Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The PoMo President

by digby

Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington’s legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.

Here’s how he put it a couple of years ago:

“After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, ‘Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,’” says Woodward.

“And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

It would, of course, be preferable for him to avoid facing a Democratic congress but even then, he probably assumes he can hold them off long enough for him to leave office — at which point the debate will be about “ending the partisanship” and that will be that. The thing that moves most powerful leaders as they see the end of their reign, their place in history, is irrelevant to this man.

His mind is so immature, and he is so extremely irresponsible, that he truly doesn’t seem to understand the ramifications of his actions. His words indicate that he sees “history” as the ultimate get out of jail free card. (“I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma.”) Perhaps he truly does believe that he’s God’s instrument who has no real will of his own and therefore no culpability — or maybe he’s just a nihilist at heart. Whatever his reasons, he seems to have adopted a shallow PoMo-style philosophy that everything is debatable down through time so it doesn’t matter what he does. Missing the point as usual, he hears the old Keynes phrase, “in the long run we’ll all be dead” and finds solace in it.

Maybe Lynn Cheney should have a chat with him about this. After all, she wrote a book on the subject:

TWQ: Tell us about what you call the attack on truth in our schools and colleges?

CHENEY: That was really the underlying topic of my last book, Telling the Truth. It’s postmodernism, the notion that there is no such thing as truth. There’s only your version of events and my version and Charles’ version and Harry’s version, and the one that prevails will be that of whoever is the most powerful. This seems to fly in the face of the way scholarship has proceeded for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Uh huh.

“How can a democracy hope to choose its leaders wisely,” Lynne Cheney asked in her 1996 book [Telling The Truth], “if time and again what their campaigns offer us are artful fictions?”

The simplest way to understand Republicans is to use the quick rule of thumb that whatever they criticize Democrats for is what they are doing. Lynn Cheney and other rightwing “intellectuals” created an entire industry devoted to attacking Democrats for moral and epistemic relativism. It became an article of faith that liberals had no values and believed in nothing — an image that sticks to us like flypaper, even today. Yet nobody has practiced relativism more successfully than the modern Republican party. The Republican President of the United States believes that truth is fungible and history is debated like a highway bill on the floor of the senate — so it doesn’t really matter what he does. It’s a clever way to rationalize ignorance, incompetence and failure but it’s an extremely dangerous way for the most powerful nation on earth to conduct itself.

.

The October Surprise

by tristero

Well! Rove certainly had me fooled, that’s for sure. I had no idea that the secret weapon Republicans were planning to deploy against Democrats was one made in North Korea. But there it is.

Get it? A nuclear North Korea requires an American party in power that is completely serious about national and international security. And up until around the start of the Foley scandal,* most Americans thought that was the Republican party.

Surprise, Karl. Ain’t gonna work this time. [UPDATE: Am I suggesting that US intelligence had advance warning from, say, this summer, that a NoKo nuke test was imminent? Yes, I think that is more than plausible and that the Republicans were counting on the alarm that would create in the US to accrue to their benefit. Can I prove it and would I be willing to admit I was wrong if it turned out that the nuke test took the US by surprise? No. Yes.]

Josh Marshall has a pretty good take on how hard it will be, post Foley, for most Americans to escape the obvious conclusion that NoKo was a monumental Republican/Bush fuckup :

Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But [Bush] wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.

So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.

Indeed, from the moment of the initial cave, the White House began acting as though North Korea was already a nuclear power (something that was then not at all clear) to obscure the fact that the White House had chosen to twiddle its thumbs and look the other way as North Korea became a nuclear power. Like in Bush in Iraq and Hastert and Foley, the problem was left to smolder in cover-up and denial. Until now.

Hawks and Bush sycophants will claim that North Korea is an outlaw regime. And no one should romanticize or ignore the fact that it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world with a history of belligerence, terrorist bombing, missile proliferation and a lot else. They’ll also claim that the North Koreans were breaking the spirit if not the letter of the 1994 agreement by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program. And that’s probably true too.

But facts are stubborn things.

The bomb-grade plutonium that was on ice from 1994 to 2002 is now actual bombs. Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Basically, I think Josh has it exactly right here. But I can’t help thinking – and this is not snark, ladies, gentlemen and Republicans, this is serious – that Marshall’s being overly optimistic. Let’s read that last bit again:

Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Not for the Bush administration.

Oh, I know Josh is talking about “any policy towards Korea’s nuke ambitions” but it doesn’t matter. Wherever you turn with Bush, it is always difficult to imagine a worse result from any of their policies. But they always seem to surprise us and manage ever more catastrophic outcomes.

Could anyone imagine that the Bush administration policy towards natural disaster would be so inept they would fail to respond with even minimal effectiveness to Katrina? Or that a US president would be so focused on bogus threats he’d receive a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US” and not put the entire country on high alert? Could anyone imagine a worse solution for the millions of patients that would benefit from stem-cell-based treatments than for the United States to cripple research with a policy that bans federal funds for new stem cell lines? Or a worse politics for an American democracy than pandering to the most ignorant constituency in the country – the true believers in the Dobsons, the Falwells, and the Robertsons? A constituency so fucking dumb that when their preachers tell them the most dangerous issue facing the country is two guys who love each other, they actually believe it, then propose and pass laws that advocate bigotry and hate? Could anyone possibly imagine an ideology so idiotic that it actually takes seriously the likes of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Ahmad Chalabi, Paul Bremer, or Richard Cheney?

It is a simple fact that the most creative people in the world are the incompetent. They find unique ways of making life hell which are far, far beyond anything the rest of us can imagine. And so, the kind of fiascos that Joshua Micah Marshall – and you, and I – find difficult ever to imagine are a piece of cake for George W. Bush to create.

If Josh really thinks this spectacular screwup on North Korea is the worst result imaginable from a Bush policy towards NoKo (or anything else), I’d like to remind him that Bush has 833 days left to generate far worse ones.** And I for one am certain that Bush and Co. can, and will.

* It truly is remarkable how often American politics is mediated by things like sex scandals which are far from central to the actual concerns of the time. If there hasn’t yet been one, there’s a doctoral thesis or two to be written on the subject.

**According to my Bush Countdown Keychain, a birthday gift from my daughter.

Bring It On, Carlson

by tristero

If Tucker Carlson has any information about any other congresspeople messing around with pages, it is his legal obligation to report it immediately to the appropriate authorities.

But until he does and action is taken, I call bullshit. I say Carlson’s merely trying to distract and confuse the American people.

Why? Because he’s a cheap Republican operative with a megaphone who obeys his overlords and puts their desire for power of all kinds -including sexual domination – far above the safety of American children, not to mention the duty of a free press to keep its citizens properly informed.

This is AN EXCLUSIVELY REPUBLICAN SCANDAL involving pedophilia, gay sex, cybersex, lying, spinning sexual harassment and statutory rape to make it seem unimportant , and illegal cover-ups at the highest levels of the government. (Let’s not forget what position Hastert holds: he is two heartbeats away from the presidency. )

Rather than spreading utterly baseless rumors, Carlson should be denouncing – unequivocally – the morality of a leadership that would try to minimize the seriousness of Foley’s behavior or place the blame on everyone but themselves. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that declares the unspeakable suffering in Iraq a comma of history. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that led to the failures of Katrina and the denial of responsibility. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that led to the nelgect that enabled a group of lunatics to crash planes into the Pentagon, into the World Trade Center, and into a Pennsylvania field. And the denial of responsibility.

.

Time Mag

by tristero

Open Letter To Right Wing Bloggers

by tristero

Dear Right Wing Bloggers,

Thank you very much for trying to focus the blogosphere’s attention on the cancelling of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo in Berlin out of fears that it would infuriate Muslims. You are absolutely right: It is an outrage for the opera company to have caved.

Now, here’s your next cause celebre which is conveniently taking place right here in the USA. I’m sure you will loudly join me in condemning Regal Entertainment Group for their inexcusable cowardice, their contempt for free speech, and their utter disrespect for Western ideals of artistic expression.

I can only assume that if you do not oppose the banning of “Death of a President” as forcefully as you opposed the cancelling of Idomeneo you are not serious about championing free speech but instead cherry-picking your issues for maximum political impact.

Love,

tristero

Divided Families

by poputonian

Anyone who missed Olbermann’s powerful chronicle about President Bush’s most recent spate of lies should visit Crooks and Liars for a look-see.
Olbermann said:

And lastly tonight, a Special Comment, about — lying.
…
The President of the United States — unbowed, undeterred, and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: The Democrats.
…
Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona Congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.”

The hell they did.

177 Democrats opposed the President’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.
…
Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind-reader.

“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the President said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”
…
It defies belief that this President and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

One of the things that bothers me about neo-Republicanism and its entire foundation of lies, is the division it has created within families. I can hardly speak to my wingnut brother anymore, and we can’t speak at all about politics. We had numerous heated debates in the first couple of years following the invasion of Iraq, but he would counter every sourceable evidence I put forward with a lie he had been fed by Fox News, Rush Phlegmball, or The President — people who really have no honor whatsoever.

When I informed an uncle (in his sixties) about PNAC as evidence of pre-meditation of the war in Iraq, he asked me with complete and genuine concern if I had been getting information from the Internet, as if the Internet was a big tub of lies, with no sources to back up any assertion. His source of information about Iraq? He admitted it: newspaper editorials and the aforementioned Mr. Phlegmball.

It seems every political debate conducted in the family setting ends in emotional turmoil. If you’re serious about the politics of death and dying, your own flesh and blood are the ones you most want to convince of how wrong and dishonorable the current administration is. But convincing the last thirty percent of deeply entrenched wingnuts, even if they’re family, isn’t going to happen given that the current Republican leadership is the most dishonorable lot of American politicians ever. They have institutionalized and legitimated the art of lying to where it is now an officially accepted practice. I really think they see lying as an important part of the political gamesmanship, the country be damned.

Out Of The Woodwork

by digby

I know this will come as a great shock to everyone, but it appears that Hastert may have lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley’s behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

Hastert and his chief of staff Palmer are very close; they are roomates during the week in Washington. It just doesn’t seem to be to be too likely to me that Palmer never mentioned all the warnings he received about Foley. I know the Speaker is a busy fellow and all, but somebody preying on the pages just seems like something that would come up, if only as gossip. Which is probably how it did come up because they didn’t seem inclined to do a damned thing about it.

And then there’s this:

The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public’s understanding of Foley’s undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

Pages apparently saw Trandahl as a strict disciplinarian. In one instant-message exchange obtained by The Post, a former page, on his way to his first annual reunion in Washington, told Foley in January 2003 that “everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc.”

He then added, “well we dont have the [expletive] clerk to fire us anymore. . . . we didnt like trandahl that much . . . he isnt a nice guy . . . and he gets really scarey when he is mad.”

Trandahl’s departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl’s exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.

Trandahl’s departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.

“My one-hour Special Order changed to a five-minute Special Order, now to a one-minute,” Shimkus said. “I just want to say thank you for the work you have done.”

Lilly said: “He seemed to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.”

.

What’s up with that, do you suppose?

Update: I hear on the grapevine that the next hilariously lame GOP excuse is that — you guessed it — the emails are forgeries. I’m not kidding.

.

Another One Bites The Dust

by digby

More e-mail shame and exposure. Where does it end with these Republicans?

A top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove passed along inside White House information to superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a time when she was also accepting his tickets to nine sports and entertainment events, according to e-mails released yesterday in a bipartisan congressional report.

The e-mails, released by the House Government Reform Committee, show that Susan Ralston also on occasion discussed possible business ventures with Abramoff. Ralston had worked for Abramoff before joining Rove in the White House in 2001.

White House contacts with Abramoff have been the focus of heated interest in Washington since he pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges earlier this year. Although the committee report documents that Abramoff’s lobbying team billed their clients for more than 400 contacts with White House officials over three years, it remains unclear what results Abramoff obtained.

I can’t help but wonder if Ralston will be persuaded that it’s in her best interest to tell the feds everything she knows about Karl Rove’s dirty dealings. She’s ripe for the big squeeze.

.

Focus On The Hucksters

by digby

James Dobson is not just an average run of the mill preacher. In fact, he’s not a preacher at all — he’s a child psychologist:

Dobson holds a doctorate in child development from the University of Southern California (1967). He was an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for fourteen years. He spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

His organization, Focus On The Family, is allegedly based on an amalgam of Biblical precepts and psychology and he dispenses his child rearing and marital advice in modern psychobabble terms. He’s more than a religious leader — his followers look to him as a doctor, particularly in the field of child psychology.

He has often been critical of modern popular culture not just because of its supposed anti-Christian message but because of its effect on young, developing minds. You’ll remember this, I’m sure:

In truth, this tale has very little to do with SpongeBob himself, and everything to do with the media’s ability to obscure the facts and to direct lies and scorn toward those of us who care about defending children. It all began on an evening in late January, during Inaugural Week in Washington, D.C. At that time, I spoke briefly to 350 guests attending a banquet hosted by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Gary Bauer’s American Values. I concluded by sharing a word of concern about a video that will be distributed to 61,000 public and private elementary schools across the nation, for use on the proposed “We Are Family Day,” March 11.

[…]

Imagine a classroom full of wide-eyed five-year olds, sitting in a circle in front of the teacher. These kindergarteners will believe anything they are told, from the notion that reindeer can fly on Christmas Eve to the idea that bunnies lay candy eggs during “Spring Break.” They are vulnerable to whatever adults tell them. In this instance, the kids are not learning about the alphabet or about exciting fairy tales; they are potentially hearing incomprehensible references to adult perverse sexuality. And the rationale for this instruction is “tolerance and diversity.” Generations past would have been shocked and outraged by the very thought of such nonsense. Yet many parents either don’t know of the teaching or are passively willing to go along with it.

[…]

Parents, I urge you to keep a close eye on your sons and daughters. Watch carefully everything that goes into their little minds. Monitor their textbooks and the words of their teachers. Do not turn them over to harmful television programs. When God’s name is used in vain, or when sex and violence come on the screen, turn off the tube and then read and discuss together the scriptures found in Psalm 101:3: “I will set before my eyes no vile thing”.

Here’s James Dobson today on the Foley scandal:

DOBSON: As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages … By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I’ve heard in seven days…

Spongebob holding hands with Big Bird on a video about tolerance is shocking homosexual brainwashing. Exchanging lewd e-mails with Republican congressman is good clean fun.

That’s an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge’s GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let’s have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can’t be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright.

Please do not ever tell me again that I have to respect this man’s religious beliefs or his professional analysis of human behavior. They are clearly just disposable political garbage to be used to bilk his followers and empower himself. I don’t want to hear about morals from any of these people anymore. They are just cheap political operatives and deserve no more polite consideration than Karl Rove or Dick Morris. Less actually, Karl Rove and Dick Morris aren’t making the huge profit that Dobson and Perkins and the rest of these Jesus hucksters do. They should retire and go into the Republican religion business. But I suppose it might be too low and unprincipled, even for them.

.

“Sure I Slept With Her”

by digby

… but I swear I didn’t try to kill the lying bitch. Vote Republican!

In other races, the Foley case has created an unfavorable backdrop for Republicans. In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress.

Hello?

And then there was this bizarre statement by David Brooks on last night’s Newshour:

I don’t want to minimize the Foley thing because the way kids are raised is a voting issue.

Who’s talking about the way kids are raised? No matter how you slice it, the kids behaviors are not the issue. It’s the 52 year old man trying to seduce them and his bosses and pals knowing about it and covering it up. Am I missing something here?

Why is this stuff so hard for the black and white morality crowd? Consensual sex between adults — nobody’s business. Marrying member of the same sex — nobody’s business. Choking mistress — wrong. Sexually preying on 16 year-olds — wrong.

Maybe we could make up some flash cards so the moralizing rightwing could carry them around and consult them whenever they get confused.

Update: Roy tries to point out to David Brooks the difference between reality and fiction. Good luck with that.

.