Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Primed For McCain

by digby

The latest GOP mantra on Iraq sounds incredibly pathetic and it’s probably why they are losing. Here’s Bay Buchanan on CNN yesterday:

BUCHANAN: There’s no question in that people have a legitimate concern.

But I think the issue here is not to debate whether we should have gone or not, but that we have a serious situation. We are at war in Iraq. It is not going well . What do you do now?

Bush expanded on that in an interview with George Stephanopoulos:

BUSH: I have always found that, when a person goes in to vote, they are going to want to know what that person is going to do.

You know, what is the plan for a candidate on Iraq? What do they believe? Frankly, I hear disparate voices all over the place on the Democrats’ side about Iraq. We got some saying, get out.

The argument seems to be, “yes we’ve fucked up, and we’ve fucked up so badly that there are no good choices. Do you want to take a chance that the Democrats will fuck it up too?”

I think people have just come to the reasonable conclusion that they have nothing to lose by letting the Democrats have a crack at it. Certainly, it hardly seems wise to reward these people by validating their policy at the voting booth. The problem, of course, is that the congress has only the nuclear option of cutting off funds, which they will not do. No maqtter how many hearings are held and how much dirt is exposed, Bush would, in my opinion, die before he would withdraw (or even be seen to be withdrawing) from Iraq. That hideous problem will be left to the next president.

Which is where St John McCain comes in.Atrios and Greenwald both discuss his rambling comments about Iraq on Chris Matthews’ show earlier this week. I saw that show and I was particularly struck by this:

MCCAIN: I don‘t think we need to think of the draft again because I don‘t think it makes sense in a whole variety of ways. But I guarantee you, if these young people felt that this nation was in a crisis and we asked them to serve, virtually every one of them would stand up because I have the greatest confidence in the young people of America.

The current problem is that unless we are invaded by martians all the crying wolf the Republicans have done these last five years means that nobody believes Bush’s abstract claims of threat anymore. They went so over the top with their screeching, fearmongering that it’s lost its punch.

McCain could change that. He will be the grown-up reformer who is coming in to fix the mess that the terrible Bushies have made. And his pitch is going to be “sacrifice” wrapped up in all kinds of feel-good symbols of national interest. He will try to persuade the country that the crisis we face(however he defines it) requires that young people cast off their self-centered interests and serve their country. It’s a potent message and it doesn’t really have to make sense.

John McCain is a bigger warmonger than George W. Bush, always has been. The only difference is that he doesn’t believe, as the administration does, that it can be done without a national mobilization. (Like most nationalists he feels that such a mobilization is good for the national character.) The change in policy will involve spending more money and putting more young people in battle, not less.

Bush’s warmaking desires have been restrained by his unwillingness to put the country on a real war footing or create a coherent military strategy. McCain will have no such restraint and may very well be the man who sets this country on a militaristic binge the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

Here’s the opening of his speech to the Republican Convention in 2004:

It’s a big thing, this war.

It’s a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God’s love for every soul on earth. It’s a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.

And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.

So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.

And much is expected of us.

We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.

Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture …liberty.

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.

Coming from Bush that talk is just more “blah, blah, blah.” Coming from McCain it is gravitas.

The failure in Iraq is going to cause many Americans to yearn for some sort of restoration of national pride. We really hate losing. If the country can be persuaded that McCain is the competent version of the man with the bullhorn, he could win and he could take the nation down a very scary road. Seven years of relentless rhetoric about a “different kinda war” and “the enemy hates America” has perfectly primed this country for a man on a white horse.

If he can manage to combine America’s tribal pride, its yearning for some sort of spiritual meaning and its fear of the other and put together an inspirational, nationalistic message (along with his pre-fab image as a straight-talking “reformer”) he could be very hard to beat — and very, very dangerous. He’s a warmongering hawk, don’t ever forget it. The only real difference between him and Bush on these matters is that he’s willing to attend the funerals of the dead.

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GOP On Self-Destruct

by tristero

Yes, these upcoming GOP ads are utterly outrageous. That said, they ain’t gonna help Republicans, nohow:

The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. “These are the stakes,” the ad concludes. “Vote November 7.”

Indeed, and not too many folks are gonna vote for the party that’s let Osama stay loose for the five years after 9/11.

Moving right along:

The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, that include bin Laden’s Dec. 26, 2001 vow that “what is yet to come will be even greater.”

The ad also cites al-Zawahri’s claim to have obtained “some suitcase bombs,” followed by a scene that appears to show a nuclear explosion.

And American voters will be immediately reminded of the latest nuclear test, North Korea’s, which happened on Bush’s watch and which he couldn’t prevent because he and which happened in great part because the Bushites are as utterly incompetent at diplomacy as they are at protecting Americans from terror attacks, or catastrophic, predicted hurricane disasters, pedophiliac Congresscritters, corporate malfeasance, or anything else you might think of.

Liberals

by tristero

Tony Judt wrote an article in the London Review of Books which began by asking, “Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy?” Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin responded in The American Prospect with a manifesto that said in essence, “Who you talkin’ about, Tony?”

But Tony has simply observed what all of us have known for the longest time: genuine liberalism – hell, even centrism – has long gone missing from the mass political discourse in the United States. The closest anyone can find to a liberal on tv – and folks, I love them dearly, but Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert are comedians – are liberal hawks of the George Packer/Paul Berman/Peter Beinart variety.

Judt makes this, unfortunately, quite clear by pointing out that in 1988, a “reaffirmation” of liberalism published in the NY Times was signed by, among others, Daniel Bell, J.K. Galbraith, Felix Rohatyn, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Irving Howe, Eudora Welty, Kenneth Arrow, and Robert Penn Warren. Many positive things can be said about the people on the current list (which, btw, includes Arrow and Schlesinger), but in terms of name recognition and cultural status, it just isn’t the same. Who has taken their place? Not the signers of the Prospect manifesto, surely. Instead, those presently with name recognition and cultural status in America are genuine morons: Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O’Reilly, William Kristol, Max Boot, and, to take Pynchon out of context, the rest of the Whole Sick Crew.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am NOT saying that the signers are in any way lightweights. There are many important thinkers among the signatories. What I’m saying is that they have, at present, next to zero stature in mainstream American culture. To claim, as Judt did of the ’88 manifesto, that the present one is an “open rebuke” of a conservative president’s folly is to ascribe much more influence to the signers of this manifesto than they command in American intellectual, let alone political and cultural, life.

American culture has literally eliminated liberals and liberalism from any consideration of serious influence. What this esoteric little spat among the intelligentsia illustrates is just how much work we liberals have cut out for us in order to regain anything resembling serious stature, let alone influence, in the US.

Re-United, And It Feels So Good

by poputonian

Church and State finally back together after forty years of separation.

” … remember the good time we had together … “”Once maybe I touched him …”

“We were just fondling …”

“He seemed to like it … “
” … we enjoyed each other’s company.””… almost like brothers …”

Oh, those young Christo-Republicans. They were so … cute.

Grenade-Threatening Lunatic Interviews US President

by tristero

Every once in a while, like three or four times a day, it is important to remember how genuinely, utterly, bogus modern American mass discourse has become. For example:

O’Reilly said that he knew “for a fact that President Bush doesn’t know what’s going on in the Internet.” O’Reilly then said, “I have to say President Bush has a much healthier attitude toward this than I do. Because if I can get away with it, boy, I’d go in with a hand grenade.”

Four things here.

First of all, O’Reilly equates presidential ignorance with presidential mental health. By his reasoning, then, George W. Bush therefore must be the sanest president that ever lived.

Secondly, note the utterly vacuous nature of the threat. Where, exactly, would Bill 0’Reilly go in with a hand grenade to destroy the evil bloggers? A server farm in Virginia? Well, that doesn’t really eliminate any bloggers, now does it? To do that, O’Reilly would have to come invade our homes.

But Bill’s right. He’d never get away with it. Oh, not that he’d get in trouble with the law: there ain’t any. Hell, a government that can rationalize torture can easily find a way to excuse Bill O’Reilly’s grenade jihad.

No the reason O’Reilly wouldn’t dare attack us is that he knows that many of us bloggers live with the kind of serious protection that would easily scare O’Reilly into dropping a huge load of falafel into his drawers.

And thirdly, even when eliminationism is uttered by blustering fools, it is still elimationism and fascism. This should be particularly disturbing to those who say we need to wait until the Minutemen… sorry, I slipped, I meant brownshirts… start their patrols before declaring the US a fascist state. After all, O’Reilly is presently deemed mainstream enough to rate an opportunity to interview the president of the United States.

And that was point four, in case you missed it.

Exceptionalism

by digby

Nearly a third of people worldwide back the use of torture in prisons in some circumstances, a BBC survey suggests.

Although 59% were opposed to torture, 29% thought it acceptable to use some degree of torture to combat terrorism.

While most polled in the US are against torture, opposition there is less robust than in Europe and elsewhere.

More than 27,000 people in 25 countries were asked if torture would be acceptable if it could provide information to save innocent lives.

Some 36% of those questioned in the US agreed that this use of torture was acceptable, while 58% were unwilling to compromise on human rights.

The percentage favouring torture in certain cases makes it one of the highest of all the countries polled.

This is kind of embarrassing. More Nigerians, Israelis, Iraqis and Philippinos approve of torture than we do. But we’re getting there. A couple more years and we’ll be number one. After all, a large majority of our political representatives voted for it.

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Shorthand

by digby

Word to the wise: if both Joe Klein and David Brooks give the same piece of advice to Democrats, do the exact opposite.

Barack Obama should run for president.

He should run first for the good of his party. It would demoralize the Democrats to go through a long primary season with the most exciting figure in the party looming off in the distance like some unapproachable dream. The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.

Right. Thank Dave, for all your concern, but don’t you worry your pretty little head about the Democrats, ok? You’ve got your hands full keeping your own party from a full scale implosion.

Apparently both Joe and David think we are such idiots that we would put the callow young pup Barack Obama up against the manly old lion John McCain for president in 2008. (Jesus, I hate having my intelligence insulted by people like the Kumbaaya twins.)

I have nothing particularly against Barack Obama, he seems like he has a lot of good qualities. But this nonsense about how Democrats should nominate him because he’s a nice bipartisan boy who can change the ugly tone in Washington is just a tad presumptuous.

Here’s an idea. How about if the Republicans nominate a bucket of vapid lukewarm spit instead? Joe Lieberman would be a good choice. The Democrats will nominate somebody who is qualified to run the government for a change.

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Fooling Only Themselves

by digby

From the Carpetbagger Report:

This month, it’s a new set of ads — running in more than two dozen congressional districts nationwide — sponsored by a political action committee called “America’s Pac,” which is a project of the very wealthy (and very white) Patrick Rooney. I honestly didn’t think the right could be this disgusting.

“Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies,” a female announcer in one of the ads says, as rain, thunder, and a crying infant are heard in the background. “The Democratic Party supports these abortion laws that are decimating our people, but the individual’s right to life is protected in the Republican platform. Democrats say they want our vote. Why don’t they want our lives?”

Another ad features a dialogue between two men.

“If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,’ you’ll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked,” one of the men says.

“That’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed,” the other replies.

“Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican,” the first man says.

There’s more at the link.

I really doubt this is going to work.

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Go Team God!

by digby

Now that’s what I’m talking about …

Weighing in on Connecticut’s hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture.

The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The legislation, which President Bush was expected to sign into law Tuesday, allows military commissions to prosecute suspected terrorists and spells out violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Organizers say about 100,000 commuters pass the billboard in Stratford each day. The billboard – 14 feet high and 48 feet wide – was sponsored by Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, which describes itself as a statewide interfaith network of religious leaders created in 2002.

The legislation would prohibit war crimes and define atrocities such as rape and torture but would otherwise allow the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, the treaty that sets standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

“This is a shameful law,” organizer Rev. Kathleen McTigue said Monday. “It grants extraordinary power to the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, including which methods of interrogation will be considered torture.”

And what about Connecticut’s most awesomely religious and moral candidate?

“This is just another example of the kind of mudslinging partisanship that Joe Lieberman wants to remove from our debates about how best to keep our nation safe,” said Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun. “The fact is, Joe Lieberman does not support torture. He joined 11 other Democrats as well as Sen. John McCain – who is himself a prisoner of war – in voting to uphold the Geneva Convention.”

And that is just another example of the kind of slick, Rovian PR spin that Democrats across the country want to remove from our debates about right and wrong. The fact is, Joe Lieberman joined 11 other Democrats and John McCain — who is himself a man with no principles — in voting for a law that allows the president to unilaterally decide what constitutes torture, gives him the power to imprison people (including American citizens) indefinitely, try them in a kangaroo court based on heresay and coerced evidence and then sentence them to death with no right to appeal.

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Go Team Jesus

by digby

Kevin highlights a post by Rebecca Sinderbrand on the Showdown ’08 Blog in which she posits that evangelicals will look at the Kuo book like this:

…Kuo’s story — if it’s believed at all — wouldn’t affect the way voters like my mom feel about the president. And the White House-based account definitely wouldn’t have an impact on how they view the GOP-controlled Congress, which doesn’t make much of an appearance in the book. So what sorts of questions does it raise in their minds? How about: Why did this come out three weeks before the election? Who’s plugging this story? And: is there any reason to trust them?

Here’s your answers: This story — which people they trust dismiss out of hand — comes by way of a turncoat. Even if it is true, the words of some nameless White House aides, and a couple of missing numbers on a spreadsheet, aren’t enough for to make them question long-standing frindships. Meanwhile: the fact that these charges are emerging in mid-October makes them feel manipulated. And sure, that kind of manipulation makes them angry — but not at the Republican party.

…I think the only possible ballot-box impact in the short term, if any, could be a rare bit of good news for Republican congressional leadership: Even the suspicion of an “October surprise” at work might be enough motivate some evangelicals who might otherwise have stayed home to turn out for the GOP.

I have no special knowledge of evangelicals, but I suspect she is correct. Their identification with the Republican party seems to me to be tribal ID and religion as politics. (I sure haven’t seen many cases where religion trumps politics anyway.)

Frankly, I have no choice but to also doubt their sincerity as Christians — and so, by the way, does David Kuo:

Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from “the base,” the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups – his old stomping ground – and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.

“You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, and you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell,” Kuo remarked. “Not a mention of the poor.”

“This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda – as if this culture war is a war for God. And it’s not a war for God, it’s a war for politics. And that’s a huge difference,” says Kuo.

I’m pretty sure they like it that way. It’s competitive, it’s fun — and it has nothing to do with religion. Democrats who try to appeal to them are chumps. They don’t care about Jesus (you’ll recall he was very, very big on helping the poor.*) They care about beating Democrats.

I continue to believe they will vote in their usual numbers this election. If we win it will be because the independents will vote for us and the non-evangelical Republicans will stay home.

*as are most decent Christians. The Christian Right, however, is not in the least bit interested in poor people.

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