Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Terro-Hippies

by digby

I think we may have underestimated Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney. All this scary dirty hippie talk isn’t just rhetorical:

Last February the Department of Homeland Security oversaw a large-scale international cyber terror simulation involving 115 public and private organizations in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, all testing their ability to coordinate with one another and respond to computer-driven attacks. It was called Cyber Storm.

Nobody’s said much about the results, or the details of the exercise scenario. But a newly-published DHS PowerPoint presentation on the exercise reveals that the real terrorist threat in cyber space isn’t from obvious suspects like al Qaida types or Connecticut voters; it’s from anti-globalization radicals and peace activists.

This is for real, apparently. The government is actually spending money doing simulations of potential terrorist attacks by peace activists.

The attack scenario detailed in the presentation is a meticulously plotted parade of cyber horribles led by a “well financed” band of leftist radicals who object to U.S. imperialism, aided by sympathetic independent actors.

At the top of the pyramid is the Worldwide Anti-Globalization Alliance, which sets things off by calling for cyber sit-ins and denial-of-service attacks against U.S. interests. WAGA’s radical arm, the villainous Black Hood Society, ratchets up the tension on day one by probing SCADA computerized control systems and military networks, eventually (spoiler warning) claiming responsibility for a commuter rail outage and the heat going out in government buildings.

The Black Hoods are a faction of Freedom Not Bombs, whose name is suspiciously similar to the real Food Not Bombs, which provides vegan meals to the homeless.

[…]

The scenario is nicely laid out, and perhaps technically plausible — some of the incidents are ripped from the headlines, kind of. And I’m frankly glad to see al Qaida wasn’t behind it all, since it seems unlikely that real terrorist groups will ever move to computer attacks, while physical destruction and murder is easier and more terror-producing.

But does the administration really see the far left as potential cyber terrorists ready to take down the power grid and air traffic control systems?

Yes they do. It even has a special name. According to the FBI, it’s called “special interest terrorism” although there does seem to be an unusual focus on what most people would think of as left wing special interests:

Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change. Special interest extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including the general public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to their causes. These groups occupy the extreme fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other movements. Some special interest extremists — most notably within the animal rights and environmental movements — have turned increasingly toward vandalism and terrorist activity in attempts to further their causes.

Since 1977, when disaffected members of the ecological preservation group Greenpeace formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and attacked commercial fishing operations by cutting drift nets, acts of “eco-terrorism” have occurred around the globe. The FBI defines eco-terrorism as the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.

In recent years, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has become one of the most active extremist elements in the United States. Despite the destructive aspects of ALF’s operations, its operational philosophy discourages acts that harm “any animal, human and nonhuman.” Animal rights groups in the United States, including the ALF, have generally adhered to this mandate. The ALF, established in Great Britain in the mid-1970s, is a loosely organized movement committed to ending the abuse and exploitation of animals. The American branch of the ALF began its operations in the late 1970s. Individuals become members of the ALF not by filing paperwork or paying dues, but simply by engaging in “direct action” against companies or individuals who utilize animals for research or economic gain. “Direct action” generally occurs in the form of criminal activity to cause economic loss or to destroy the victims’ company operations. The ALF activists have engaged in a steadily growing campaign of illegal activity against fur companies, mink farms, restaurants, and animal research laboratories.

I think you can see now why the vegans are in the government’s sites, especially vegans who feed the homeless. They simply can’t be trusted. And where there are vegans there are peace activists. (Why do you think they handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at that anti-Halliburton rally the Pentagon monitored instead of ham and cheese like real Americans?) You have to keep an eye on all of them.

I’m afraid this is one situation where we are going to have to fight them here so we don’t have to fight them over there — or something.

Over the years, no one has been killed in any ecoterrorist “action.” But officials reject the claim that ALF/ELF is “nonviolent.”

“It’s just a matter of time before a human life is taken,” warns Rep. Scott McInnis (R) of Colorado

According to the FBI, these hippie peace extremists are the most serious domestic terrorist threat we face. As opposed to, for instance, this guy.

Last month, an east Texas man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Inside the home and storage facilities of William Krar, investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature.

“Without question, it ranks at the very top of all domestic terrorist arrests in the past 20 years in terms of the lethality of the arsenal,” says Daniel Levitas, author of “The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right.”

But outside Tyler, Texas, the case is almost unknown. In the past nine months, there have been two government press releases and a handful of local stories, but no press conference and no coverage in the national newspapers.

Experts say the case highlights the increased cooperation and quicker response by US agencies since Sept. 11. But others say it points up just how political the terror war is. “There is no value for the Bush administration to highlighting domestic terrorism right now,” says Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “But there are significant political benefits to highlighting foreign terrorists, especially when trying to whip up support for war.”

Mr. Levitas goes even further: “The government has a severe case of tunnel vision when it comes to domestic terrorism. I have no doubt whatsoever that had Krar and his compatriots been Arab-Americans or linked to some violent Islamic fundamentalist group, we would have heard from John Ashcroft himself.”

Let’s not be hasty. Remember this, from this past January:

After taking nine years to penetrate what they called a “vast eco-terrorism conspiracy” in Oregon and four other Western states, federal prosecutors announced on Friday the indictment of 11 people in connection with a five-year wave of arson and sabotage claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

The 17 attacks, which occurred from 1996 to 2001, caused no deaths but resulted in an estimated $23 million in damage to lumber companies, a ski resort, meat plants, federal ranger stations and a high-voltage electric tower.

“Today’s indictment proves that we will not tolerate any group that terrorizes the American people, no matter its intentions or objectives,” Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said at a news conference.

Joining Gonzales, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said: “Investigating and preventing animal rights and environmental extremism is one of the FBI’s highest domestic priorities.”

You can see why they are concentrating on the vicious environmentalists. Between 1996 and 2001 these terrorists caused 23 million dollars in property damage whereas it’s been years since a rightwing extremist has actually killed anyone and more than a decade since the big one, Oklahoma City. There’s no reason to make a big deal out of some white supremecist with a WMD in his living room when you have these SUV vandals on the loose. It’s a much better use of government resources to run sophisticated war games and concentrate large numbers of resources on vegans.

This threat, my friends, is why Ned Lamont must be stopped. With men like him in the government it’s only a matter of time until one of these terro-hippies gets around to killing you in your beds and writing Helter Skelter in organic beet juice on the bedroom walls.

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Superiority Theory

by digby

An allegedly liberal writer at the New Republican has made her bones as a beltway contrarian today with a stirring defense of Ann Coulter. She writes about how she used to work on an assembly line in a red state and had to engage in rude polemics to win political arguments — at which point stupid men would invariably be flummoxed by her brilliance and start talking about her ass. Now, darn it all, she finds that all the ever-so-smart DC types are just the same way — when you “bitch slap” them out of their “robotic-pundit” routines with what I assume must be Coulteresque dialog, they go all assembly line on her and start talking about her looks.

That is just so, like, unfair.

That is why I love Ann Coulter. Coulter shocks and offends, but underneath her offensiveness is a grain of truth that people cope with by critiquing her hair. Americans like comfort: comfort food, comfort shoes, comfort pundits to reinforce everything we already believe. Ann Coulter is not comfort. I love that she pisses people off. I love her outsized confidence, rare in females who’ve gone through puberty, which means she doesn’t turn into a pile of stuttering mush when an interview turns to her body. I love the way her face flickers devilishly for just a second when an interviewer wraps his own noose–the joy tinged with a bit of sadness, as if to say, Oh what fun this is, but do you have to make it so easy?

Yes, yes, Coulter has said some terrible things. But I don’t think it’s the terrible things that really bother liberals. Coulter makes us cringe not when she lies, but when she says things we wish weren’t true. Let’s go to the tape. Asked to define the First Amendment: “An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason.” Just completely terrible, I know. But I have to admit, I giggled–having recently covered a pro-choice rally where I interviewed a very nice young woman whose nipples were covered by naral stickers.

I will just say for the record that Coulter ‘s lies do piss me off and I don’t find in her “bitch slaps” even a grain of truth. I do not see the first amendment as an excuse for “overweight women to dance in pasties” and the New York Times to “commit treason.” That’s ridiculous on its face. I, like most Americans, define the first amendment as the right to free speech, full stop, even for heinous, shrieking dickheads like Coulter.

But let’s face it, this is really just a cheap fat woman joke, not a bold grain of truth. Whatever. Lowest common denominator lizard brain laughs will always be with us. But please — let’s not elevate it to insight. (I would recommend that anyone who cares about character should probably read what Aristotle had to say about this form of humor in Nicomachean Ethics — if you don’t feel like an asshole for laughing at Coulter’s lowbrow jokes after that, you definitely are one. They don’t call it “Superiority Theory” for nothing.)

But aside from all that, why would Reeve, the journalist, ignore the second half of Coulter’s comment — you know, the one about the NY Times commiting treason? I suppose some might find it funny, but I would hope that any journalist would be laughing very, very nervously at such talk. How sure can Reeve be that Coulter is joking when there are many on the right who are dead serious about this?

Or take Coulter’s most infamous line: Writing about her friend’s death on September 11, she finished her essay with, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Wow, that’s pretty indefensible. The United States could never–would never–do such a thing. Instead, we’ve invaded their countries, killed their leaders, and are desperately trying to convert them to secularism. (It’s not like mullahs appreciate the difference.)

I can’t help but wonder again why Reeve calls herself a liberal. Liberals are not mullahs and do appreciate the difference. And most of us find the invading and leader-killing part a fairly dicey proposition as well, especially since Coulter’s screed was pretty thin on just who “they” were other than “swarthy men.” Nobody ever said that Coulter wasn’t a conservative — she’s as mainstream as they get. That’s the problem; what she said and what they did is indefensible.

On the BBC show “Newsnight,” Jeremy Paxman asked Coulter if she’d like to withdraw her infamous statements about the September 11 widows. (If you’ve been living in a spiderhole, she called the more politically inclined among them “broads”.) “No, I think you can save all the would-you-like-to-withdraw questions, but you could quote me accurately. I didn’t write about the 9/11 widows. I wrote about four widows cutting campaign commercials for John Kerry and using the fact that their husbands died on 9/11 to prevent anyone from responding,” she said. The thing is … it’s kind of true. A little. It is a little absurd to hold up a person as an expert judge of the 9/11 Commission Report, for example, just because she lost a loved one. Liberals do tend to do that kind of thing, and it makes us look like weenies.

If all Ann Coulter did was call them “broads” I don’t think anyone would have been offended. What she said (among other things) was this:

“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis.”

“And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy.

Here’s the thing. 9/11 has been turned into a sacred cow by Coulter and the right, not by liberals and not by the widows. They have fetishized it to such a degree that history is now divided into two parts, before 9/11 and after, just like Christ’s birth. It has spawned a War on Terror which has no discernable end and which excuses every insane decision they’ve made since then. You can read columns in major newpapers today in which torture and genocide are casually bandied about as reasonable. There is no questioning any of this without unleashing a torrent of rabid, rightwing opprobrium, accusing the queestioner of everything from appeasement to treason.

As for “liberals tend to do this kind of thing,” think about this: ask yourself how conservatives respond to any criticism of religion or the military. For instance, if a liberal dared to criticize a returning Iraq vet for his view that the war is an important battle in the War on Terror, the entire rightwing would rise en masse and bite off the offending critics head — despite the soldier’s lack of geopolitical expertise. Go ahead, try it.

It’s a game that’s played on both sides and anyone who doesn’t know that has either been spending way too much time among the political class or shares the conservative view that only liberals can be weenies. This kind of santimonious weenie-ism is a tried and true political tactic that has actually been perfected by the right. Jesus, they got away with whining “this is not a goooood man” when John Kerry had the temerity to point out that the Cheney’s openly gay daughter was well … openly gay.

Coulter herself went on Hannity and Colmes and went ballistic claiming that liberals were racist for criticizing Condi Rice:

COULTER: I don’t know why you [Beckel] keep talking about [the unfair treatment received by] Bill Clinton when your party — I mean, I understand why you’d like to change the subject, but your party is being biased and condescending about a black woman.

[…]

COULTER: I understand why you are so terrified of letting us point out what racists the Democrats are and how they have a big problem with black women.

Here’s Coulter just this week:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn’t involve wearing a paper hat.

I assume that the iconoclastic, fun-loving, unconventional Reeve thinks “it’s kind of true” that liberals are racists and that Maxine Waters would be working at McDonalds without affirmative action. And even if it isn’t, it’s just side-splitting to think of Waters, who was born in 1938 and who became a school teacher long before affirmative action was even conceived of, in a paper hat. It’s always ok to make fun of black liberals. They are uppity weenies after all.

And then there are the insults. Chris Matthews asked: “How do you know that Bill Clinton’s gay?” Coulter, who had earlier said the former president had exhibited some “latent homosexuality,” gestured casually from behind her sunglasses. “Ah, no, he may not be gay. But Al Gore? Total fag.” OK, that one really is indefensible. Because gratuitous gay jokes have, um, no precedent in pop culture whatsoever. I admit it, I snickered. What can I say–her timing was great. (And yes, later, she conceded, “That’s what we call in the writing business a joke.”).

Perhaps if Coulter were performing at The Comedy Store that might be true. Chris Matthews, however, hosts a political show. If someone doesn’t know or understand the history of the Republican party feminizing Democrats then perhaps it’s understandable that they would they fail to see why this matters. But one does expect serious people to understand that such “jokes” often serve such political purposes.

Coulter is a pretty woman who holds up a mirror showing us the ugliest parts of ourselves. She makes nice liberals think bad thoughts–particularly about whether they would have sex with her. Which is why we often fight back dirty, talking about her looks. Andrew Sullivan called her “a drag-queen-fascist-impersonator.” The New York Times said she’s “a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress.” Last week at TNR Online, her arguments were described as “about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention.”

In June, the guests of “Hardball” discussed Coulter’s latest book in which she made her comments about the September 11 widows, denounced her offensiveness, bemoaned her book sales, and pontificated on what it all means about “society.” That obviously led to Matthews’s next question, “Do you find her physically attractive, Tucker?” And Tucker Carlson dodged, as did the other guests, until the question was turned on Matthews, who replied, “You guys are all afraid to answer. No, I find her–I wouldn’t put her–well, she doesn’t pass the Chris Matthews test.”

I only shudder that I, too, might not pass the Chris Matthews test. All wrapped up in liberals’ snarky comments about her hair is a wellspring of latent guilt for judging her by her hair. Even after all those gender studies classes in college, even after having known/befriended/dated/been That Girl who Doesn’t Shave Her Pits, after pretending to like Ani DiFranco, liberals still can’t get over her hair. I love Ann Coulter because, in her, I see a loudmouth on the assembly line, fighting not to be squished and whittled and boxed into the shape Washington seems to think fits a girl just right.

Yes, poor little Coulter, stuck on the assembly line of liberal political hegemony, is just fighting for her right to be an obnoxious bitch with fabulous hair — a truly important calling if there ever was one. And the fact that liberal men find her repulsive and reject her sexually is due to the fact that she’s attractive and therefore they feel guilty for wanting to fuck someone who challenges their political beliefs. Uh huh. That must be it.

Apparently, Ms Reeve, who is also quite attractive, feels some kinship with poor misunderstood Ms Coulter who has made no secret of her belief that the “pretty girls” like herself are her allies:

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the “F-word” are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.

[…]

As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the U.N. Security Council’s approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.

Yes, it’s awfully rude of people to derisively comment on Coulter’s looks isn’t it? It’s not like she asks for it. And one can certainly see why some attractive young women would not want to be associated with the revolting stereotype that Coulter perpetuates about liberal females. One doesn’t expect them to be writing for The New Republic, however.

Ann Coulter is not a brash comedienne, she is a propagandist and if you can’t see that she is deadly serious you are a fool. She is part of a billion dollar industry that is designed solely to degrade, demean and destroy liberalism. It is subsidized by millionaires for the benefit of millionaires and they count on the ignorance of certain members of the public (and immature liberal writers) to fall for their scam.

Ann Coulter is laughing her ass off today at the silly writer over at TNR who doesn’t get it. And for the first time ever, I’m laughing right along with her.

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The Looming Tower

by tristero

Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower” really is a must read. It is probably the single best one-volume history available of al Qaeda and the events leading to 9/11. Events that have always seemed puzzling, and chronologies that were confusing become quite clear, as does the motivations and culpabilities of the people responsible.

Wright all but indicts the CIA for criminal obstruction of justice in refusing to share information with the FBI on the infamous Kuala Lumpur meeting of al Qaeda operatieves where 9/11 was clearly on the agenda. And that’s only for starters – there were times the CIA literally dangled photographs in front of the FBI squad and refused to identify them. Even worse (!), the CIA knew that two al Qaeda operatives had traveled from KL into the US and refused to share the info with the FBI. Wright correctly notes that this would have been enough information for the FBi to derail the 9/11 plot when combined with all the other information the gov’t had.

But the FBI had its own craziness. It grossly misinterpreted a law as requiring agents never to share or receive information from intelligence services. Furthermore, the timid bureaucratic culture of the FBI had little space for the likes of John O’Neill, who also, towards the end of his career, made some careless errors that his enemies used to prevent him from possibly replacing Richard Clarke, who had become fed up with the incompetence of his bosses at the White House, and their lack of understanding of the threat from bin Laden.

Perhaps all the information in The Looming Tower is already available, but I’ve found this to be the most compelling narrative yet about al Qaeda. However, I must confess I had no idea al Qaeda, in the early days, actually had a health plan for all its members, It was also gratifying that Wright avoided the ethnocentric errors that marred, ever so slightly, Steve Coll’s excellent Ghost Wars: Wright knows better than to describe Wahabbism as “puritanical,” for instance

Some of the reviews say this will be the “standard reference” for the history of Qutbism, al Qaeda, and the US. In fact as detailed as it is, it is much too short, or, if you prefer, succinct. A genuinely useful standared reference will last thousands of pages and go into far more detail about many issues, including the philosophy and influence of Qutb; the exceedingly complex political situation in Afghanistan in the 80’s and 90’s, the eerie parallel wordview between the neo-conservatives such as Frum and Perle who famously – and insanely – called for The End of Evil, and the manifesto writers of al Qaeda and al Jihad, who used the exact same phrase to attract recruits; and so on.

That said, for most of us, who don’t know Arabic or don’t have connections to the spy world, but who nevertheless want to get a good sense of what happened, and why, Wright’s book is probably one of the best places to start. Beautifully written, intelligent, and objective – meaning capable of genuinely careful analysis that in no way shirks the obligation to come to firm conclusions about errors and incompetence – it’s really worth your time.

Irate Moderates

by digby

The day after the Connecticut primary the NY Times published an editorial that I have been thinking about in the days since. It was called “Revenge of the Irate Moderates” and I think it was more insightful than I recognized at the time:

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

When Mr. Lieberman told The Washington Post, “I haven’t changed. Events around me have changed,” he actually put his finger on his political problem. His constituents felt that when the White House led the country into a disastrous international crisis and started subverting the nation’s basic traditions, Joe Lieberman should have changed enough to take a lead in fighting back.

It seems this race in Connecticut has become a clarifying moment for many people and in the long run Lieberman may have done his the party a favor. Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum each have interesting posts up today discussing their personal odysseys. I urge you to read them both because it’s important for those of us who are temperamentally fiery partisans to understand how this unfolded for those who are more temperamentally moderate. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that either Drum or Marshall needed any kind of political educating or conversion experience to understand modern politics — they are smarter than virtually anyone I know. It was, I think, a psychological reckoning rather than a political one and I believe that’s key.

Those of moderate political temperament are naturally resistent to the rather radical belief that politics have become an ugly, bare knuckle battle in which winning is defined as stopping the other side cold — or winning elections and passing legislation through brute partisan force if necessary. I suspect that many people are resistent to this idea and for good reason. While there are some on the right who enjoy getting in others’ faces, most people prefer a peaceful existence and avoid confrontation until they are absolutely forced to do it.

It took me a little while to recognize what was happening too. I was a Clintonite who was willing to see if the third way could work. But I’ve got a strong streak of anti-authoritarianism in me that viscerally recoiled at the conservative movement’s partisan misuse of the congress and the legal system during that era. Perhaps because I grew up in a rightwing household I understood that the bipartisan rules we had all assumed were a permanent fixture in American politics were no longer operative. By 2000, I was thoroughly radicalized and believed that Democrats had to play a different, more disciplined, brand of politics even if it meant losing in the short term (which, after 9/11, I figured would happen anyway.)It was clear to me that third way politics had no future once the Republicans had a taste of power and revealed themselves.

But that’s me. I’m naturally partisan anyway. I grew up in a rightwing family and I’ve had emotional, take-no-prisoners political arguments my whole life — I get how these macho wingnuts love the fight and will do anything to win. Most of us have been lucky to avoid such highly charged confrontations (at least since the Vietnam era) and quite naturally assume that the opposition is reasonable. (Most people you meet in real life are.) Modern rightwingers, however, are a different animal.

Atrios touches on how this led to Democratic paralysis in a post today in which he discusses the policy implications of all this. In his own pithy style he puts it this way:

The politics side has to do with a Democratic party in which all the leading Democrats are forever running against their own party. Triangulation can work for one man, but when every leading Democrat is constantly falling all over themselves (yes, this is exaggeration) to distance themselves from Those Damn Dirty Democrats, you have a party which is without foundation and where capitulation is confused with bipartisanship.

The Lieberman race seems to have finally resolved the Democratic party’s confusion on this. When even Joe Klein is correctly characterizing the Republicans as using the war for partisan gain, the zeitgeist has clearly shifted. All factions of the Democratic party, with the exception of the actual DLC membership, seem to be coming to this realization which is absolutely key to making a case for the Democrats in November and beyond.

I think we are now seeing more political analysts recognizing this than not and that’s a huge step. I cannot predict how a message of contrast and confrontation will affect the unaffiliated moderates in the electorate but I think the Democrats must at least try it. The strategy of blurring differences has not worked for us in this partisan era and we need to try something new.

But because of this recent shift among Dem moderates, I think there’s some hope that the Independents and moderate Republicans who are appalled at the results of total Republican rule may also see that the Democrats are getting their act together and are willing and able to confront the Republicans and change course. I believe our biggest problem among those people has not been the hippie boogeyman (which nobody under 50 really gets anyway) but rather the idea that Democrats don’t stand for anything and are ineffectual against the Republicans. People won’t vote for you if they feel that it’s pointless. Going with the confident winners and hoping they will learn from experience is a better bet.

No matter how upsetting the current political situation may seem or how unpopular the Republicans are, if people feel that it will make no difference they won’t bother to vote. A strong, united Democratic party can change that. I think we might be getting there.

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Chutzpah

by digby

How does he get away with this?

Lieberman aides said that Mr. Lamont’s association with Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson — both of whom campaigned vigorously for Mr. Lamont — was a political albatross that helped explain why Mr. Lieberman believed he could win over a majority of voters.

“Primary night was the first time that many Connecticut voters saw Lamont on TV, and he’s surrounding himself with two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party,” said Dan Gerstein, a veteran Lieberman aide who was appointed communications director for the campaign last week.

Here you have a Democrat who has rejected the result of a Democratic primary, is now running as an independent calling members of his own party soft on terrorism and out of the mainstream and he has the balls to call other people “divisive and problematic in the Democratic party?” Wow.

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French Code Words

by digby

There is some debate as to whether George Felix Allen was making a deliberate slur or whether he was just repeating his French mother’s phrase for “dirty arab” without fully realizing what he was saying (or thinking nobody would know what he was saying.)

I don’t think so. I think this is racist code of the worst sort. Allen isn’t just another southern good old boy who can’t tell the difference between his family heritage and racism. He chose to become a neoconfederate long after it was out of fashion, in defiance of accepted norms of his time and he has built his good old boy reputation partially because of it. He didn’t inherit his brand of racism — he chose it.

The evidence suggests that “macaca” is a slur that American white supremecists have adopted from European white supremecists to apply to dark skinned people. And what this means is that George Allen is conversant in the language of white supremecists and he uses that language in his conversation. And while it’s impossible to prove, I believe he used that word deliberately because it is a word that a racist like him would know that “certain” people would correctly identify.

It’s right out of the Lee Atwater playbook, at whose knee Mary Matalin, Allen’s biggest supporter, studied. Bob Herbert reported in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times of a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater in which he explains the GOP’s Southern Strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er” – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er.”

That was Atwater, even as he was trying to say that racism was dying, helpfully explaining that the GOP mantra of “tax cuts” was another way for a candidate to say that you didn’t believe in government hand outs to black people. (Too bad nobody listened to him at the time and figured out a way to fight that, but it’s too late now.) But what he really revealed was that racism had just gone underground. “Macaca” is as abstract as it gets — to anybody but a white supremecist who knows exactly what it means. It’s just one of the newer code words for “ni**er, ni**er, ni**er” and Allen, who kept a noose in his office for years, is the type of guy who would know it.

George Felix Allen is the most disgusting serious candidate for president this country has produced in many decades. The fact that he’s backed by a large number of powerful mainstream Republicans for the nomination shows what that party really is, even now, after all this time.

Update: Allen has apologized again, sort of:

“I also made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely false.”

“I never want to embarrass or demean anyone and I apologize if my comments offended this young man

bullshit.

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Take It To The Wingnuts

by digby

Most of you have probably already read the fascinating polling data from MYDD that challenges the conventional wisdom about the Busby race in CA-50 (if you haven’t, be sure to do it.) If you don’t want to slog through all the numbers, here’s an interesting article from the LA CityBeat that gives the basic overview.

Busby’s campaign turns out to have been far less effective than the media suggested. While she certainly galvanized Democrats in the 50th Congressional District, and while Republican turnout was markedly lower than usual because of disenchantment with the status quo, she failed to capture the one constituency she desperately needed to put her over the top, which was independent voters. Her promise to push for better ethics in Washington fell utterly flat with them, because they were almost as suspicious about the integrity of the Democratic Party as they were of the Republicans. Things might have been differenBt if Busby had been running against Duke Cunningham himself, but the man was in prison, not on the ballot. Independents, according to the survey, either stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate.

What might have induced those independents to vote for Busby? According to Rick Jacobs, the Courage Campaign’s chair, all it would have taken was a simple promise to hold the administration’s feet to the fire. “Voters want a candidate to say, ‘I will hold George Bush accountable,’” Jacobs told me. “They think the country’s heading in the wrong direction, they disapprove of George Bush, and therefore they want to know: who is going to be most likely to call him to account and put the country on a better path? I don’t think Busby did any of that.”

[…]

Busby herself appears to have taken some of these lessons on board as she gears up for a rematch against Bilbray in November. Curiously, it might actually be easier for her to win this time – if she can use Bilbray’s few months’ tenure on Capitol Hill as ammunition to suggest that a Republican representative will do nothing to force the Bush administration to change course. According to Rick Jacobs, the party as a whole would do well to approach the midterms in a similar spirit. “This is how the party can define itself, nationally,” he said. “Bush is taking the country in the wrong direction, and Iraq is exhibit number one. Vote for us, and we are going to force the president to come up with a plan to get us out of the there. A Republican congress won’t do anything. That’s the message.”

That was certainly Ned Lamont’s message, and it worked. Now the Democrats need to stop fighting among themselves, and take the message to a broader national audience. They might not have had the courage to stand up against a popular Republican administration. Now all they need is the courage to oppose an unpopular Republican administration. Really, how hard can that be?

Democrats have been demonized as being weak and ineffectual for so long that Independent voters naturally figure that they can’t or won’t do anything to stop the Republicans. Democratic partisans may believe, but in order to get a robust turnout throughout the country, even many of them still need to be convinced that their party leadership will follow through. Democrats must make the case in no uncertain terms that they are prepared to hold Republicans accountable — which means that they must be willing to talk about the lack of oversight and they must promise to hold hearings into specific issues.

The Republicans will scream like banshees, but that actually plays into the Democrats’ hands if they have the nerve to just stare them down and tell them to bring it. Rove’s tried to innoculate against this with his little “omg! they’re going to act just like we did and impeach the president!” message but its primary purpose was to get Democrats to back off. He knew that if Democrats ran on holding his boy accountable they would win. Now we have the data to back that up.

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Send Her Back To Normal

by digby

The President of the most powerful nation on why Hezbollah isn’t the real winner in this war:

The world got to see — got to see what it means to confront terrorism. I mean, it’s a — it’s the challenge of the 21st century, the fight against terror.

A group of ideologues, by the way, who use terror to achieve an objective — this is the challenge.

And that’s why in my remarks I spoke about the need for those of us who understand the blessings of liberty to help liberty prevail in the Middle East.

And the fundamental question is: Can it? And my answer is: Absolutely, it can. I believe that freedom is a universal value. And by that, I mean I believe people want to be free.

People want to be free. One way to put it is I believe mothers around the world want to raise their children in a peaceful world. That’s what I believe…

Could somebody please keep him away from Karen? This is just embarrassing.

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Craven Hawk

by digby

Atrios flags this piece by Spencer Ackerman which I also thinks is worth reading. Ackerman points out that Lieberman’s reputation for sophisticated foreign policy smarts is nothing more than knee jerk me-too-ism:

Lieberman’s judgment on defense questions is like that of a stopped clock: the hawkish position, applied consistently, has to be right sooner or later. What Lieberman is asking Connecticut — and the Democratic Party, and the country — to accept is that the only secure America is a bellicose America. And that position is a guarantee of future Iraqs.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Lieberman’s defense record is the difficulty of defining Liebermanism. On the central question of why a nation should or shouldn’t go to war, Lieberman’s answer is simply, “yes!” His Senate-floor explanation of his 1991 vote for the Gulf War wasn’t a ringing endorsement of the need to confront Saddam Hussein, or a defense of Kuwaiti sovereignty, or even a simple explanation of how the war served American interests – none of which were difficult cases to make. Rather, Lieberman contended that the war was necessary “because our president has asked us to vote to support him in this hour of challenge.”

This is not a matter of philosophy. It’s a lazy and craven purely political stance that was perfectly illustrated by Jacob Weisberg’s Slate piece the other day:

The Lamont-Lieberman battle was filled with echoes and parallels from the Vietnam era. Democratic reformers and anti-establishment insurgents weren’t wrong about that conflict, either. Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue. In turning viciously on stalwarts of the Cold War era like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson, anti-war insurgents called into question the Democratic Party’s underlying commitment to challenging Communist expansion. The party’s Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense—and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism—helped push a lot of Americans who didn’t much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon.

Lieberman, a charter member of the DLC, learned the lesson so well that he does not discriminate at all when it comes to military action. If a war is on the table, he’s for it. And that’s pretty much what Weisberg prescribes as the proper Democratic position if they want to be taken seriously on foreign policy and national security.

You can be craven about a lot of things, but war is one issue you really should think twice about. Not only is it a moral question it is a most serious question of national security. Once you unleash the dogs of war, all kinds of unintended, catastrophic things can happen as we are now witnessing in Iraq. It should never be just a matter of politics.

I think that it’s quite clear from Holy Joe’s record that, in his case, it is. He’s voted enthusiatically for every military action that’s been proposed since he took office. I doubt there are many Republicans out there with that kind of record (although their reasons for voting against military action in the 90’s were completely partisan.) He clearly doesn’t even think about it.

What Weisberg and Lieberman and other DLC types have done is back Democrats into the corner by agreeing with the GOP that they must always follow the Republicans over the cliff or risk being called weak on security. This is political blackmail and it’s exactly what led us into Iraq. The Democratic caucus was terrified of the repurcussions (especially post 9/11) of their votes against the first Gulf War and I have no doubt that guys like Lieberman were fingerwagging in the cloakroom every chance they got.

Joe Lieberman has taken the easy route on national security time after time and it’s led to this horrible mess we’re in. The sooner he’s out of the Democratic party the better for everyone. This lazy, rubber stamping of GOP warmongering for political purposes has paralyzed the Democratic party on national security and it’s time the party rids itself of it.

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Unity ’06

by digby

George W. Bush is not committing to support the Republican nominee for Senate in Connecticut:

Q Does the President support the Republican candidate for Senate in Connecticut?

MR. SNOW: The President supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut, and wishes them a successful election in November.

Greg Sargent asked the Lieberman campaign over the week-end if they would demand that the GOP stop using their candidate as a talking point. This is their reply:

“Joe Lieberman has no interest in being Dick Cheney or Karl Rove’s political football, just as he has no interest in being a political football for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. In fact, he’s fed up with this kind of petty partisan game playing which is stalemating Washington and blocking progress on the problems people care about. That is exactly why he is campaigning for a new politics of unity and purpose that will deliver results for the people of Connecticut. The Republicans and Democrats in Washington can spin the results any way they want, but Joe Lieberman is focused on bringing meaningful change for his constituents.”

So we have Joe Lieberman claiming to be above partisan politics and George W. Bush claiming to be above partisan politics. Look for more of that rhetorical synergy going into the fall.

Update: Armando has more.

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