:
And, of course, you can also give of your time if money is short.
Here are some good resources:
Move-On Call For Change
The Democratic Party
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Concerned Women For Pornography
by digby
Think Progress has Wolf Blitzer’s response to Lynn Cheney’s ridiculous claim that she was invited on CNN’s the Situation Room 10 days before an election to talk about her dipshit children’s book:
Blitzer:…In this most recent interview, she, of course, knew we would would be speaking about politics. That was reaffirmed to her staff only hours before the interview. As a former co-host of Crossfire during the 1990s, she knows her way around the media. She was never shy about sparring with Democratic strategist and co-host.
Lynn Cheney has a schtick and it’s the “offended Republican mom responds with righteous indignation.” You’ll recall her excellent use of it in campaign 2004 with her “this is not a gooood man” line. In this case she aped Bill Clinton’s earlier complaint when he was sandbagged on FoxNews by Chris Wallace, but it doesn’t hold water — Blitzer says the wide ranging topics were reaffirmed by her staff before the interview.
Cheney likes to pretend that she is just an indignant political wife and mother, but in fact she’s a Republican political operative well-known in her own right — far more than Hillary Clinton ever was before she became first lady. Lynn and Dick Cheney are the Borgias of American politics.
The minute I heard she was coming on CNN yesterday I posted that everyone should watch because I knew that she was coming out in full Republican harpy mode. That’s what she does. It’s her thing. I knew she would get especially outraged because her hubby was being heavily criticized for saying that “dunking” terrorists in water was a no-brainer and her own lesbian romance novel was back in the news since George Allen had gotten Drudge to post the sexy scenes from Jim Webb’s Vietnam fictions.
In the final days of an election, when the Republicans are confronted with an uncomfortable truth concerning the Borgia clan, they send out Lynn, Queen of the Harpies with her rabid incoherent schtick to shut down that line questioning. It’s all about attitude and Lynn has it in spades:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no- brainer if it can save lives?
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, it’s a no-brainer to me, but I — for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: It made it sound — and there’s been interpretation to this effect — that he was, in effect, confirming that the United States used this waterboarding, this technique that has been rejected by the international community that simulates a prisoner being drowned, if you will, and he was, in effect, supposedly, confirming that the United States has been using that.
L. CHENEY: No, Wolf — that is a mighty house you’re building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion; he didn’t say anything of the kind.
BLITZER: Because of the dunking of — you know, using the water and the dunking.
L. CHENEY: Well, you know, I understand your point. It’s kind of the point of a lot of people right now, to try to distort the administration’s position, and if you really want to talk about that, I watched the program on CNN last night, which I thought — it’s your 2006 voter program, which I thought was a terrible distortion of both the president and the vice president’s position on many issues.
It seemed almost straight out of Democratic talking points using phrasing like “domestic surveillance” when it’s not domestic surveillance that anyone has talked about or ever done. It’s surveillance of terrorists. It’s people who have al Qaeda connections calling into the United States. So I think we’re in the season of distortion, and this is just one more.
Nobody does it better. She’s as good as anybody in the GOP.
Here she goes right in Blitzer’s face:
L. CHENEY: Well, all right, Wolf. I’m here to talk about my book, but if you want to talk about distortion …
BLITZER: We’ll talk about your book.
L. CHENEY: Well, right, but what is CNN doing running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans? I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter ask you a very good question and you didn’t answer it. Do you want us to win?
The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There’s no doubt about that. Do you think we want terrorists to win?
L. CHENEY: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?
It doesn’t get any more aggressive than that. And then she went into an angry spin that would make a dervish dizzy:
BLITZER:Let’s talk about another issue in the news, then we’ll get to the book. This — the Democrats are now complaining bitterly in this Virginia race, George Allen using novels — novels — that Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger, has written in which there are sexual references, and they’re making a big deal out of this. I want you to listen to what Jim Webb said today in responding to this very sharp attack from George Allen.
L. CHENEY: Now, do you promise, Wolf, that we’re going to talk about my book?
BLITZER: I do promise.
L. CHENEY: Because this seems to me a mighty long trip around the merry-go-round.
BLITZER: I want you to — this was in the news today and your name has come up, so that’s why we’re talking about it, but listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES WEBB (D), VIRGINIA SENATE CANDIDATE: There’s nothing that’s been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn’t been either illuminated the surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot. I’m a serious writer. I mean, we can go and read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian love scenes, you know, if you want to get graphic on stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
L. CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexual, explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references — well, you know, I just don’t want my grandchildren to turn on the television set. This morning, Imus was reading from the novels, and it’s triple-X rated.
BLITZER: Here’s what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional — Senatorial Campaign Committee: “Lynne Cheney’s book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a book called “Sisters,” which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes.”
L. CHENEY: No.
BLITZER: “In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.” Is that true?
L. CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies. It’s not — it’s just — it’s absolutely not a…
BLITZER: But you did write a book entitled “Sisters”?
L. CHENEY: I did write a book entitled “Sisters.”
BLITZER: And it did have lesbian characters.
L. CHENEY: This description — no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.
BLITZER: There’s nothing in there about rapes and brothels?
L. CHENEY: Well, Wolf, could we talk about a children’s book for a minute?
BLITZER: We can talk about the children’s book. I just wanted to…
L. CHENEY: I think my segment is, like, 15 minutes long and we’ve had about 10 minutes of…
BLITZER: I just wanted to — I just wanted to clarify what’s in the news today, given — this is…
L. CHENEY: Sex, lies and distortion. That’s what it is.
BLITZER: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.
L. CHENEY: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to explain.
BLITZER: Well, he says he’s only — as a serious writer, novelist, a fiction writer, he was doing basically what you were doing.
L. CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney.
I’m not sure who she persuaded with that argument, but I have no doubt that she impressed all the phony GOP women who profess to be traditionalists but who are actually thoroughly modern power brokers — and the allegedly traditionalist housewives who voraciously devour those pornographic sexually explicit romance novels while decrying the Democrats’ libertine values. Lynn Cheney’s incoherent defense soothes their cognitive dissonence and makes them feel better about supporting torture and getting off to women’s pornography racy fiction. That was her job, she’s a professional and she did it well.
Update: To be clear regarding romance novels. First, I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with (adult) pornography, but I’ll accede to the fact that romance novels may not be pornographic in the way that many people think of pornography. But they are indisputably very sexually explicit, which I guess many women find to be different from men’s pornography because the sex is in the context of committed relationships. Different strokes (and I mean that in the nicest way.)
In any case, they are no less X-Rated than Jim Webb’s books, even if they depict a more romantic form of highly detailed descriptions of sex from a female point of view. I’m all for whatever people enjoy and I’m not passing judgment. My objection was to the hypocrisy of women who read these books and then vote Republican, complaining that the Democrats are libertines. And there are bunches of them. Romance fiction is the highest selling paperback genre in the country.
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