Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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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Fork It Over

by digby

I don’t do candidate fundraising here because I assume that you all read the big blogs that do it and get involved through their Act Blue pages. But for the rarest among you who only read this blog today, I urge you to go to some of the major blogs like Eschaton, Kos, FDL, MYDD, C&L and others who are all asking for donations today for the final push to election day. If you haven’t done it yet, now’s the time.

For those who’ve already done so or are looking for other ways to contribute there are many needs. The little button from the DNC over there in the left column gives you something to do every day until the election. You can volunteer for your local congressional campaign and do phone banking or canvassing. Here’s a very handy web-site called “Do More Than Vote” that makes it easy to figure out where and how.

This is it, kids, for all the marbles. It’s time to change the world.

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Queen O The Harpies

by digby

They’re so desperate they’ve dragged Lynn Cheney out of her hive to go on CNN and screech “you are not a good man” to Wolf Blitzer, or something to that effect. She’ll be swooping in in a few minutes. Tune in, if you have the stomach.

The promo I just saw had Wolf pointing out that innocent people have been captured and imprisoned and “aggressively interrogated” and then set free. Her reply? “How do you know they’re innocent?” Wolf rather confusedly said, “well — they’re walking around free…” and she went on to say that one of then alleged innocents had had a bookstore in London that sold radical Islamic texts. So apparently, selling certain books now can get you kidnapped, waterboarded and imprisoned without trial until they’re done with you. Good to know.

Wolf just asked Jack Cafferty what he thinks of her criticisms of the CNN show he’s been involved with “Broken Government” (which she describes as Democratic talking points) and Cafferty said “Who cares?”

She’ll be on in full harpy costume (you won’t believe the bizarre outfit she’s wearing — it looks like one of those “tapestries” you see in Parade magazine every Sunday) in a few minutes.

Update: She’s spitting mad. She doesn’t like Blitzer reading from a DNC press release that says her novel “Sisters” was racy just like Jim Webb’s (which she describes as “triple X”.)

I sure wish he’d have brought up her husbands right hand man, Scooter Libby’s, book:

He said that boys from the village took the merchant’s daughter places, and word spread that she had many lovers. There were odd tales of her sexual prowess, and they said she had coupled with dogs and men and several of the boys at once. Then to their village came a young samurai, who spotted the girl as all did, and she folded him into her. She took other lovers in the village, which enraged him, but he would not be done with her . . .

The young samurai’s mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white . . .

“They taught her how to draw pubic hair on her mound,” Ueda laughed, “because she was still too young to have any of her own.” A fat woman on the far side of the fire laughed out until tears streamed down her face and her sides rocked. She reached into her clothes while she was laughing and pulled sharply and made a little cry and her mouth opened and then, laughing harder, she pulled her hand out with pubic hairs stuck between her swollen fingers and flung them at the men around the fire. “No ink here,” she gasped, laughing, “No ink, no ink” and the laughing men beside her made grasping motions above the fire as if to catch the pubic hair she had thrown. Some clung unnoticed in her moist palm.

Lynn herself wrote this nauseating passage:

The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.

I don’t say it’s nauseating because of the content — it’s nauseating because of the writing. Dear God.

This whole argument is absurd, of course. George Allen is passing around explicit passages from Webb’s book like a 12 year old boy at summer camp. This is not a real issue. It’s completely stupid. John McCain, for god’s sake, gave the books glowing reviews as did a whole bunch of others. This is a meaningless controversy that is only getting oxygen because the dipshit kewl kidz are all reading them and it makes them feel funny down there.

(Donna Brazile just gave a typically lame response by saying that she hasn’t read the books and has no plans to. Bullshit. She should have said, “I’m going out to get them right now. John McCain and Tom Clancy both recommend them as gripping depictions of the wartime experience.”)

Jim Webb is an adult and he writes for adults. Most of us have had sex and aren’t shocked by literary depictions of it in fiction. Scooter’s book may be terrific, I don’t know, it’s not my thing. My problem with him isn’t that he wrote those passages, it’s that he works for a party filled with racist morons like George Allen who pretend that they have a problem with it. All this santimonious sexual hypocrisy is too much to take from the party that couldn’t care less about their own representatives trying to seduce teen-aged boys three at a time.

Update II: You really have to see this interview. She’s a piece of work. She’s acting all indignant about answering these questions as if she was really invited on “The Situation Room” today to talk about her children’s book and Wolf is sandbagging her. The Queen of the Harpies is something else.

Update III: Amato has the whole thing up at Crooks and Liars w/ transcript.

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Let’s Remember

by tristero

On the extremely remote chance that Diebold’s voting machines will fail to overcount Republican votes in some future election and a non-Republican gets sworn in as president, someone should be archiving all the times the network has refused to run ads for documentaries, features, and other media critical of Republicans, like this one.

Call me cynical, but I suspect that if the Republicans are out of office, they still won’t have any problem getting their propaganda publicized like mad on all the major networds, no matter how vicious, how false, or how un-American.

What to do in the here and now? Well, I’d boycott NBC except for one thing. I can’t remember the last time I watched anything on NBC. The closest was a few Olbermann web clips that didn’t have any commercials, so I guess I’ve just been given one more very good reason to ignore NBC’s programming.

Oh, and now I know what my Holiday* presents will be. Chicks albums as well as Michael Berube’s great book.

*That’s right O’Reilly. Holiday presents.

The Man Who Sold The World

by digby

So Bush met yet again with some friendly rightwing journalists and impressed them mightily with his intensity and manliness. As usual.

According to Greg Mitchell at E&P he told his sycophants that:

Gen. John Abizaid (“one of the really great thinkers”) was the one who “came up with” the recent construct about the enemy in Iraq, “If we leave, they will follow us here.” Bush then explains that this is what makes the Iraq struggle “really different from other wars we’ve been in.”

More “the oceans don’t protect us anymore” and “this is the biggest threat the world has ever known” crapola. I don’t know what in the hell he thinks he knows but it bears no relationship to reality. The US was seriously concerned with an invasion during WWII and had reason to be:

In Autumn of 1940, the attack on the US was fixed for the long-term future. This appears in Luftwaffe documents, one of which dated October 29, 1940 mentions the “extraordinary interest of Mein Führer in the occupation of the Atlantic Islands. In line with this interest…with the cooperation of Spain is the seizure of Gibraltar and Spanish and Portuguese islands, along other operations in the North Atlantic.”

In July 1941, the Führer ordered that planning an attack against the United States be continued. Five months later, on December 11, 1941 Germany declared war on the United States.

[…]

(Fall Felix) and Operation Sealion, planned the occupation of Ireland and Operation Ikarus, would have provided some support bases for installing the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine infantry seaborne or Luftwaffe Airborne forces for the invasion.

These units, with proper support from the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, were to capture coastal areas in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

On the other hand, the invasion could have come from airborne landings on the Atlantic coast of Canada in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, with the army then continuing into U.S territory. The Saint Lawrence River was also considered to be a major possible entry point into North America. Another option involved launching seaborne rockets, long range missiles or aerial bombardments, against U.S. territory. The Germans were also considering the development and use of an atomic bomb against the United States.

Air strikes with heavy long range bombers would have not only put the coastal targets of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York within range, but also targets in Ohio and even Indiana.

[…]

For Japanese Naval strategists, an invasion of American, Mexican, and Central American Pacific coasts would have required naval bases in the Aleutian and Hawaiian islands, as well as the Mexican Revillagigedo and French Clipperton islands.

From the Aleutians, Japanese forces would have landed in Alaska and Canada, from Hawaii naval or airborne landings in Washington state, Oregon, and California were considered. From these bases, long-range heavy land-based bombers or flying boat attacks on U.S. territory could be launched. The High Command staff considered bombing San Francisco, Panama, Los Angeles, the Texas oilfields, in coordination with German naval strikes against Boston, Washington D.C. or New York. The use of biological and chemical weapons was also considered.

Or how about this little threat. Bush once said:

“The first lesson is, is that oceans can no longer protect us. You know, when I was coming up in the ’50s in Midland, Texas, it seemed like we were pretty safe. In the ’60s it seemed like we were safe.”

Apparently the moron never heard of this:

(Duck and Cover)

The Soviet Union had thousands of ICBM’s pointed at us and we had many more pointed at them. We lived under a doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. I honestly don’t know where this bozo got the idea that our oceans protected us or that fighting someone “over there” keeps them from getting “over here,” but we haven’t been “safe” in those terms since — well, ever. It’s utter pablum and I can’t believe that even Rush and his mouthbreathers believe it. (That General Abazaid coined the silly phrase explains a lot about why everything is so screwed up in Iraq.)

We desperately need some leadership that at least knows the world they grew up in and live in today. But at the very least we need leadership who didn’t watch a bunch of bad cowboy and war movies on TV when they were kids and think they learned history. This is the second Republican president in the last 25 years who has routinely confused Hollywood product with reality and it’s got to stop.

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Melting Snowflakes

by digby

If Rush Limbaugh and his pals in the media still think that Michael J. Fox is acting, they should check out this video clip from ABC News from last July. The guy is so clearly trying to do something good here. It just kills me that these heartless bastards are attacking him and saying that it’s exploitive for him to be an activist for a disease that’s killing him.

Actors are vain people. It cannot be easy for him to expose himself in public knowing that when the public sees him in this condition they are uncomfortable and pitying. He is rich enough to live out his days in in comfortable privacy, getting the best of care and giving money for the cause. But he’s put together a very serious and productive foundation that has funded 70 million dollars in Parkinson’s research and he works constantly on the issue.

This transcends politics and it’s beyond petty partisanship. (After all, Fox did a very similar commercial for Arlen Specter in 2004.) Stem cell research has the support of the vast majority of this country of all political persuasions but it’s being held hostage by the same minority group of religious extremists who staged that sideshow over terry Schiavo. There you had a woman with no brain and no hope who the extremists were willing to go to the ends of the earth to “save.” Here we have a 45 year old man who is fully funtional intellectually but whose body is beginning to fail him because of a terrible disease and they are rudely dismissing him as a fake and saying that his life is no more important than a smear in a petrie dish.

And you will recall that their favorite president Bush used his veto pen for the first and only time just this past July to veto stem cell research:

President Bush issued the first veto of his five-year-old administration yesterday, rejecting Congress’s bid to lift funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and underscoring his party’s split on an emotional issue in this fall’s elections.

At a White House ceremony where he was joined by children produced from what he called “adopted” frozen embryos, Bush said taxpayers should not support research on surplus embryos at fertility clinics, even if they offer possible medical breakthroughs and are slated for disposal.

The vetoed bill “would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others,” the president said, as babies cooed and cried behind him. “It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.” Each child on the stage, he said, “began his or her life as a frozen embryo that was created for in vitro fertilization but remained unused after the fertility treatments were complete. . . . These boys and girls are not spare parts.”

That’s so true. Here’s an example of how this works in practice for these good Christian believers in the absolute sanctity of life:

The Vests were unable to conceive, and Cara’s husband Gregg was diagnosed with a sperm disorder. Then Cara was told she had the “ovaries of a 40-year-old.” They considered using a donated egg or adopting a child, until she heard about an embryo-adoption agency while listening to “Focus on the Family,” a Christian radio show. She called the agency, Snowflakes, and two years later she and Gregg had adopted 23 embryos.

The Vests believe that life begins at conception, so adopting 23 embryos meant becoming the parents of 23 children. Never mind only two-thirds would survive the thawing, and even fewer would develop into babies. The Vests thought at least these embryos would all have a chance at life instead of being disposed of or used in stem-cell research.

By the logic of George Bush and the religious extremists, that couple who chose to “adopt” 23 embryos in the hopes of becoming pregnant are guilty of pre-meditated murder because they know that they are not going to give birth to 23 children. It is nonsensical moral reasoning and we simply cannot let people like this stand in the way of potentially curing these diseases. It’s time to draw the line.

Fox was on CBS tonight and said:

The irony is that I was too medicated. I was dyskinesic,” Fox told Couric. “Because the thing about … being symptomatic is that it’s not comfortable. No one wants to be symptomatic; it’s like being hit with a hammer.”

His body visibly wracked by tremors, Fox appears in a political ad touting Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill’s stance in favor of embryonic stem cell research. That prompted Limbaugh to speculate that Fox was “either off his medication or acting.”

Fox told Couric, “At this point now, if I didn’t take medication I wouldn’t be able to speak.”

He said he appeared in the ad only to advance his cause, and that “disease is a non-partisan problem that requires a bipartisan solution.”

“I don’t really care about politics,” Fox added. “We want to appeal to voters to elect the people that are going to give us a margin, so we can’t be vetoed again.”

The portion of the interview they broadcast was quite decent. But you can see the whole interview here — and listen to Katie Couric push him over and over again on the burning question of whether he manipulated his medication and ask him whether he should have re-scheduled the shoot when his symptoms were manifested as they were. And she does it while she’s sitting directly across from him watching him shake like crazy. Her questions imply that it was in poor taste or manipulative as if he can magically conjure a film crew to catch him in on of the fleeting moments where he doesn’t appear too symptomatic. The press seems to truly believe that it is reasonable to be suspicious of him showing symptoms of a disease that has him so severely in its clutches that if he doesn’t take his medication his face becomes a frozen mask and he cannot even talk.

I know I’m harping on this subject, but it isn’t just because I’m emotionally engaged and angry, although I am. I think it’s one of those important “real-life” issues that might wake a few more people up and get them to the polls.

-A new national study revealed that American voters’ support for stem cell research increased after they viewed an ad featuring Michael J. Fox in which he expresses his support for candidates who are in favor of stem cell research.

The study was conducted among 955 Americans by HCD Research and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion (MCIPO) during October 24-25, to obtain Americans’ views on the stem cell research before and after they watched the ad.

The participants included self-reported Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They were asked to view the ad and respond to pre-and post-viewing questions regarding their opinions and emotions concerning the ad.

Among the study findings:

* Among all respondents, support for stem cell research increased from 78% prior to viewing the ad, to 83% after viewing the ad. Support among Democrats increased from 89% to 93%, support among Republicans increased from 66% to 68% and support among Independents increased from 80% to 87% after viewing the ad.
* The level of concern regarding a candidate’s view on stem cell research increased among all respondents from 57% prior to viewing the ad to 70% after viewing the ad. Among Democrats, the level of concern increased from 66% to 83% and Republicans’ level of concern increased from 50% to 60%. Independents’ level of concern increased from 58% to 69%.
* The perception that the November election is relevant to the U.S. policy on stem cell research increased across all voter segments, with an increase of 9% among all respondents pre- and post-viewing from 62% to 71%. The Democrats’ perception increased from 75% to 83%, Republicans’ perception increased from 55% to 62% and Independents’ perception increased from 60% to 68% pre- and post-viewing.
* The advertisement elicited similar emotional responses from all responders with all voter segments indicating that they were “not bored and attentive” followed by “sorrowful, thankful, afraid and regretful.”
* The vast majority of responders indicated that the advertisement was believable with 76% of all responders reporting that it was “extremely believable” or “believable.” Among party affiliation, 93% of Democrats 57% of Republicans and 78% of Independents indicated it “extremely believable” or “believable.”

Respondents were asked to indicate what candidate they would vote for in the U.S. House of Representatives election if it was held today before and after viewing the ad.

# Republicans who indicated that they were voting for a Republican candidate decreased by 10% after viewing the ad (77% to 67%). Independents planning to vote for Democrats increased by 10%, from 39% to 49%.

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Good Morning, Creep

by digby

This Michael J. Fox controversy is making me more angry than I can remember being in a long time. There is something wrong with people who think like this:

LAUER: And you brought up Michael J. Fox. Let me just ask you: You know, Rush Limbaugh started a lot of controversy when he said perhaps Michael J. Fox was exaggerating or faking these effects of Parkinson’s disease in that ad promoting stem cell research. Didn’t Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking?

[…]

LAUER: But also, Susan, last word. If Michael Fox goes out there politically and puts himself in the fray, he has to expect to be, you know, taken to account, correct?

ESTRICH: Correct. And he is being taken to account.

If Michael J. Fox could still act he would be making millions of dollars acting in paying TV commercials, films or sitcoms. He’s only 45 years old for God’s sake and he still has young kids. He is suffering from a horrifying disease and he deserves for people to respect his sincerity if nothing else. He does actually have Parkinson’s, after all, and I’m sure he really does believe that stem cell research provides a hope for a cure — unless they think he’s lying about that too.

I was never an avid fan of The Today Show but I never knew that Matt Lauer shared the same privileged, cynical sophomoric worldview as the talk show pig, Rush Limbaugh. Now I know. I won’t be bothering with him anymore.

* And Susan Estrich is typically obtuse for agreeing that Fox should be “called to account.” What exactly does he have to account for? Being struck by a debilitating disease and campaigning for a cure?

Jesus this political establishment is a bunch of heartless, useless creeps. No wonder most poeple in this country are turned off to politics.

Update: In an amazing exchange of posts between Jonah Goldberg and Kathryn Lopez (ayeee, my head)on the Corner Jonah approvingly posted this e-mail from a reader commenting on the opposing Missouri stem-cell ads:

So let me get this straight: It’s an outrage when Michael J. Fox, an actual Parkinson’s sufferer, films a political ad supporting a measure allowing stem cell research, but the fact that stem cell research opponents used a fake Jesus speaking in Jesus’ language, gets no comment? Which side is being basely manipulative?

Good question. That Cavaziel ad is just weird. But you have to see this from K-Lo to really appreciate the tenor of the discussion:

The Absolute Last Word on Jesus vs. Alex P. Keaton [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A reader points out the real genius in Jim Caveziel appearing in that ad: “the point is Jim Caviezel is HOT! is that blasphemous?”

(Though truth be told, MJ Fox isn’t bad himself. So the two commercials are apples vs. apples, at least on one front. How you like them apples?)

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The Crucible

by digby

The stakes in the Connecticut race seem to be getting higher among the chattering classes than among the grassroots. For the second time this week, I’m seeing one of the courtiers — in this case the Dean — saying that the race is the referendum on the Iraq war:

The outcome of their fight is important nationally for the meaning that will be attached. While other states such as Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and Virginia will decide whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate, this Connecticut race constitutes perhaps the nation’s clearest test on the Iraq war.

Lieberman insists he is not wholly in the Bush camp but still argues that a victory in Iraq is possible and essential for American security — whatever that may mean. “I’m not ready to give up on the Muslim world,” he said, adding that a democratic Iraq could serve as a model for the Middle East. His winning and returning to the Senate and its Democratic caucus would slow, if not reverse, growing pressure from the Democrats for an early pullout of U.S. forces.

On the other hand, should Lamont repeat his primary win over Lieberman and capture the seat, it would add immeasurably to the momentum of the antiwar forces. He says that he is running in order to end the nightmare of “140,000 of our brave troops stuck in the middle of a bloody civil war.”

Wow. now that’s putting it in stark terms, isn’t it?

Here was court jester Chris Matthews on Tuesday talking about the Connecticut race:

I just don’t want to hear from those people later about how terrible the war is because the one thing about these elections is that in every national poll the number one issue is Iraq and the issue is going to turn on that election because we are already seeing develop a new policy refinement based upon these new political circumstances right now.

Washington has apparently decided that the Iraq war debate hangs on the Lamont-Lieberman race.

Perhaps this last week is a good time to tell all those Washington and Connecticut Democrats who care about this issue that this is how this race is shaping up. All eyes are upon them. The lives of thousands of people may depend on it.

Joe Lieberman is an unreconstructed hawk who, even in the presence of fellow willing bipartisan lap dancer Bob Kerrey, cannot admit that the war has made the threat of terrorism worse:

As Senator Joseph I. Lieberman stood beside Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator, to accept his endorsement on Wednesday, the two seemed to differ about whether the war in Iraq had made the United States safer.

Like Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Kerrey supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein early on and said that the region was safer without him in power. But he added: “Do I think invading Iraq helped the war on terror? No, I do not. I think it reduced the threat in the region, which was serious.”

His comments put Mr. Lieberman in an awkward position. Mr. Lieberman declined to say whether he believed that the war in Iraq had helped the war on terror.

Initially, Mr. Lieberman cited Mr. Kerrey’s comments about Saddam Hussein, saying that overthrowing him had helped make the Middle East safer, but he conceded that terrorists had “poured into Iraq now.”

Then, pressed by reporters, Mr. Lieberman answered, “It’s a more complicated question than that, and it doesn’t have a yes-or-no answer.”

If the cognoscenti believe that the Connecticut race is a crucible on Iraq, then we’d damn well better work our asses off to make sure that Lamont pulls this thing off. We may win the election but lose the Iraq war debate — at least in the short term — and that would be a terrible thing. The courtiers are looking for a way to discredit the anti-war sentiment in this country and this looks to be the vehicle they are going to use to prove that when the chips are down “America” really doesn’t care that much about the war in Iraq. (Look for them to find out that something like “gas prices” or “moral values” were the top issues in the campaign.)

This race is about more than Holy Joe Lieberman. The Kewl Kidz and the courtiers want to make it the national referendum on the Iraq war.

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Limbaugh

by tristero

When he arrived in the White House for a sleepover many years ago, George Bush the Elder carried Limbaugh’s bags to his room. This man, who uses Republican presidents as porters, is the very same malicious yet pathetic creature we see here, shaking in what he thinks is a parody of a Parkinson’s sufferer off his medication, but isn’t. Unbeknownst to Limbaugh, involuntary shakes are a side-effect of taking the medication.

Limbaugh, you recall, once coined the odious term “feminazis.” To most of us, Limbaugh’s outrageous attack on Fox is all of a piece. But at least to some of those who thought “feminazis” was a clever, funny, and precise piece of sadistic mockery, Limbaugh’s latest inadvertently off-base display of his total ignorance may come as something of a shock, revealing how seriously his drug addiction has affected his enormous capacity to spew invective.

If you watch the segment, be sure to check out Sam Seder’s comments, that Limbaugh’s real job is to insulate his listeners from reality. He’s absolutely right. The only real issue is funding for stem cell research, which the Republican party – consistent with its mistrust of all things scientific, be they biological, physical, ecological, or statistical – opposes. But suddenly the airwaves are all atwitter with chirpy parrots concerned with whether Michael J. Fox was acting. As if that matters one whit.

What matters is that the United States under Republican rule is deliberately undermining its commitment to world-class scientific inquiry. But gee, science is hard.* Let’s speculate on whether Fox hyped his symptoms or not.

My god, what a waste of time given the seriousness of the real issue. But unfortunately, it’s important. As long as malignant fat like Limbaugh clogs the arteries of discourse (sorry, after two cups of strong java, I couldn’t resist), we have to confront it and resist. Meanwhile, the real subject – the real issues in stem cell research, its potential and limitations – are not being addressed by a public that needs to be, and deserves to be, informed. Ditto evolution, global warming, racism, poverty, war, nuclear proliferation – you name it. Perhaps, in living memory, there never were halcyon years for cultural discourse in the US, even when Murrow strode the earth. But I do seem to recall that once upon a time there was at least some concerted effort by the media to focus on real news instead of obsessing on the worthless, grotesque bloviations of lying, unscrupulous, ignorant pricks like Limbaugh.*

Jane Hamsher has some excellent comments on this weird story.

*Actually, science isn’t that hard, even the fuzzy math. Because as difficult as it may be, say, to wrap one’s mind around the details of stem cell biology, it can be comprehended, if you’re willing to spend the time to do so. What’s really hard is trying to grasp creationism or astrology, because there literally is nothing there that is capable of actual meaning. Nor are there legitimate ways of finding meaning in pseudo-science. To understand that crap – now, I’ve always found it well-nigh impossible.

* Special note to any lying, unscrupulous, ignorant pricks who may have chanced upon this blog post: I apologize in advance for lumping you in with Rush Limbaugh.

We’re All For It!

by digby

The Republicans are taking a new tack on stem cells. In response to the Michael J. Fox “backlash” Ken Mehlman just said on CNN that Jim Talent supports stem cell research but he just doesn’t think the government should pay for it. He pointed out that nobody says that the private sector shouldn’t pursue stem cell research. What’s the problem? (It’s a lie, of course. Talent’s position is actually much more complicated than that and just as ridiculous.)

This argument worked back in the day with the Hyde Amendment banning public money for abortion because some people object to the expenditure on moral grounds. Maybe it will work again. But I don’t think stem cell research has ever had the kind of visceral punch that abortion has and the benefits to everyone are far more obvious. (After all, it’s only dizzy women of child-bearing years who might tempt some man into getting her pregnant. Men can get Parkinson’s disease.)

Mostly, though, it undercuts the moral argument the Republicans have been making about their (phony) “culture of life.” Back in the 70’s, when the Hyde Amendment was passed, Republicans could get away with making practical arguments like “people shouldn’t have to pay for things that morally offend them.” But this isn’t the “me decade” anymore. The Republicans are no longer supposed to be just the defenders of traditional values — they are supposed to be true believers. I don’t see how the religious right could support such a “split-the-difference” strategy.

On the other hand, the religious right has recently been remarkably supportive of the party covering up for closeted GOP congressmen seducing teen agers, so it’s hard to see where they might draw the line.

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