Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Taking Out The Trash

by digby

DemFromCT has an interesting post up this morning over at Daily Kos discussing the rise of hyper-partisanship. He quotes an interview with the authors of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track,Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann:

Is the current Congress demonstrably more partisan than those in the past? Why does it matter?

MANN: Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s. Now it is tribal warfare. The consequences are deadly serious. Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order — the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process — was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption. And grievously flawed policy formulation and implementation.

It really can’t be overstated how Newt’s bare knuckle style of politics changed the way things worked in Washington. When it was combined with the big money media operations that finally came to fruition during that era — Limbaugh, FOX etc. — any old fashioned notions of political comity went out the window. And it was such a strong series of below the belt punches that it knocked the Democrats to the ground for nearly a decade. (It was providence that the Democratic president at the time was a skilled rope-a-dope fighter who could withstand a relentless rain of blows.)

The assault on the political system was so intense that they even pushed the nuclear button and impeached the president for trivial, political purposes. The president’s very successful governance and the Senate requirement for a supermajority were all that kept them from going through with it. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, with the use sophisticated media techniques and manipulation of the various levers of government under their control, they managed to seize control of the presidency despite a dubious outcome in a state run by the president’s own brother — and they got away with it. (They even got the press to repeat their snide mantra: “get over it.”)

Think about that. Within one two-year period, the Republicans tried to remove a legitimately elected and popular president from office on a purely partisan basis and then assumed the presidency through an unprecedented partisan Supreme Court decision after losing the popular vote.

We all watched that happen, many of us not realizing how extraordinary and how dangerously undemocratic the US political system had become. It was all “legitimate” after all. No laws were broken. Newt’s take-no-prisoners political style had become normal. But it was nothing compared to what was to come.

After taking office under the most questionable circumstances in history*, they proceeded to rule as if they had won in a landslide. Once 9/11 happened, he had the mandate he’d been pretending to have and the Republican congress docilely turned their power and responsibility over to the president as if he were a king. What little dissent had been tolerated (such as Jim Jeffords defecting) was completely quashed and Democrats’ only function in the government was to serve as a straw-man foil for the Republicans to run against.

DFC writes:

From … the Hastert policy of only considering bills acceptable to the “majority of the majority”, to Frist’s considering of the Nuclear Option of changing the rules about filibusters, the House and Senate have become a “my party before my Country” institution, and it started in 1994.

That “majority of the majority” is especially important when looking at this period of Republican rule. In one of the most cynical decisions of their reign (and there have been many) they consciously governed without any support from the opposition, even to the point of scuttling popular bipartisan legislation rather than allowing the opposition to participate in any meaningful way. There has never been a case of partisanship so severe in American history.

Throughout this period they successfully manipulated and co-opted the media in a thousand different ways. Their decades long project to mau-mau the press about its alleged liberal bias and the emergence of rightwing media served to obscure this story as it was unfolding. The leaders of the political media became ensconced in the new Republican political establishment and reflected their attitudes and biases.

Probably the starkest illustration of that was this famous comment about Bill Clinton by the dean of the Washington Press Corps:

“He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”

He was ostensibly speaking about the president having an affair but it is redolent of the common Republican view that after Ronald Reagan, the Republicans had a permanent lock on the presidency that was rudely foiled by this interloper. Republicans constantly mentioned that Clinton won with a 43% plurality and therefore, 57% of the nation had rejected him. Oliver North even said “he’s not my commander in chief,” during his unsuccessful race for the Senate. Senator Jesse Helms said [Bill Clinton] “better watch out if he comes down here [to North Carolina]. He’d better have a bodyguard.”

That was the least of it as any of you who are above the age of 30 or so well remember. There has rarely been a more vicious partisan environment than during the 1990’s. And the media, as frightened as anyone of this marauding hoard of political hatchetmen, naturally sidled up to the bullies as a way of protecting themselves. Hence, David Broder saying that it was Clinton who came to town and trashed the place when it was really Newt Gingrich and his wild revolutionaries who broke all the rules of civility and comity.

Here’s a little sample of how this worked:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that “language matters.” In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt.”

[…]

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

* abuse of power
* anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
* betray
* bizarre
* bosses
* bureaucracy
* cheat
* coercion
* “compassion” is not enough
* collapse(ing)
* consequences
* corrupt
* corruption
* criminal rights
* crisis
* cynicism
* decay
* deeper
* destroy
* destructive
* devour
* disgrace
* endanger
* excuses
* failure (fail)
* greed
* hypocrisy
* ideological
* impose
* incompetent
* insecure
* insensitive
* intolerant
* liberal
* lie
* limit(s)
* machine
* mandate(s)
* obsolete
* pathetic
* patronage
* permissive attitude
* pessimistic
* punish (poor …)
* radical
* red tape
* self-serving
* selfish
* sensationalists
* shallow
* shame
* sick
* spend(ing)
* stagnation
* status quo
* steal
* taxes
* they/them
* threaten
* traitors
* unionized
* urgent (cy)
* waste
* welfare

This was was way beyond what we had long accepted as the polite language of politics that allowed people to battle over issues but maintain decent human relationships when the workday was over. The kind of “bipartisanship” that the old lions are constantly going on about was killed in the 80’s and 90’s by a political machine that consciously set out to demonize first liberals and then Democrats. David Broder and his friends in Washington can’t wrap their minds around the fact that there was a deliberate right wing strategy to kill bipartisanship because they reluctantly went along with it, were duped by it or embraced it themselves.

So, why am I taking this little trip down memory lane of which most of you are all too well aware and need need no reminding? Because we are very possibly going to win this election and you can very confidently place a large bet in Las Vegas that the cries to end the partisanship will be deafening. I have little doubt that the entire Washington press corps is gearing up for a full scale vapor-fest if the Democrats attempt to demand even the slightest bit of accountability for the past six years of corruption and failure. The Democrats have to accept that they will once again be fighting the entire political establishment.

You can see the outlines already. Time’s cover this week features Barack Obama, the latest empty receptacle of establishment bipartisan wishful thinking:

Obama’s actual speaking style is quietly conversational, low in rhetoric-saturated fat; there is no harrumph to him. About halfway through the hour-long meeting, a middle-aged man stands up and says what seems to be on everyone’s mind, with appropriate passion: “Congress hasn’t done a damn thing this year. I’m tired of the politicians blaming each other. We should throw them all out and start over!”

“Including me?” the Senator asks.

A chorus of n-o-o-o-s. “Not you,” the man says. “You’re brand new.” Obama wanders into a casual disquisition about the sluggish nature of democracy. The answer is not even remotely a standard, pretaped political response. He moves through some fairly arcane turf, talking about how political gerrymandering has led to a generation of politicians who come from safe districts where they don’t have to consider the other side of the debate, which has made compromise–and therefore legislative progress–more difficult. “That’s why I favored Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal last year, a nonpartisan commission to draw the congressional-district maps in California. Too bad it lost.”

This will, I predict, be the latest fad: bipartisan nothingness. Now that the Republicans have successfully moved the political center so far to the right that they drove themselves over the cliff, we must stop all this “partisan bickering” as if the Democrats have been equally partisan and therefore can ask for and expect the right to meet them halfway, which they never, ever do. That means we must let their most heinous ideas congeal into conventional wisdom, let their criminal behavior go unpunished, clean up the global disaster they’ve created, do the heavy lifting to fix the deficit they caused. While we’re fixing things, they’ll count their ill-gotten gains, catch their breath and gear up to trash the place all over again.

Modern bipartisanship can be simply defined as Democrats repeatedly getting taken to the cleaners by Republicans. Until the rules of the game are changed it will remain so whether Democrats are in the majority or not. That pathetic Charlie Brown with the football ritual is what Joe Lieberman is running on and what Joe Klein is angling for with his Blankslate Obama love-fest. (Norquist called it date rape but that’s too kind — the Liebermans and Kleins love being in the spotlight giving wingnuts lapdances. They enjoy every minute of their rightwing orgy — they just don’t want to take responsibility when they turn up with wingnut transmitted diseases.)

It is going to take some deft media management and skillfull legislative action to stop this pattern, but stop it we must. We have had more than two decades to assess this and this is how the conservative movement works. You can almost feel the relief (and even the glee) in some of the recent right wing claims that losing will be good for the party.

Richard Viguerie says it right out loud:

“The importance of losing elections is greatly underrated,” he adds. “There’s not any way Ronald Reagan would have been elected in 1980 if [Gerald] Ford had been elected in ’76.”

This time the stakes are so high and the failures so manifest that we cannot allow this zombie revolution to rise again. No matter how tempting it is to let bygones be bygones and get to work to “fix” the problems, the Democrats must recognize that fixing the problem requires discrediting this Republican revolution once and for all. Until that happens, they will keep coming back and each time they do they destroy a little bit more of our democracy.

We may win this one but we are basically the janitors, winning the contract to clean up after the conservative frat boys trashed the place for the last few years. And Daddy Broder believes it when his boys tell him it was the cleaning people who caused all the damage because he just can’t bring himself to admit that they are out-of-control misfits because they come from good families and dress so nicely when they come to the club. We need to make sure the dean and all his friends have their noses rubbed in what their boys have been up to all these years before we can ever hope to do anything but take out the garbage and change the sheets every few years.

*The fact that the deciding Supreme Court vote was cast by a justice appointed by the candidate’s own father in a case based upon partisan decisions made by the president’s own brother the governor of Florida made this the most egregious case, even compared with Hayes-Tilden race in 1876. It was corrupt on an entirely different level. And looking at it now from the perspective of six years down the road, we can see that that very first act of blatant cronyism presaged the way the Bush administration would work, from Cheney’s energy task force to the botched occupation of Iraq to Katrina.

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Some Good News

by tristero

Michigan Citizens for Science

Michigan Citizens for Science (MCFS) is happy to announce that we won a major victory with the State Board of Education on Tuesday. Having failed to have pro-ID [“intelligent design” creationism] language included in a bill earlier this year to harmonize the educational standards for public and charter schools in the state, House Republicans turned their attention to the State Board of Education and attempted to influence that board to include anti-evolution language into the new science standards. The BOE rejected those attempts with a unanimous vote.

And this is as good a time as any to make the point that Kitzmiller was a far more important decision than Scopes, for three reasons. First of all, unlike Scopes, scientists were permitted to testify extensively on the theory of evolution. Secondly, the judge’s decision was particularly damning, putting creationists on notice that their legal antics were dishonest and wasting the judiciary’s time.

But the most important reason is that, unlike Scopes, the good guys decisively won.

Back in 1925, Scopes was convicted, as part of Darrow’s strategy to appeal the case eventually to the Supreme Court. Instead, the case got kind of waylaid on a technicality. In Kitzmiller, the verdict was an unequivocal slam-dunk for science, reason, and the core American value of separation of church and state.

ht, Frederick Clarkson whose post has all sorts of interesting goodies.

Spying On The Enemy

by digby

Here we have a smoking gun that should convince everyone that we must continue to honor the constitution and require the government to get warrants before spying on Americans. It’s not because we want to help the terrorists and it’s not even because we are paranoid. It’s because we already know they have been spying on people who oppose the Iraq war:

Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

I can’t believe we even have to have this argument or even need this kind of proof. There was never a good reason for the administration to be so stubborn about this issue unless they were doing something nefarious. The FISA court is a notoriously rubber stamp court — it’s designed to be. They always had the ability to spy first and get warrants later and the congress would no doubt have willingly extended the period in between or even enhanced the meaning of probable cause if they’d been asked. They didn’t ask and they have resisted any kind of rational accomodation ever since the program was revealed.

The only logical reason they have adamantly insisted on maintaining this power to freely spy on Americans without any oversight is because they know that even the most rubber stamp court in the land would object to them spying on their political opponents. It’s the only thing that ever made any sense.

This battle is going to come back after the election. Whether they try to do it in the lame duck session or afterwards, there will be tremendous pressure in the press for the Democrats to prove their national security bona fides and Democrats may very well feel that this is one they can punt on to neutralize the GOP trash talk before moving on to other issues. I don’t think winning the congress is going to take this off the table — we still have Bush for two more years trying desperately to save his agenda and his legacy. I predict he will go to the mattresses on this.

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Willful Injustice

This is just awful:

Abdul Rahim Al Ginco thought he was saved when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and overthrew the Taliban regime.

Mr. Ginco, a college student living in the United Arab Emirates, had gone to Afghanistan in 2000 after running away from his strict Muslim father. He was soon imprisoned by the Taliban, and tortured by operatives of Al Qaeda until, he said, he falsely confessed to being a spy for Israel and the United States.

But rather than help Mr. Ginco return home, American soldiers detained him again. Nearly five years later, he remains in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in part, it appears, on the strength of a propaganda videotape made by his torturers.

“This was a 22-year-old kid who was brutally tortured,” one of Mr. Ginco’s American lawyers, Stephen R. Sady, said. “And instead of being liberated, he has endured four and a half years of additional confinement.”

It’s something out of Kafka, so surreal and horrifying that I honestly can’t wrap my mind around the fact that an allegedly civilized country would think this was ok.

But it gets worse:

A bill signed into law by President Bush last December requires the Pentagon to determine if information being used to hold a detainee has been obtained by coercion and “the probative value (if any)” of such information. Another law passed by Congress last month would ban the use of statements made under torture from the military tribunals that are to be used to prosecute some Guantánamo detainees.

But that second law, which awaits the president’s signature, would also sweep away most federal court challenges to the detention of Guantánamo prisoners, including perhaps the one filed by American lawyers for Mr. Ginco, who is now 28.

Well yes. To give this man the right to file a writ of habeas corpus would clog the courts and the terrorists will have won. Much better to leave his life hanging on the whim of the president or some faceless military bureaucrat, either of whom might wake up one morning feeling good about himself and decide to set this poor bastard free.

Really, when you think about it, we could totally unclog the courts by doing away with this archaic writ altogether and just count on the President’s pardon to take care of government errors and injustices. (Like Jack Abramoff, for instance.) This would be more in keeping with the traditional values that so many Americans would like to go back to — the traditional values of feudal England. This whole “rule ‘o law” thing is way overrated anyway.

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A Rout Vs. A Rogue President

by tristero

Riffing on Digby’s post earlier, I agree that Bush et al are too sanguine. And it’s very spooky. But rather than speculate on why they are so apparently clueless about reality (yet again), let’s speculate on something else. And if I’m shown wrong, I’m wrong (and I’ll say so). But I don’t think it’s frivolous to explore the possible implications of what the November vote could bring. It might help us better deal with it and understand the potential and limitations.

Ok, let’s first speculate that it really will be a rout. I, like you, will thank God, Thor, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that it happened. And like you, I’ll give myself a little pat on the back for voting for Democrats and helping make it happen.* But what are the first things the Republicans are gonna do the day after?

That’s right, goopers gonna demand recounts of as many races as they dare to. Lets not forget that many of the national races are major-league gerrymandered. The Republicans will scream something that boils down to, “Hey! No fair! We *#&*@$ rigged these races within an inch of our lives. We made sure those districts would be slamdunk GOP wins. Democrats simply had to be cheating!”

And so there will be recount demands. Lots. And here’s the kicker: Some of those recounts could take a very long time. A very long time, indeed. And cost a lot more money than the Democratic party has. (BTW, a question for legal people out there: Can GOP incumbents be stopped from casting their votes if their seat is up for dispute, the vote is being recounted, and a new term has started?)

Okay, but let’s put the concern about recounts aside. Let’s speculate that regardless of election disputes, a newly Democratic Congress is finally seated. Now what? Well, William Greider sez we should “insinuate” ourselves as “friendly critics” and push progressive, meaning liberal, ideas. And he rounds up some delicious sounding promises if the Dems win the House, such as investigations into waste and constitutionality. I agree (but geez, Bill, “insinuate?” couldn’t you have picked a better word? ) and I promise to help push.

But while we’re trying to bring some commonsense back to national politics, let’s try to anticipate what might plausibly happen. I think it’s a safe bet that a Democratic House that starts genuine investigations will be charged with revenge, payback and fomenting destructive vendettas “during wartime!” by everyone on the right and the mainstream media will let them. And, btw, you haven’t seen hysterical yet from the right. It will be ugly: Remember the “White Collar Riot” in Palm Beach, 2000? But all in all, that doesn’t concern me too much. Those kinds of charges and fights are par for the course, even if they become exceptionally vitriolic this time around.

No. Here’s what concerns me. What if Congress passes laws Bush don’t like?

Well, he may just go along with some of them. And for some he will surely release a signing statement or just quietly ignore them. But for certain laws that he thinks his actively opposing them will play well to other rightwing extremists – say bills that roll back the “Patriot” Act to something more befitting a free society – I think the odds are good that Bush may actually publicly refuse to follow them, citing the “overriding principle of the unitary executive.”

In short, Bush will say, “Try ‘n make me.” And the amen choir at Fox and elsewhere will stand up for him, deploring a fascist Democrat [sic] Congress trying to Subvert the will of the People.

Actually, I don’t think this dramatic – no, melodramatic – scenario is likely for a very simple reason. Congress wouldn’t dare to substantively repeal the “Patriot” Act or the Torture Act or anything else that central to Bushism. I believe that Bush will, as he has done since the beginning, continue to play chicken with the US Constitution, daring Congress to force the constitutional crisis he’s created, which has been going on since before he took office, into a full-blown public meltdown. And I believe, just as they did with the filibuster, that Congress will back down to prevent a public meltdown from happening. Congress, either Dem-controlled or not, will prefer to avoid a very frightening confrontation with a rogue presidency – that could lead who knows where – in the hopes that Bush’s insane challenge to the very structure of the US government simply will end when Bush leaves office in 2009.**

I’m not saying I like this or that I think it’s a good (or bad) idea. All I’m suggesting is that even if there is a rout, don’t expect much. With Bush in office, the serious danger to the country’s kind of government persists. He will do whatever he wants to do. The Congress, like it or not, will be very anxious to do nothing to exacerbate the crisis, hoping to wait him out.

Yes, indeed, a Democratic House/Congress may raise quite a stink over Bush’s desire for the big Iran Bang Bang he’s planning. But even so, Congress will do all it can not to confront Bush but avoid the confrontation.

That’s right: Even a Democratically controlled Congress may very well go along with Bush’s war plans in order to avoid a catastrophic showdown over who really has the true power in America these days.*** It may mean that the confrontation over Bush/Iran could devolve into an open clash between Bush and very reluctant generals, with Congress stuck, badly, in the middle. (And I can clearly see the headlines on Fox declaring a ” military coup d ‘etat” and “mutiny.”) But frankly, I doubt it. I suspect that there will be no major dramatic confrontations and, barring the totally unforeseen, that Bush could get away with starting another war. Possibly even a nuclear war – and then watch the fur fly as the world condemns the US and Congress tries to figure out what to do while the bodies of radiated children are displayed on television and Bush demands “loyalty in a time of active war.”

Don’t get me wrong. A Democratic Congress is a Very Good Thing and we should all be working to see that it happens. But we should be realistic about how much even a Democratic Congress will feel it can do, given a president who has the unchecked power, the corrupt will, and the truly perverse desire to be a cheap dictator instead of an American leader.

——–

*As for those of you who vote your conscience and vote for a Republican-funded third party candidate, may your music collection vanish in a puff of Green, except for the Yanni and Vangelis compilations your well-meaning and trying-to-be-hip aunt bought for you once and that you couldn’t bring yourself to touch, let alone, toss.

**Congress has no reason to doubt Bush will leave at the end of his term, nor do I: Bush is anxious to become Commissioner of Baseball, after all. That’s the job he’s really wanted all along.

*** Yes, I know the situation and his support is not Fall, 2002 even though Congress did cave in back then to avoid exactly such a showdown. However, I don’t think Bush cares about public opinion (or the rule of law). He does what he wants. He’s the decider, not the American people. He has the power and he will exercise it. And how, exactly, does a Congress stop a president who believes that he, not the Supreme Court, is the ultimate arbiter of all legislation? And “during wartime,” as he will surely claim? And if they succeed, what kind of potentially dangerous precedent does that set? I think Congress will try to avoid gettting into a position where those questions have to be answered.

Cheap And Tawdry

by digby

So, the religious right now claims they are all upset about the gay Republicans in their midst.

“It’s time for what we call a ‘Come to Jesus Meeting,'” said Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. “Homosexuality is a dysfunctional lifestyle, and it must be addressed.”

“Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote in an e-mail to activists. “Does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?”

Excuse me, can I just inquire where in the hell they were when this little kabuki took place during the last campaign?

Mary Cheney, one of two Cheney daughters, is openly gay and an official in the Bush-Cheney campaign. The vice president has spoken at length about his daughter’s sexuality and his view of gay relationships, even disagreeing with the president about the need for a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages.

Asked Wednesday night by debate moderator Bob Schieffer whether homosexuality is a choice, Kerry said: “We’re all God’s children, Bob, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was. She’s being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it’s not a choice.”

Kerry issued a statement Thursday after the Cheneys had expressed anger over his remarks: “I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue.”

Cheney told supporters at a rally Thursday in Fort Myers, “You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.” He made no other reference to Kerry’s remarks about his daughter.

Mrs. Cheney, introducing her husband in a post-debate appearance Wednesday night in Coraopolis, Pa., also avoided a specific reference to her daughter’s sexuality when she made clear she thought Kerry had crossed a line into family privacy.

“Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man,” Mrs. Cheney said. “Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

That was one of the most frustrating moments of the campaign. Here they were with an openly gay daughter, working on their campaign, but they had the chutzpah to claim righteous parental indignation at Kerry for mentioning it when asked about gay marriage — a campaign issue stoked by Bush and Cheney to turn out their religious right base to vote against it. I’ll never forget how the crowd cheered wildly when Lynn Cheney made her nonsensical statement.

The only thing I could conclude from that episode is that the religious right is phony or stupid. This recent Claude Rainsing about the “gay cabal” has not changed my mind on that.

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Crazy Jesus Lady

by digby

Roy reads the Crazy Jesus Lady’s latest so you don’t have to. She’s impressed by how all the Republicans are doing an honest reassessment of their values in light of the party’s “problems” while the Democrats are just being so rude about everything, as usual. She says we don’t have “grace.”

Here’s a little advice for her, from her, to think about while she ponders how to deal with the social embarrassment of being a high profile member of the party of criminals, screw-ups and sexual deviants:

A lot of you–you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you’ve become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Let me be very candidly specific. Some of you need to get a good psychologist and a good holy man or woman, a priest or rabbi or minister–or how about all three–and figure out why you’re turning everything in your life into politics. Because I have to tell you what I know: Politics is the biggest, easiest way in all of America to avoid looking at yourself, and who you are, and what fence needs fixing on your own homestead.

A lot of you are in politics not because you want to lead, but because you want to run. From yourselves.

When you’re in politics not to live life but avoid it, you become especially susceptible to a kind of polar thinking. You become convinced you’re with the good team and the good people over here. You become convinced anyone who doesn’t want the same policies you want must be bad. After all, you’re good, so if they disagree they must be bad. When you’re polar like that you dehumanize the people on the other side. And when you dehumanize them–well, then you wind up … starting wars on lies, excusing sexual predation of teen-agers, stealing billions from taxpayers and legalizing torture.

Think about it Peggy. You and your little friends really ought to spend some time with your holy men — if they can pull themselves away from the porn and the spread sheets — and think about how you all managed to pick a group of leaders whose colossal incompetence is only exceeded by their titanic avarice.

I promise I’ll work on my grace.

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Voodoo?

by digby

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president’s news conference this week.

“They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush’s final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

“The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress,” said a Bush ally. “Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month.”

I don’t want to get all tin-foily here, but this just strikes me a very, very odd. Maybe it’s the tinkerbelle strategy taken to the next level. But you do have to wonder why they are so eerily confident in the outcome of an elections that looks more and more to be a rout.

Billmon, from whom I lifted this link, points to this:

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

Chris Hedges
Does Bush Think War With Iran is Preordained?
October 10, 2006

I think most of you readers will probably think of this.

I suspect it may just be something simpler: president pissypants:

The President’s Increasing Isolation: A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President’s increasing isolation. Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he’s wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”

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It’s Not The Sex

by digby

…no matter how titillated he was by the pictures.

Chris Shays keeps digging:

“It was a National Guard unit run amok,” Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable … This is more about pornography than torture.”

Uhm, no it isn’t just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as “material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.”

Rush said, you’ll recall:

LIMBAUGH:And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.

(Apparently, it isn’t just him. I always wondered why Shays stayed in the Republican party and now I know.)

Seriously, do Republicans really think those pictures of the mentally ill patient covered in excrement or the terrified man who suffered that bloody dogbite were intended to cause sexual excitement? Where does this pornography thing come from? Did it cause them sexual excitement?

Shays said Friday he wished he had more fully explained his views at the debate.

“I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be,” he said. “Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it.”

Shays said his debate comments reflected the disturbing photos he has seen of Abu Ghraib abuses: “Naked Iraqis, naked Americans, Americans having sex … gross and despicable pictures.”

I guess he was so overwhelmed by the male nudity and the pictures of Americans having sex (which none of the rest of us have seen) that he didn’t notice this stuff:

11:15 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003. The detainees were brought into the hard site for their involvement in a riot. The seven detainees were flexi cuffed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Soldiers then jumped on the pile, stomped on their hands and feet. CPL GRANER is depicted holding and in the process of punching a detainee. [Detainee name deleted] is detainee with writing on leg wearing the white underwear.

Maybe Republicans think that’s porno, but it sure looks like torture to me.

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“Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant”

by digby

I would become a believer myself if this happened:

Dear Dr. Dobson and Friends

I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America. Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement. You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.

But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark. It is time to leave the Republican Party. Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.

I know that seems like a radical move, sir, but it has become increasingly apparent that the core values of the Republican Party are not Christian values. It is time all Christian leaders ask ourselves if it is possible for God to bless a polluted party. Make no mistake, the Republican Party is polluted.

[…]

Now is the time to form our own party. You and your friends have the influence to do it. Remember how quickly people got behind Ross Perot? Can’t our Christian leaders do the same? We have the resources and the network. It is time to stop wasting them on Republicanism.

The world has gotten smaller. The power of the internet has changed the way Americans communicate. With one click of a mouse, millions can be alerted to Truth. A network of churches and ministries already exists. We can override the lunacy of television ads, without spending a dime, if we focus now on 2008.

Here is a plan.

· Begin now to build the network of partnerships of those who espouse Christian values. Much of it is already in place.

· Draft Judge Roy Moore as the 2008 presidential candidate. He has proven his mettle. Begin working for his election now. There is no question where his loyalty lies. Work to get him on the ballot in all fifty states. Stay out of the Republican primary. Build a war-chest for the general election.

· Begin a training program for future candidates in Constitutional government as it relates to God-ordained freedoms. Train up men who will not compromise for personal gain. Courageous men who stand in the face of the anti-god establishment. Men who will restore Constitutional government. Men in the tradition of Madison and Washington. In two years we will have a group of God-fearing men to run in local races.

· Hire experts to create PAC’s that will support the candidates giving opportunities for Christians to donate to Godly candidates, rather than compromised Republicans. Thumb your nose at the IRS. Would Jesus be silent on the great moral issues of the day because he was afraid of losing His tax-exempt status?

· Give no money to Republican or Democratic candidates–only those who join the new party.

· Offer current God-fearing officials an alternative to status quo politics, and offer an alternative party for them to join.

[…]

Things are not looking good for Republicans. It is time to abandon ship, to build an ark, to raise the standard. Republicanism is making Christianity look bad.

Dr. Dobson, America needs bold new leadership. You and your friends have the influence to pull it off. Are you and your friends willing to give up your seat at the Republican table? With leadership comes responsibility and the Lord will hold us all accountable for the compromising of His standards. The wonks will tell us a third-party can’t win, that we will only divide the vote, that Hillary will be president.

I say God will do something great if we honor His name and His ways. Matthew 19:6 “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So, Dr. Dobson, who will you choose to believe?

Praise the Lord! I think there is no doubt that Jesus would want these people to form a third party of conservative Christians with Judge Roy Moore at the top of the ticket.

I’m with them on this 100%. In fact, I’ll give money to help them make it happen. Republicans are polluted, yes they are. Long live the Conservative Christian Crusade Party. It is exactly what this country needs at a time like this.

h/t to SarahT

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