Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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:

Do More Than Vote

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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They Haven’t Even Lost Yet

by digby

…. and they are already behaving as the rabid opposition we all know and love. This is from a former Bush speechwriter and published in a Virginia newspaper.

Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts

WHEN I WAS speechwriting at the White House, one rule was enforced without exception. The president would not be given drafts that lowered him or The Office by responding to the articulations of hatred that drove so many of his critics.

This rule was especially relevant to remarks that concerned the central topic of our times, Iraq. Having left the White House more than a year ago, I conclude that the immunizing effect of that rule must have expired, because I now find that I am infected with a hatred for the very quarter that inspired the rule–the deranged, lying left.

I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now.

And though these figures might be dismissed as inconsequential, their views seem mild compared with those of some of our university professors charged with the “higher” education of our youth.

Thus have I come to hate Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the Sept. 11 victims of the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns”; Nicholas De Genova, the Columbia professor who loudly wished “a million Mogadishus” on American troops in Iraq; and Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin professor who teaches his students that President Bush was the actual mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I used to laugh these people off. Now I detest them as among the most loathsome people America has ever vomited up.

I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on; I hate the executives at CNN, Turner’s intellectual progeny, who recently carried water for our enemies by broadcasting their propaganda film portraying their attempts to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won’t win in Iraq, bets his party’s future on our nation’s defeat.

I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie: that the president knew in advance there were no WMD in Iraq; that he lied to Congress to gain its support for military action; that he pushed for the democratization of Iraq only after the failure to find WMD; that he was a unilateralist and that the coalition was a fraud; that he shunned diplomacy in favor of war.

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.’s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq. Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called “duty,” and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation–the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

These are the people I now hate–these people who seek to control our national security. The best of them are misinformed. The rest of them are liars.

So I intend to vote on Nov. 7. If I have to, I’ll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I’m voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I’ve had it. I’m fed up with the deranged, lying left. They’ve infected me. I’m now a hater, too.

PAUL BURGESS of Spotsylvania County was director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House from October 2003 to July 2005.

I heard this “broken glass” phrase earlier on Chris Matthews week-end show. Kathleen Parker explained that they are calling them “broken glass Republicans who will crawl over broken glass to vote against the Democrats.” (This was compared to “Yellow Dog Democrat,” but I would point out the yellow dog, at least, was an affirmative vote — “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he was a Democrat.”)

We’ll be seeing more of this. Losing liberates them from having to even pretend to be civilized.

Update: One thing to keep in mind about this: he’s not getting his hate on about politicians. It’s about his fellow citizens. They complain mightily about “Bush hatred,” and there’s been plenty of it. But there’s a difference between hating the leader of a political party and hating your fellow Americans. Take a look at the Amazon listings of political books and you’ll see the difference is stark.

Update II: In case anyone’s wondering:

William Safire’s New Political Dictionary explains the origin of yellow-dog Democrat. When Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support Democrat Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election, Al Smith’s supporters popularized the phrase “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket.” These Southern Democrats were loyal to their party–they wouldn’t vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.

H/T to NickM

Popping Corker

by digby

James Wolcott understands Bob Corker better than he understands himself. (It’s a masterpiece. Read it.)

I’ve always felt that the macho Republican closet was probably a spacious walk-in. After all, this isn’t exactly subtle:

LIDDY: Well, I—in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know—and I’ve worn those because I parachute—and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count—they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

Oooh la la.

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Back To Their Natural State

by digby

Glenn Greenwald did a thorough deconstruction of Peggy Noonan’s noxious latest, but I do want to emphasize the most important point about it. She is signaling (along with a lot of others) that it’s time to purge the Bushmen and, as Glenn says, we shouldn’t let them do it:

There remains a broad, reflexive, and very Republican kind of loyalty to George Bush. He is a war president with troops in the field. You can see his heart. He led us in a very human way through 9/11, from the early missteps to the later surefootedness. He was literally surefooted on the rubble that day he threw his arm around the retired fireman and said the people who did this will hear from all of us soon.

Images like that fix themselves in the heart. They’re why Mr. Bush’s popularity is at 38%. Without them it wouldn’t be so high.

But there’s unease in the base too, again for many reasons. One is that it’s clear now to everyone in the Republican Party that Mr. Bush has changed the modern governing definition of “conservative.”

He did this without asking. He did it even without explaining. He didn’t go to the people whose loyalty and support raised him high and say, “This is what I’m doing, this is why I’m changing things, here’s my thinking, here are the implications.” The cynics around him likely thought this a good thing. To explain is to make things clearer, or at least to try, and they probably didn’t want it clear. They had the best of both worlds, a conservative reputation and a liberal reality.

And Republicans, most of whom are conservative in at least general ways, and who endure the disadvantages of being conservative because they actually believe in ideas, in philosophy, in an understanding of the relation of man and the state, are still somewhat concussed. The conservative tradition on foreign affairs is prudent realism; the conservative position on borders is that they must be governed; the conservative position on high spending is that it is obnoxious and generationally irresponsible. Etc.

This is not how Mr. Bush has governed. And so in the base today personal loyalty, and affection, bumps up against intellectual unease.

“He did it without asking.” Poor Peggy, she was given a political Roofie and taken against her will. I’ve said it before but I’m going to say it again. Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

The Republicans have fielded five presidents since 1968 and only one of them can be considered politically successful. One out of five. The rest have crashed and burned each time on incompetence, corruption or some combination of the two. I think it’s fair to say that neither the modern Republican party or the conservative movement is capable of governance. And there’s a reason for that.

I wrote this a while back:

The movement conservatives are not really very comfortable on the inside. Witness their absurd appeal above. It’s all about the “permanent revolution” for them, even to the extent that they could ridiculously defend Tom DeLay as innocent, upright and under seige from powerful liberal factions less than a year ago. They seem to have realized that it won’t work any longer and it’s time to begin the conservative purification rituals if they want to keep the revolution alive.

This is why I don’t want any of us to think for a moment that winning and losing elections means the same thing to us as it means to them. Democrats believe in government and they want to make it work. Republicans see government purely as a means to exert power. Unfortunately, they are not very good at that because in the modern world sheer, dumb might is no longer possible. The best they can do is loot the treasury and leave the rest of their mess to be cleaned up by the Democrats.

What they really excel at is politics. Governance just hangs them up. And don’t think for a moment that they will be chagrined or ashamed and crawl off into a hole to lick their wounds. Being defeated liberates them to do what they are really good at — destroying the opposition and pushing their agenda with sophisticated, scorched earth political rhetoric. It’s not natural for them to be on the defense and they don’t like it. They are going back to their natural state — victimhood and the aggressive attack.

Get ready. The Democrats will not only have to govern, but they will have to fix all the problems they’ve created while fighting them every step of the way. They’re not going away. And they will pull out every stop to win every election, not because they necessarily want to govern but because that’s how you keep score. For a long, long time they’ve been able to get their way whether they win or lose and they see no reason to doubt that will continue. And unless we put a stop to this they might be right.

That’s why this is important:

LET THE HEARINGS BEGIN!
Subpoena Envy
by Michael Crowley

As the Lord High Executioner said in The Mikado, ‘I have a little list.'” So says John Dingell, the 26-term Michigan House Democrat who spent 14 years as a mighty committee baron before the 1995 Republican Revolution booted him into the powerless minority. At last poised to reclaim his House Energy and Commerce Committee gavel, the 80-year-old Dingell now sounds like a man who can’t wait for 2007. Though he knows a House Democratic majority won’t pass much legislation, especially given George W. Bush’s veto pen, his chairmanship means he can subject the Bush administration to high-profile committee hearings–lots and lots of them.

“Privacy,” he begins. “Social Security-number protection. Outsourcing protection. Unfair trade practices. Currency manipulation. Air quality. We’ll look at the implementation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. We’ll take a look at climate change. We’ll take a look at [the Department of Energy’s] nuclear waste program, where literally billions of dollars are being dissipated. We’ll look at port security and nuclear smuggling, where there’s literally nothing being done. We’ll look at the Superfund program. We’ll take a look at EPA enforcement.” He pauses for a breath–but he’s just getting started: “On health, we’ll take a look at Medicaid and waivers. The Food and Drug Administration. Generic drug approval. Medical safety. We’ll also take a look at food supplements, where people are being killed. We will look at Medicare Part D [prescription drugs].” Is that all? “Telecom. We’ll look at FCC actions. … Media ownership. Adequate spectrum for police, fire, public safety, and addressing the problems of terrorism. … We will look also at the overall question of Katrina recovery efforts.”

As Democrats have gained in the polls, Republicans are predicting that a Democratic majority will mean a frenzy of political witch hunts directed at them by newly installed chairmen like Dingell. “You can expect two years of all-out investigations and attacks and anything they can bring to bear,” Newt Gingrich warned on Fox News last March. Clearly aiming to calm the hysteria, George H.W. Bush recently warned it would be a “ghastly thing” for the United States if “wild Democrats” were put in charge of congressional committees. A Washington Times article fretted that “key administration officials will be so busy preparing for testimony that they will not be able to do their jobs.”

But the curious thing about Dingell’s little list is that it targets policies–not people. While some Democrats may dream of hauling Karl Rove to the Hill to discuss Plamegate or forcing Dan Bartlett to testify about Dick Cheney’s hunting accident, Dingell is one of a number of future Democratic chairs who plan to focus on substance, not sideshows. And, as strange as it sounds, this may not come as a relief to Republicans. The GOP would love nothing more than for Democrats to go off on half-cocked, mean-spirited inquisitions that generate sympathy for the hapless Bushies. Alas, the GOP’s conduct during the Clinton years has provided Democrats with a near-perfect what-not-to-do manual.

If they have the guts to do this, and do it right, if they win the Democrats will have it in their power to end this cycle and shut the door on this era of conservative politics. Otherwise we will remain their cats-paws no matter which party is in the majority.

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Good General

by digby

Jane’s feeling Clarkie today and for good reason. Wes Clark has made a helluva good commercial for Ned Lamont. Jane sez:

Nice to see someone with guts who isn’t intimidated by No Show Joe’s petulant threats against the Democratic party.

As some of you may remember, I was a Clarkie in the last round of primaries and I still like the guy. He’s spent the last two years working tirelessly for candidates all over the country and he is, as Jane points out, not intimidated by ossified GOP enablers or the Democratic establishment.

He also respects actual Democratic voters. I think that one of the reasons the netroots backed Dean and Clark in great numbers during the primaries was that simple fact. They both respected the base of the Democratic party — the people who devote their energy and their money to the party and believe in Democratic principles. That’s a rarity in Democratic establishment politics, as Joe Lieberman has demonstrated for us once again.

Clark’s campaign fizzled and Dean’s went out with a bang, but they were the first glimmer that the base of the Democratic party — the netroots, in particular — had had it with Washington’s game. It’s a lesson that still hasn’t completely sunk in. But it’s beginning to. And we’re not going anywhere.

Good for Clark for being smart enough to see the future and gutsy enough to act on it.

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Confederate Prick

by digby

You’ve got to give George Allen credit for gall. He’s making his pitch that Webb’s a pervert by trying to tie it to Webb’s 1978 (admittedly misogynistic) article about women in the military academies. Allen is using a feminist argument to accuse Webb of being a sex fiend. (His novels are “servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.”) It’s an interesting tactic coming from a man who is well documented as having a proclivity to literally spit on women:

I stepped near the governor and smiled, told him my name and that I wrote for the local newspaper. Then I asked him a softball question, what some reporters call a “set-up.”

“Does Southwest Virginia need these jobs?” I asked.

He stopped and looked straight at me. He had to look down at me, because he stood so tall in those cowboy boots. I thought I spotted a twinkle in his eye, and for a moment, I suspected he might give a humorous, light-hearted answer. Then he leaned forward and looked all the way down at the pavement. I figured he was planning a perfectly crafted answer to my question. I put pen to paper, ready to take it down. His lips puckered as if he might speak.

Then, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia gathered up a glob of tobacco-laced saliva. He used his lips to squirt it out, as if he had practiced. The spit landed just at the tip of my shoe. He grinned, but didn’t say a word. Then he walked into the building.

From the sound of the other stories related at the above link, it isn’t only african americans who piss Allen off, it’s women too.

Allen has refused to release his divorce records and his arrest records. It’s not a stretch to assume that when his best behavior as a potential candidate for president includes bullying and intimidating dark skinned folks and women, his past is filled with some really disgusting episodes.

Like these:

Jennifer Allen, documents many cases of her brother’s bullying in her book Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter. Read the excerpts below.

Explaining why she is scared of heights, Ms. Allen writes that “Ever since my brother George held me over the railing at Niagara Falls, I’ve had a fear of heights.” [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, page 43]

Referring to George’s relationship with one of her boyfriends: “My brother George welcomed him by slamming a pool cue against his head.” [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, page 178]

Referring to George’s early leadership skills, Jennifer wrote: “We all obeyed George. If we didn’t, we knew he would kill us. Once, when Bruce refused to go to bed, George hurled him through a sliding glass door. Another time, when Gregory refused to go to bed, George tackled him and broke his collarbone. Another time, when I refused to go to bed, George dragged me up the stairs by my hair.” [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, page 22]

Referring to George’s early career aspirations, Jennifer wrote “George hoped someday to become a dentist. George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession – getting paid to make people suffer.” [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, page 22]

Referring to George’s habit of terrorizing a Green Bay Packer fan in their neighborhood, Jennifer wrote that the fan’s mailbox often “lay smashed in the street, a casualty of my brothers’ drive-by to school in the morning. George would swerve his Mach II Mustang while Gregory held a baseball bat out the window to clear the mailbox off its post. . . . Lately, the Packers fan had resorted to stapling a Kleenex box to the mailbox post to receive his mail. George’s red Mustang screeched up beside us, the Packers fan’s Kleenex mailbox speared on the antenna.” [Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, page 16]

Humans have a very complex, highly evolved way of interpreting a speaker’s intent, which includes an instinctive understanding of paralinguistics and body language. I think that one of the things that struck most of us on a gut level about the macaca video was the expression on Allen’s face and the tone in his voice. There was look in the eye that most of us can recognise right away as nasty, derisive bullying, no matter how bland his actual words. You can feel it. You know it when you see it. And the documentary evidence bears out what we saw. He’s a nasty prick.

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Attack Of The Killer Morons

by digby

Here is how the kewl kidz look at politics. I was just watching Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and they did a segment on the attack ads we are seeing this cycle. They led off with the Harold Ford Playboy ad and the Michael J. Fox ad in Missouri.

Did you see the Fox ad as an attack ad? Did he disparage Talent’s character or imply that he was a bad person? Was he appealing to peoples baser nature by playing to their prejudices? Or, as the nation’s premiere advocate for Parkinson’s disease, did he just ask people to vote for Claire McCaskill because she supported stem cell research and Talent didn’t — a straighforward, endorsement based upon a single issue. I don’t see any attack in it at all.

I suspect the sad truth is that the kewl kids think it’s hitting below the belt for a disabled person to appear in an advertisement — just as Rush does. They obviously think it’s manipulative and wrong to show the actual results of an illness for which you are advocating. After all, somebody might be having dinner and they don’t want to have to look at that icky sick stuff that makes them feel all guilty and uncomfortable. Therefore, tt’s an attack if someone endorses a particular candidate and he isn’t “normal.”

These DC elites really need to get out more. Sick, disabled, elderly imperfect people are very common out here in the real world. I would imagine it could even happen to some of them too — and when it does I don’t want to hear about their conversions to the cause. If you have to personally experience something before you have compassion for it or understand it you are an immature, shallow person. Which is what they are.

Update: Hah. Here’s an audio remix of real attack ads.

He Said/She Said Woodshed

by digby

A number of commenters have objected to my characterization of Katie Couric’s interview with Michael J. Fox. yesterday. Obviously I need to explain why I think it was wrong.

First of all, this is not actually a “controversy” in any legitimate sense. It was ginned up by Rush and the right wing noise machine to try to discredit a powerful spokesman for this issue, which is a very dangerous one for the Republican party. Now, it may be that the backlash against Rush will prove to have been worse than the fake one he and the press tried to create, but that’s a testament to the basic decency of most people and the class act that is Michael J. Fox.

From the moment that Rush began his tirade (for which he has not apologized, despite the press’s insistence that he has) the issue became whether Fox was faking his symptoms or failing to control them, whether it was right for him to show them at all, whether people should be “playing the gimp card” etc. All this is part and parcel of the right’s ongoing program of character assassination. (Coulter recently took on the 9/11 widows, you’ll recall.) Rush made this explicit earlier this week:

This is a script that they have written for years. Senate Democrats used to parade victims of various diseases or social concerns or poverty up before congressional committees and let them testify, and they were infallible. You couldn’t criticize them. Same thing with the Jersey Girls after the 9-11 — and in the period of time when the 9-11 Commission was meeting publicly. Victims — infallible, whatever they say cannot be challenged. I don’t follow the script anymore.

That’s absurd, of course. The right holds up all kinds of people as being unassailable, particularly (Republican) veterans and religious figures. But that’s not even the point. Nobody says you can’t criticize a “victim’s” point of view or disagree with their take on the issue. Rush could have made a straightforward argument that stem cell research is wrong. But the right wing almost never does this on any issue anymore. Virtually every time, they attack the person’s character.

They do this for a number of reasons. The first is to give their followers some reason to reject a compelling argument like that set forth by Fox. They send this idea into the ether that Fox is faking it and create a controversy that suddenly makes what seems to be self-evident — Michael J. Fox is suffering horribly from a dread disease that might be cured with stem cell research — into a matter of interpretation. It furthers their meme that Democrats are phonies and flip-floppers who don’t stand for anything. It helps their base come to terms with their own internal contradictions. They have turned spin into a worldview.

But they also want to advance the idea that the message always depends upon who is delivering it and you can accept or reject it purely on the basis of tribal identification. (“Don’t think, meat.”) And to do that they’ve introduced a form of congitive relativism in which there is no such thing as reality. The press’s lazy “he said/she said” form of journalism reinforces it.

We’ve seen quite a bit of this in the campaign. In this case they are trying to make people feel ok about selling sick people down the river with the religious right’s irrational devotion to saving embryos and the braindead at the expense of everyone else. In another, just a couple of weeks ago we saw James Dobson of Focus On The Family and many Republican politicians make a case that the Mark Foley scandal was a political dirty trick or that the pages had set him up.

Katie Couric becomes part of the problem when she validates these ginned up controversies or gives credence to accusations for which there is no evidence. She knows very well that nobody can really doubt Fox’s sincerity. He’s raised tens of millions of dollars for the cause and it’s evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that he’s got this horrible disease. He should not have to prove that he’s not faking his symptoms and it’s unconscionable that the media is allowing the issue to be framed that way.

If it was necessary to refute Limbaugh’s ridiculous claims, she should have had a leading expert in Parkinson’s come on to discuss the symptoms and then interview Fox about the issue itself. Instead she presented it like a “he said/she said” by interrogating Michael J. Fox about whether it was proper for him to go ahead with the shoot when it appeared that he was going to look like a Parkinson’s sufferer on camera. In doing so she validated the accusation that he might have been faking it when the only “evidence” was Limbaugh’s noxious ravings.

Yes, Fox was articulate and well able to defend himself because he has been in the public eye nearly his entire life, he’s a professional and he has guts. And every time he appears he probably helps the cause of stem cell research because of that. But that doesn’t change the fact that this method of dealing with phony right wing noise machine controversies leads to all those who oppose Rush Limbaugh’s version of reality being constantly on the defensive over nothing. The press knows it, just as they know without doubt that Michael J. Fox is a sincere and legitimate spokesman for stem cell research who isn’t faking a bloody thing. They persist because it’s an easy way to pretend they are not biased. But it is biased in itself and it’s a major reason why the rightwing has been so successful.

Even after that interview, the CBS web-site is running a poll today that asks:

Was Michael J. Fox exaggerating his Parkinson’s disease symptoms for political effect?

Here’s an email from a reader on this subject:

I cannot explain to you how seething mad I am over the remarks made by
Limbaugh and his friends in the conservative shithole universe. I
thought I reached the boiling point when I was able to view the
Limbaugh video of that fatass druggie mocking, MOCKING Fox’s symptoms.
Then, I thought I would lose it when Lauer said “Didn’t Limbaugh just
say what everyone was really thinking?”. All wrong, the final nail
was the Couric interview and the portion you wrote about. What the
hell is the matter with people in this country when they’re
questioning the authenticity of a person with a horrible, progressive
disease?

As a 23yo male who’s been battling against a progressive
disease(Cystic Fibrosis) all his life and will continue to do so until
a cure is found, the original Michael J. Fox ad was both moving and
forceful. I’ve been singing the hopeful benefits of stem cells for
years now and have even managed to sway a few decent republicans my
way; indeed, my political transformation was mostly spearheaded by the
stem cell issue in 2001 and subsequent utter failures by
the.worst.president.ever.

People with progressive diseases already wear different masks for
different occasions, but when it comes to treatments for our diseases,
we’re supposed to put on a happy face and say, “hey, maybe one day if
congress comes around something fruitful will happen!!”? Not in my
lifetime. It’s bad enough I feel as if I have to compose myself as a
somewhat healthy person during school, social events or else face
stares and neverending questions, but when people like Fox are
attacked in a very public way for “coming out of the closet” so to
speak, then I seriously start to question and worry for this country.
Like you said, should we just stay in our rooms and hope one day those
without disease will champion our causes?

It’s like war; who do you want leading the fight? Some general with
battlefield experience or the ivy educated whizkid? I think the
current events answer that one.

I’m mad. I’m pissed. I literally want to throw something at the TV
every time I see some offthewall commentator proffer up his/her
worthless opinion on what Fox should and shouldn’t be doing and how
it’s so “political.” You’re left with one option against a
progressive disease — to stay alive using every option, treatment
possible. And in this current “war,” the patients with diseases such
as Fox’s and mine are stepping onto the field not only without any
armor, but without a gun too.

How sad America has become when science is simply a tool to bludgeon
the head of those who advocate its welcome benefits.

-Stephen

That’s what Rush and the cynical political creeps he represents don’t want people to hear. They know they are on the wrong side of this issue.

If you want to see the full depth of Limbaugh’s depravity and media complicity on this, Media Matters has documented the whole thing.

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