Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

What’s The Matter With Bagdad?

by digby

I think it’s clear that the nation should want to keep the party in power that is responsible for this:

I keep seeing his face. He appears to be in his mid-20s, bespectacled, slightly bearded, and somehow his smile conveys a sense of prosperity to come. Perhaps he is set to marry, or enroll in graduate school, or launch a business — all of these flights of ambition seem possible.

In the next few images he is encased in plastic: His face is frozen in a ghoulish grimace. Blackened lesions blemish his neck.

“Drill holes,” says Col. Khaled Rasheed, an Iraqi commander who is showing me the set of photographs.

He preserves the snapshots in a drawer, the image of the young man brimming with expectations always on top. There is no name, no identification, just a series of photos that documents the transformation of some mother’s son into a slab of meat on a bloody table in a morgue.

“Please, please, I must show these photographs to President Bush,” Rasheed pleads in desperation, as we sit in a bombed-out palace along the Tigris, once the elegant domain of Saddam Hussein’s wife, now the command center for an Iraqi army battalion. “President Bush must know what is happening in Baghdad!”

He doesn’t care what is happening in Bagdad and neither does the Dark Lord Cheney. They think people getting literally drilled in the head is an Iraqi tactic to deny them a Republican majority.

On Oct. 17, Cheney told Limbaugh: ‘I was reading something today that a writer — I don`t remember who — was speculating on increased terrorist attacks in Iraq attempting to demoralize the American people as we get up to the election. And when I read that, it made sense to me. And I interpreted this as that the terrorists are actually involved and want to involve themselves in our electoral process, which must mean they want a change.

[…]

[The]show was not the first time Cheney has suggested terrorists have picked favorites in the upcoming election.

In August, Cheney told wire service reporters that ‘al-Qaida types’ were looking to break the will of the American people to stay and fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He linked that al-Qaida effort to the Connecticut Democratic primary rejection of Iraq war supporter Sen. Joe Lieberman.

It’s all about them, you see.

That article linked above, called “Into The Abyss Of Baghdad,” shows just how much the Iraqis care about maintaining that majority in congress:

Every day the corpses pile up in the capital like discarded furniture — at curbside, in lots, in waterways and sewer lines; every day the executioners return. A city in which it was long taboo to ask, “Are you Sunni or Shiite?” has abruptly become defined by these very characteristics.

Once-harmonious neighborhoods with mixed populations have become communal killing grounds. Residents of one sect or the other must clear out or face the whim of fanatics with power drills.

[…]

People are here one day, gone the next. Those who do go out often venture no farther than familiar streets. In the sinister evenings, when death squads roam, people block off their lanes with barbed wire, logs, bricks to ward off the killers.

Many residents remain in their homes — paralyzed, going slowly crazy.

“My children are imprisoned at home,” says a cook, Daniel, a Christian whom I knew from better times, now planning to join the exodus from Iraq. “They are nervous and sad all the time. Baghdad is a big prison, and their home is a small one. I forced my son to leave school. It’s more important that he be alive than educated.”

But homes offer only an illusion of safety. Recently, insurgents rented apartments in mostly Shiite east Baghdad, filled the flats with explosives and blew them up after Friday prayers. Dozens perished.

Even gathering the bodies of loved ones is an exercise fraught with hazards. A Shiite Muslim religious party controls the main morgue near downtown; its militiamen guard the entrance, keen to snatch kin of the dead, many of them Sunni Muslim Arabs. Unclaimed Sunni corpses pile up.

[…]

On a recent patrol in Adamiya, one of the capital’s oldest sections, U.S. soldiers went door to door speaking with merchants and residents, trying to earn their confidence. Everyone seemed cordial as people spoke of their terror of Shiite militiamen. Then a shot rang out and a soldier fell 10 yards from where I stood with the platoon captain; a sniper, probably Sunni, had taken aim at this 21-year-old private from Florida ostensibly there to protect Sunnis against Shiite depredations. The GI survived.

Coursing through the deserted cityscape in an Army Humvee after curfew empties the streets is an experience laced with foreboding. U.S. vehicles, among the few on the road, offer an inviting target for an unseen enemy. Piles of long-uncollected trash may conceal laser-guided explosives. Russian roulette is the oft-repeated analogy.

“Everyone’s thinking the same thing,” a tense sergeant tells me. “IEDs,” he adds, using the shorthand for roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices.

ONE evening, I accompanied a three-Humvee convoy of MPs through largely Shiite east Baghdad. Before leaving the base, the commander performed an unsettling ritual: He anointed the Humvees with clear oil, performing something akin to last rites.

[…]

At this point, anything seems possible here, a descent of any depth into the abyss. Militiamen and residents are already sealing off neighborhoods by sect. Some have suggested district-to-district ID cards. Word broke recently of a plan to build barriers around this metropolis of 6 million and block the city’s entrances with checkpoints. The “terror trench,” as some immediately dubbed it, seemed to have a fundamental flaw: The killers already are in Baghdad.

Sure, it’s a little “untidy” and all, but they should be a lot more grateful to the liberators who freed them and created this wonderful democratic paradise. Interfering with the Republicans’ ability to do more of this good work in their country is drilling through their faces to spite their noses.

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Tricky Joe

by digby

So Joe Lieberman is now an anti-war candidate. Isn’t that something? Just like the rest of the Republican pack he’s been running away from his previous support for the war in order to get elected. Sadly, because he used to be a Democrat, he’s getting the benefit of Democratic credibility on that issue when he really isn’t entitled to it.

It’s a lot like the 60’s when Nixon created a faux anti-war message. In fact, Joe sounds remarkably like Tricky Dick on the subject these days:

“I want peace as much as you do.” – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

“No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do.” – Joe Lieberman,
10/18/06

“Many others — I among them — have been strongly critical of the way
the war has been conducted.” – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

“I have been very critical of a lot of the mistakes the Bush
administration has made in Iraq.” – Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06

“Many believe that President Johnson’s decision to send American
combat forces to South Vietnam was wrong. But the question facing us
today is: Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?”
– Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

“The question is what do we do now. We are there, no matter what you
think of how we got there.” – Joe Lieberman, 10/8/06

“I want to end the war.” – Richard Nixon, 11/3/69

“I want to help end the war in Iraq.” – Joe Lieberman, 8/11/06

“A fixed timetable for our withdrawal would completely remove any
incentive for the enemy to negotiate an agreement. They would simply
wait until our forces had withdrawn and then move in.” – Richard Nixon,
11/3/69

“If you tell your enemy when you’re going to leave, they’ll wait and
create disaster.” – Joe Lieberman, 7/6/06

“I understand why they are concerned, about this war. I respect your
idealism. I share your concern for peace.” – Richard Nixon, 1969

“I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position
on Iraq. I respect your views.” – Joe Lieberman, 8/7/06

You know, now that I think of it there is a lot about Joe’s smarmy, self-righteousness that reminds me of Dick Nixon.

But what really reminds of Dick Nixon is the fact that Joe Lieberman apparently keeps a slush fund in his campaign:

After President Richard Nixon abused campaign finance law through his Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), laws were passed to force candidates to disclose how they spend campaign funds. But over the weekend, it became clear Senator Joe Lieberman may be ignoring those laws, as the Senator’s FEC reports uncovered $387,000 “petty cash” slush fund that could be called the Committee to Reelect Lieberman (CREEL).

During the 14 days around the August 8th primary, Lieberman’s campaign spent over $387,000 on un-itemized, un-identified, and un-disclosed disbursements. By contrast, Ned Lamont’s campaign spent just $500 on petty cash in the entire reporting period. This slush fund requires answers to questions like: what was this spent on? Who was it spent on? And why weren’t the expenses itemized, as the FEC requires?

Today, the Lamont campaign will be filing a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, demanding an investigation into possible wrongdoing.

LIEBERMAN REPORT SHOWS UNPRECEDENTED $387,000 SLUSH FUND: Lieberman’s most recent FEC report shows $387,561 spent on “petty cash” – unaccounted for cash that was not itemized at all. To understand what an abuse this is, consider that FEC rules dictate that all expenditures over $100 must be itemized.

LIEBERMAN SLUSH FUND COMPRISED ONE OUT OF EVERY 12 DOLLARS SPENT: Lieberman’s massive slush fund comprised almost 8 percent of all of his expenditures in the reporting period. That’s almost one out of every $12 that Lieberman is effectively hiding.

LIEBERMAN FUNNELED OUT $32,000 A DAY IN UNACCOUNTED CASH: Lieberman’s campaign disbursed $387,000 in unmarked “petty cash” in just 12 days. That’s $32,000 every single day, with no accounting at all for how it was spent.

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS WERE ACCOUNTED FOR: Most mundane expenditures from Lieberman’s campaign such as salaries, printing, food, and other “petty” expenditures were already itemized on Lieberman’s FEC report, begging the question: What did Lieberman do with almost $400,000 in unaccounted for cash in 12 days?

THESE EXPENDITURES APPEAR TO VIOLATE FEC STATUTE: Title 11 C.F.R. §102.11 (2 U.S.C. 432(h)(2)) (Petty Cash Fund) provides: A political committee may maintain a petty cash fund out of which it may make expenditures not in excess of $100 to any person per purchase or transaction. If a petty cash fund is maintained, it shall be the duty of the treasurer of the political committee to keep and maintain a written journal of all disbursements. This written journal shall include the name and address of every person to whom any disbursement is made, as well as the date, amount, and purpose of such disbursement. In addition, if any disbursement is made for a candidate, the journal shall include the name of that candidate and the office (including State and Congressional district) sought by such candidate.

Tricky Joe’s campaign is saying he legitimately spent $387,000 on petty cash in less than two weeks? Come on.

I can hear Joe’s speech now:

Not one cent of the $387,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses.

It was not a secret fund. As a matter of fact, when I was on “Meet the Press,” some of you may have seen it last Sunday—Tim Russert came up to me after the program and he said, “Joe, what about this fund we hear about?” And I said, “Well, there’s no secret about it. Go out and see Dana Smith, who was the administrator of the fund.”

And I gave him his address, and I said that you will find that the purpose of the fund simply was to defray political expenses.

One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Hadassah on the radio mention the fact that our kids would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Fed-ex saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was.

It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl, the 26-year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.

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Do The Right Thing

by digby

I’m glad to see someone with Paul Krugman’s profile also making the case against going soft if the Democrats take over the congress. (I agree completely.)

I just heard poor little John Cornyn whining about the horrible mean partisanship of Nancy Pelosi, so they are already working themselves into a tantrum.

Krugman says:

Now that the Democrats are strongly favored to capture at least one house of Congress, they’re getting a lot of unsolicited advice, with many people urging them to walk and talk softly if they win.

I hope the Democrats don’t follow this advice — because it’s bad for their party and, more important, bad for the country. In the long run, it’s even bad for the cause of bipartisanship.

There are those who say that a confrontational stance will backfire politically on the Democrats. These are by and large the same people who told Democrats that attacking the Bush administration over Iraq would backfire in the midterm elections. Enough said.

Political considerations aside, American voters deserve to have their views represented in Congress. And according to opinion polls, most Americans are actually to the left of Congressional Democrats on issues such as health care.

In particular, the public wants politicians to stand up to corporate interests. This is clear from the latest Newsweek poll, which shows overwhelming public support for the agenda Nancy Pelosi has laid out for her first 100 hours if she becomes House speaker. The strongest support is for her plan to have Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, which is supported by 74 percent of Americans — and by 70 percent of Republicans!

What the make-nice crowd wants most of all is for the Democrats to forswear any investigations into the origins of the Iraq war and the cronyism and corruption that undermined it. But it’s very much in the national interest to find out what led to the greatest strategic blunder in American history, so that it won’t happen again.

What’s more, the public wants to know. A large majority of Americans believe both that invading Iraq was a mistake, and that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war. And according to the Newsweek poll, 58 percent of Americans believe that investigating contracting in Iraq isn’t just a good idea, but a high priority; 52 percent believe the same about investigating the origins of the war.

I was struck by this too. There is an appetite for putting things right in Washington and that means that an accounting is due. Most adults understand that people must be responsible for their actions. Indeed, Republicans were the ones who used to make a fetish of it. Now that they have made a mess of things, not so much.

Why, then, should the Democrats hold back? Because, we’re told, the country needs less divisiveness. And I, too, would like to see a return to kinder, gentler politics. But that’s not something Democrats can achieve with a group hug and a chorus of “Kumbaya.”

The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that’s the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. People like Grover Norquist, who once declared that “bipartisanship is another name for date rape,” push for a hard-right economic agenda; people like Karl Rove make that agenda politically feasible, even though it’s against the interests of most voters, by fostering polarization, using religion and national security as wedge issues.

As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.’s strategy, Democrats can’t do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.

Even if they try to act in a bipartisan fashion, their opponents will find a way to divide the nation — which is what happened to the great surge of national unity after 9/11. One thing we might learn from investigations is the extent to which the Iraq war itself was motivated by the desire to have another wedge issue.

There are those who believe that the partisan gap can be bridged if the Democrats nominate an attractive presidential candidate who speaks in uplifting generalities. But they must have been living under a rock these past 15 or so years. Whoever the Democrats nominate will feel the full force of the Republican slime machine. And it doesn’t matter if conservatives have nice things to say about a Democrat now. Once the campaign gets serious, they’ll suddenly question his or her patriotism and discover previously unmentioned but grievous character flaws.

This is exactly correct. The chattering classes are all abuzz with the notion that now is the time to bind up the nation’s wounds and work across the aisle. (I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t see the need for such rapproachment during the last decade of slash and burn GOP partisanship.) This pattern is well documented. They will continue to drain the treasury and play our their “movement” experiments and then have the democrats step up and clean up the messes they make until this is stopped. The conservative movment is a failure and it must not be allowed to govern this country anymore with its lies, debts and dangerous foreign policy.

We are confronting some very serious problems right now, only one of which is terrorism. The Republicans have destroyed our international reputation at the very time when we need global cooperation. And they have driven the nation itself into the ditch dividing the country with their polarizing wedge politics and blaming everyone but themselves for their failures.

The Democrats have to be the “grown-ups” yes. And one of the unpleasant tasks will be figuring out what went wrong, putting safeguards in place so the same things don’t happen again and making people take responsibility for their actions. That is what adults do. Letting bygones be bygones and simply blathering on about how we all need to put the unpleasantness behind us and get along will not win the respect of the American people nor will it fix the problems this nation faces. (That, after all, is the indulgent mommy model that the Republicans have been using as a club to beat us over the head with for the last 30 years. No more.)

Now, politicians can make speeches about bipartisanship and sing kumbaaya all they want. I’m sure it is a very soothing tune. But the Democratic party had best not forget that the actions a Democratic majority takes in the next two years will determine if the American people can trust them to defend the nation and fix the mess going forward. It’s very hard to see how that will happen if they capitualte to John Cornyn’s whimpering about how mean and nasty they are.

The polls show that the American people are behind them and the world is behind them. For the good of the party, the good of the country and the good of the planet, they just have to tough out the criticism they will receive from the mincing GOP courtiers in the press and the blubbering, wailing Republicans, and Do. The. Right. Thing.

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Robinson On Sullivan And Religious Tolerance

by tristero

Sara Robinson on Orcinus has weighed in on Amy Sullivan’s New Republic piece. I wrote about it here and don’t want to repeat what I said there. But I do want to respond to this passage that Sara wrote, as well as some others:

“…studying fundamentalist theology is almost entirely beside the point. On the other hand, studying their psychology and sociology — which a great many people have already done — and using that information to understand what they value and how they communicate will get us much, much farther.”

I strongly disagree that “studying fundamentalist theology is almost entirely beside the point.” One of the most important ways available to understand what makes christianists tick is to read and listen to what they have to say. You simply cannot understand their psychology or sociology -which certainly are extremely important – without also understanding their belief system.

Another reason to study fundamentalist theology is in order to counter it. Not to convert true believers, of course, which Sara also recognizes. No, the real audience we must persuade are the mainstream media outlets who have provided the christianists with a free pass mostly because they have been virtually unopposed theologically. They have declared themselves not fundamentalists but simply “Christians,” which they most certainly are not, and until recently, no one knowledgeable enough and articulate enough has called them on it.

In short, the mainstream media are the audience for persuasive tactics based on reason. But to persuade them is difficult, especially if you don’t know your opponent’s position in detail.

A prime example of this was the coverage of “intelligent design” creationism in the New York Times. For years, both under Raines and Keller, the Times gave these unscrupulous extremists a free pass. Kent Hovind had an admiring profile of his now defunct creationist theme park splattered all over the Times’s front page, with hardly a word of objection permitted in the article’s text by scientists, and with no indication that, among other things, Hovind had been videotaped extolling the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a serious work. Another frontpager was when a Times reporter took some rafting trips in the Grand Canyon, one run by a creationist and another by scientists, and typed up a he said/she said, giving both views equal weight.

I’m sure I’m not the only reader who wrote in strongly objecting to this coverage. More importantly, scientifically knowledgeable opponents of creationism got their act together and studied the creationists’ “science,” amassing hoards of evidence to address the specific issues raised by the IDiots. It was made clear, not to the proponents of “intelligent design” creationism but to the reporters and editors at the Times, that there was no there there. A turning point was the verdict in the Kitzmiller trial. Since then, it is all but impossible to find in the Times any remarks by creationists that aren’t immediately caveated.

My point is this: without specifically addressing the issues raised in a knowledgeable way, which requires studying your opponent’s position and beliefs with great care, there is no way to persuade others that your opponent is worthless.

Now there are very good reasons why many good people should not bother to address creationism in a serious fashion. But someone has to. And someone must study and address the incoherent and repellent theology of christianism in a direct way. You not only provide the media with compellling reasons to marginalize these genuinely marginal beliefs, but you also publicize alternative theologies that do not hold as their goal the establishment of an American theocracy. Furthermore, you shift the locus of dispute from a defensive fight on the worthiness of enlightenment values. Instead, by knowledgeably disputing christianist theology, you place christianists on the defensive, forcing them to defend their radical theocratic beliefs. Again, the audience we’re trying to persuade is not christianists, but those who give them enough stature to advance their cause in the mass media.

Another example of why it helps to know what your opponent believes if you want to discredit them is that it can provide more fodder for important rebuttals. Here’s one case in point.

With all due respect, in her post, Sara doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that “tolerance” is a technical word within the worldview of christianist theology and they often pun between the technical and commonsense meaning. As a result, we get much eloquent prose defending the importance of speaking out in dissent of christianism (some of which is discussed below), which is certainly stirring but besides the point.

“Tolerance” to a christianist means several things, most of which they oppose. One example: When a state “tolerates” a religion, it means (to them) that the state has usurped the power to be the sole arbiter of whether a religion should be permitted (ie, tolerated) to practice without restrictions. In short, the problem with the notion of tolerance for christianists is that it is a codeword for the licensing of religious belief. The state may tolerate a religion today, but tomorrow may decide to revoke the state’s license. Christianists argue that the state has no business tolerating (ie licensing) religion, because the state derives its power from God, from whence comes all authority both spiritual (through the church) and secular (via civil government).

In short, christianism is a direct challenge to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. It is as anti-American as Stalinism or the divine right of kings.

Now, this is an extremely powerful argument to make if your goal is not to convert the hardcore but rather make christianism a more marginal influence on American mainstream politics. In order to do so, you must convince mainstream reporters and news outlets not to be gulled into thinking these people are anything but radical extremists. And in order to do that, you simply must study works like Reverend [sic] Joseph Morecraft’s With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple or the writings of Rushdoony.

In her eloquent advocacy of speaking up to christianist nonsense, Sara writes:

Well, damn it — sometimes, people who are in error should be made to squirm a little. They should be called to account for their views, and queried thoroughly on what their agenda is for the rest of us. There comes a time when politeness has to take a back seat to the larger interests of the country…

Well, yes, of course. But then again, no christianist would disagree with what she’s written here, either. The only difference is that they think you and I are the ones who should be held to account. And they are prepared to argue that. Here is part of they waythey do that:

Christianists, like other rightwing extremists, have studied non-christianist American society very carefully. Proof? Their utilization of liberal phrases, like “free expression” or “equal rights” is one example. They then upend the conventions, throw in some obscure facts, sprinkle it with lies, and poof, they’ve given the impression that they know what they’re talking about and that their position has been thoughtfully considered. The result: they confuse the news media into permitting them to spew their propaganda unimpeded, as the media has a bias towards presenting all points of view that appear to have stature.

Finally, I genuinely have no idea what utility Sara find in Lakoff’s parent frames, which are a misleading oversimplification of what is going on. Discussed in relationship to her reactions to the sentimental scenes of Gore down on the farm in “An Inconvenient Truth” Sara fails to take into account that perhaps she found the farm life scenes ineffective in the Gore film not because they were emotional but because they were genuinely ineffective. And likewise, perhaps the reason the charts were effective was because they simply were compelling data compellingly displayed.

In other words, I’m suggesting that her reaction had nothing to do with the privileging of one Lakoffian frame over another, but simply with the limited artistic talent of the filmmaker. Sara claims that the charts meant something to her because of their intellectual appeal and the farm scenes meant little because they were an appeal to emotion. Nonsense.

I guarantee that if she saw Ingmar Bergman’s Shame, with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman, she’d walk out as shattered as everyone else who has seen it, far more emotionally moved about the horrors of war than she ever could become from a mere graphic of rising casualty rates in Iraq.

Don’t get me wrong. That is not to say that such a graphic is cold, it most certainly isn’t, but the invoking of emotional response is a complex skill, one that the filmmakers in the case of Gore simply don’t have in much abundance. Sara was unmoved not because of an unwillingness to ascribe value to an emotional frame, but because the artistry in those scenes was sub-standard. (Much of the Gore film, of course, was brilliant and deeply moving, however.) As for the Gore film being in any serious way an influence on far right evangelical environmentalism, well…I’ll believe it when I see some evidence that makes that plausible.

Lakoff is, however, correct that liberal rhetoric must be improved and drastically so. Unfortunately, vacuous notions like “nurturing parent” are part of that problem, not the solution.

I’ve criticized Sara a great deal, but I also must acknowledge that I agree with her on these points. It is vitally important that christianists never get a free pass in the media. Since their politics are central, they don’t deserve respect when they try to fend off criticism by claiming liberals, of all people, are intolerant (in our sense of the word). Christianism must be disputed. Always. We also both agree that there is no point in debating christianists although we disagree on why. Sara believes it is hopeless as you will never convince them. I believe it is not only hopeless, but it is talking to the wrong audience. I further believe an effective opposition to christianism requires a deep knowledge not only of their psychology, their sociology, and their history, but also of their beliefs, because, among other reasons, it gives opponents the opportunity to take the fight into the churches and provide congregants with a wider assortment of theologies to embrace, including ones that aren’t as ominously anti-American as christianist ones.

I’d like to reiterate what I’ve said in numerous other posts. Religion is the macguffin here. This is not a dispute about religion but politics. It is vitally important that whenever political operatives manipulate religious belief in order to deflect criticism, they be opposed. With strength and knowledge.

[A few quick updates after the original post.]

Jerk

by digby

One of the most unpleasant facets of Junior Codpiece’s personality is the way he publicly disses his own father. Contrary to this article in the NY Times it isn’t rare at all. This is typical:

Mr. Bush has been saying for months that he believes Republicans will keep control of the House and the Senate, and he is not changing his tune now, even if it means taking the rare step of rebuking his own father.

In an interview shown Sunday on ABC News, Mr. Bush was asked about a comment by the first President Bush, who said this month that he hated to think about life for his son if Democrats took control of Congress. “He shouldn’t be speculating like that, because he should have called me ahead of time,” the president said, “and I’d tell him they’re not going to.”

The whole damned country is speculating about that and he’s talking about his dad like he’s a 12 year old who needs to be given a pep talk — the same father who was president and vice-president himself for 12 years. But then Junior has some issues:

“I can’t remember a moment where I said to myself, maybe he can help me make the decision,” Bush told Woodward.

He’s just a doddering old fool:

WILLIAMS: Is there a palpable tension when you get together with the former president, who happens to be your father? A lot of the guys who worked for him are not happy with the direction of things.

BUSH: Oh no. My relationship is adoring son.

WILLIAMS: You talk shop?

BUSH: Sometimes, yeah, of course we do. But it’s a really interesting question, it’s kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant. My dad means the world to me, as a loving dad. He gave me the greatest gift a father can give a child, which is unconditional love. And yeah, we go out and can float around there trying to catch some fish, and chat and talk, but he understands what it means to be president. He understands that often times I have information that he doesn’t have. And he understands how difficult the world is today. And I explain my strategy to him, I explain exactly what I just explained to you back there how I view the current tensions, and he takes it on board, and leaves me with this thought, “I love you son.”

Can you imagine being lectured about strategy by the idiot son who has put the Bush name in the pantheon of historical leadership failure ? I assume the only way he can get through the day is by living in total denial. But still, he must have to fight back the urge to backhand the little prick when he acts like that. How dare he…

Junior’s daddy complex has had catastrophic implications on this world. It should remind us all why hereditary leadership is such a bad idea.

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Chick Heroes

by digby

You’ve all probably seen the ads on the important blogs about this new Dixie Chicks movie “Shut Up and Sing.” I haven’t seen it but I’ll be going as soon as the movie opens because I’m very anxious to see their story (told by a master documentary filmmaker like Barbara Kopple, too.) I wrote last summer about my experience when I first heard their song “I’m Not Ready To Make Nice” and I still get a little chill whenever I hear it.

The Chicks have more money than God and they can afford to completely drop out of music if they wanted to, but that doesn’t diminish the courage it took for them to defy their fans and their audience and stand on their principles. They are country artists, from deep in Red Country and what they did — and continue to do — is the essence of patriotism. At cost to themselves they are standing up for the right to speak out against your government. I think they are heroes and I hope their movie is an inspiration and solace to those who’ve been out here shouting into the void about what’s been going on in our country and our culture for the last decade or so.

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Man, That Bastard Can Lie

by tristero

Yoo hoo, Democrats! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll make sure that every person in the country gets a chance to watch this:

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’

And also these:

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

I can’t imagine how awful it must be to be the parent of a child in Iraq, knowing that your kid’s life is being placed in danger by this foul, cynical, unprincipled liar.

h/t, Atrios.

Colossal Failure

by digby

What Kevin sez:

I wonder how long it will take America to recover from George Bush’s uniquely blinkered and self-righteous brand of ineptitude? In the past five years he’s demonstrated to the world that we don’t know how to win a modern guerrilla war. He’s demonstrated that we don’t understand even the basics of waging a propaganda war. He’s demonstrated that other countries don’t need to pay any attention to our threats. He’s demonstrated that we’re good at talking tough and sending troops into battle, but otherwise clueless about using the levers of statecraft in the service of our own interests. If he had set out to willfully and deliberately expose our weaknesses to the world and undermine our strengths, he couldn’t have done more to cripple America’s power and influence in the world. Beneath the bluster, he’s done more to weaken our national security than any president since World War II.

This is the argument. Bush’s foreign and national security policy has given the world the impression that the United States is a paper tiger. It has made us dramatically less safe in the process. It’s not the Democrats or the terrorists who have done this. Bush and the Republican congressional majority did this with their insistence on puerile bully tactics instead of sophisticated use of the “levers of statecraft” — which they then followed up with almost comically incompetent bumbling of their own misguided tactics. Their failure is total and comprehensive. This world is just too complicated for schoolyard thinking and tinkerbell planning.

The other day someone (a former liberal who now believes the Republicans are better at national security) lectured me about how wonderful the lovely Condi Rice has been in representing this country around the world and how this shows that the modern Republican party, of which I am so critical, has changed. I answered, “The whole world hates us now. Do you really think that’s good for this country?” She didn’t have much of a response because having the whole world hate you represents a terrible failure of leadership and she knew it.

This is a big problem and it makes me kind of sad. There’s always been anti-Americanism, of course, but our greatest responsiblity was to try to manage it, not make it worse. We are much to powerful a natiohn to let that sort of thing get out of hand. It makes countries start thinking of creating alliances and building nasty weapons to protect themselves from such a big powerful threat. Anti-Americanism is far worse than it’s ever been now and it’s going to affect many aspects of our lives in this age of globalization, from security to economics. It will not be easy to rebuild what respect and trust we once had.

And then there was the failure of Bush to seize the opportunity we had after 9/11 and the Afghanistan operation to launch a new period of international cooperation, when we had the support of the vast majority of the world. With his casual abrogation of treaties he didn’t like to the invasion of Iraq, he turned an outpouring of support into international disdain.

Here at home, for his own political purposes, he has done bin Laden’s work for him through relentless fearmongering and curtailment of the constitutional freedoms we are supposedly fighting the terrorists to maintain.

The last five years have been a colossal national security failure and the only thing that will change it is if the American people make it clear to the world that they don’t support it — by electing new leadership. We must do it this November and we must do it in November two years from now.

The Republicans are right about one thing:

“These are the stakes. Vote November 7.”

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The Fucking Faith-Based Initiative

by tristero

I’d like to briefly weigh in on the hullabaloo over David Kuo .

From what I can tell, in all the publicity over Kuo’s book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, no one seems to have asked what I think is the only interesting question: Does David Kuo believe that the US government actually should have an Office of Faith Based Initiatives?

This interview with Kuo in Salon is typical. He discusses how much contempt some in the Bush administration have for christianist loonies, as if the Bush administration doesn’t contain a large number of religious nuts – Jerry Boykin comes instantly to mind, as does the former AG, John “Crisco Johnny” Ashcroft for whom Kuo once worked. Well, I’m as interested in hearing more stories about the hypocrisy and corruption of the Bush administration as the next American, but the larger issue, whether any administration, has, or should have, the right to dole out my hard-earned money to religious groups, is finessed.

To make it clear, there should be no office of faith-based initiatives. The very idea is digustingly offensive. To say so does not make me a “secularist” as many of the devout understand how important such a wall is to their faith. I am merely being an American. A wall of separation between church and state was clearly established by the Founders and over the years, that wall has been determined, quite rightly, to mean that no religion can be privileged by the US government. And that means giving ’em money or other special breaks.

Kuo’s basic point appears to be that faith-based initiatives would be great, provided he was in control of it, or some other incorruptible evangelical. No, it wouldn’t. It is simply un-American, a direct violation of the Constitution and American traditions.

Amy Sullivan is upset that in discussing all this, Democrats have been shooting themselves in the foot by framing the issue in such a way as to alienate potential evangelicals. I’ll grant that, to a small extent, she may have a point. It is quite possible to heap scads of contempt on scum like Pat Robertson while not inadvertently offending the genuinely religious. And, while I strongly disagree with Sullivan’s specific criticism – she apparently doesn’t seem to grasp how insane and revolting it is, to the many of the devout of all faiths, for anyone to claim Jews will burn in hell because they won’t accept Christ,; furthermore, her characterization of what o’Donnell said is totally inacurrate – in principle, it never hurts to gain insight into how to do so in an effective manner.

But she is avoiding the elephant in the room. Democrats need to remind evangelicals that it is in their interest to examine the roots of their involvement in the politics of this country. Back then, it was the ancestors of the modern evangelicals who were among the most fervent advocates of church/state separation. That said, let’s get real. Given that there is lots of what Samuel Beckett quaintly called “filth” up for grabs (ie, money), getting the evangelicals to eschew religious welfare will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is the argument that must be addressed. And the delicate sensibilities of evangelicals who get offended when people object to them telling their flocks that Jews will burn in hell is a minor matter.*

The extent to which the wall of separation has been battered and the enormous effort it will take to repair it is just one example of the damage the Bush administration has caused to the very foundation of this country’s system of politics. This is not simply about “under God” in the Pledge of the Allegiance (which imo, is bad enough), but about a system in which Muslims are being taxed to give money to Buddhist temples, Christians are taxed to fund Jewish synagogues, atheists are forced to fund churches, and pious worshippers of all faiths are coerced into giving money to cynical political operatives like Colson, Robertson, and Dobson.

Since Kuo appears to have no problems with establishing state-sponsored religion or religions, I wonder whether his book has much importance beyond the gossip stage. Yes, it’s nice to have more confirmation that Rove, et al, are hypocrites, and to have some insight into the details of the splits in the Bush administration. But Kuo doesn’t seem to grasp the enormous risks of his position. He says, “Invoking God’s name to get anything can be a very dangerous thing spiritually.” That may be so, but what is certain is taht the founders well understood that the state funding of religion is a dangerous thing, especially for religions. And the Democrats’ task – hell, it’s also the Republicans’ task as well, if they really are as American as they claim to be – is to find a way to say that in a compelling, modern rhetoric.

To call for such rhetoric is the exact opposite of a call for discussion of religion to be off-limits for politicians. Yes, Democrats must discuss religion. To avoid it is to fall into exactly the trap that many of us, including Digby and myself, have been warning Democrats against. When you avoid a subject, you enable the Republicans to define it, and when the avoided subject has in any way, shape or form to do with values, you are a goddamn fool.

Yes, talk about religion and belief. A lot. And be smart about it.

(h/t to Karl Rove who came up with the title for this post.)

Special note to newer readers: It is impossible to tell from what I ‘ve written here what my religious beliefs are or are not. Do not assume that I am either an atheist, an agnostic, or a person of deep faith. My personal beliefs, whatever they may be, are private. Support of church/state separation makes me an American, but says absolutely nothing about my belief in God, or lack of such a belief.

What is not private, as many longtime readers know, is my public support and enormous respect for the practice of all faiths, or for the right not to practice any faith at all. What also is not private is my thorough contempt for political operatives who try to deflect criticism by hiding behind the skirts of their priests. They are the ones contemptuous of religious faith, not I, they are the blasphemers, not I, and I see no reason to tolerate their hypocrisy.

*******

*The sensibilities of bigoted evangelicals may be a minor concern but what is not, obviously, is that such anti-semitic bullshit is being fobbed off by Robertson and others as mainstream Christian belief.

The First Lemming Over A Cliff Is No Leader, Frank

by tristero

I’m a longtime Rich fan, actually from the moment he stopped being a theater reviewer. [UPDATE: However, I’ve always been appalled by his anti-Gore remarks. (ht, Eric in comments.)] But this is simply idiotic:

Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda – enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging “pre-emptive” war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights- and he didn’t fudge it. He didn’t care if half the country despised him along the way.

Say whatever you want about George W. Bush, but he is a leader only in the same way that the 9/11 hijackers were brave.

When the term is used in modern American political discourse, “leader” does not have the standard generalized meaning of “a person in authority” regardless of whether they are good or bad. When Americans use the term “leader” in reference to their own politics, they are not talking about Kim Jong Il or Vladimir Lenin. Americans are invoking the imagery of great American political and cultural leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Coltrane.

First and foremost, a leader persuades others, by proposing sensible ideas in an honest and convincing rhetorical voice.

A leader is NOT someone who doesn’t care “if half the country despised him along the way.”* A leader is NOT someone who hides a tyrannical agenda under the skirts of priests and behind cheesy bromides like “compassionate conservatism.” A leader is NOT someone who does exactly as s/he pleases.

Bush does not persuade, he does what he wants, and if anybody stands in the way, he ignores or blackmails them. His ideas are not sensible, but nuts. He is thoroughly dishonest and his inability to articulate even the simplest ideas is a national embarassment.

In addition, a leader recognizes when a given course of action, especially one that he himself endorsed, is failing. A leader takes responisiblity for failures as well as successes. Bush, of course, is notorious both for following his delusions until they lead into total fiasco and for simply refusing to recognize that he ever made a single mistake.

In American public discourse, rightly or wrongly, words like “leader” and “brave” are typically descriptive of people with positive virtues. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader. Idi Amin was not. The students in Tiananmen Square were brave, the man who assasinated Rabin was not.

By drawing a direct comparison between Bush and the 9/11 hijackers, am I saying that Bush is a religious fanatic in the grip of dangerous narcissistic delusions of grandeur and who has no regard for the death of innocents?

You bet I am. And that is not what Americans mean by a leader, Mr. Rich.

***

*Ah, you say, but what about Coltrane? Surely he didn’t care if he was despised when he went into “free” jazz, did he?

On the contrary, like every other professional musician, he most certaInly did care about his audience. At the same time that some of his more adventuresome music was recorded, Coltrane laid down an exquisite, and deliberately commerical, recording of ballads. The release of some of his most challenging music was alternated, surely with his knowledge and assent, with less “out” recordings. True, his later style was consistent in concert, and led to considerable anger. But Coltrane was dismayed by it, and concerned. He was on a constant search for more tunes like “My Favorite Things,” which had nearly universal recognition but also the kind of musical structure that inspired his bolder experimentation. It goes without saying, contra Adorno, that none of this detracts one iota from the incredibly original and genuinely awe-inspiring example of musical integrity Coltrane set for the rest of us.

When musicians treat the audience with apparent disdain, for example Miles Davis, it is always a pose. They know full well the marketing advantage of being considered so “pure” and so “attuned to their muse that they even turn their back on the audience.” Back in the 1960’s, we went to Mothers of Invention concerts because Zappa would greet us with “Hi, boys and girls” or even “Hi, pigs” in kind of a collusion with his disdain. Yes, the rest of his audience was ignorant buffoons, but we were different. We knew who Varese was. We could follow his experimentation in improvised polymeters. In other words, Zappa’s disdain for the great unwashed was a deliberate tactic to rope in the kinds of fans that were influential trendsetters in the 60’s, by appealing to their sense of alienation and our desire to seen as special individuals who stood out from the crowd of conformist. Later on, of course, as his audience grew far beyond the original cognoscenti, Frank literally changed his tune. JAP’s, closeted rough-sex gays, hypocritical politicians – all became targets of Zappa’s acid contempt. But it’s hard to find examples, if any, of Zappa insulting actual ticket-buyers to his concerts en masse, as part a routine shtick, which he did, at least at every concert I saw or heard about, in the late 60’s/early 70’s.

[Edited slightly after original posting]