More YKOS
by digby
Here’s the schedule, which includes those panels that are being streamed. CSPAN 2 will be carrying the DailyKos superstar panel later today. (Or so they announced.)
This one looks like fun.
I hope they talk about Coulter. Scathingly…
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Cipher
by digby
Bush is on TV right now, going on and on about Al Zarqawi being a criminal mastermind whose raison d’etre was to stop democracy in iraq. Blah, blah, blah.
Does he have any credibility at all these days? I hear this stuff and my first reaction is to say “sez who?” I realize that I’m a member of the partisan angry left and all, but I have to suspect that at 30%, I’m not the only one. I look at the guy now and see nothing but a lying loser.
Imagine what other world leaders think. Or terrorists. It’s dangerous.
Update: Get a load of this:
People are goin’ ta look back on this moment in history and say a democracy in Iraq helped change the world for the better and helped provide security. It certainly helped address the simmering resentment that exists in a part of a region that for too long has been ignored, see…
It’s addressed it allright. Jesus, what a delusional fool he is. We’ll be lucky if 9/11 and Iraq are the worst things that happened to us under this idiots leadership.
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YKOS Update
by digby
C-Span2 is broadcasting the Plame panel at Yearly Kos as we speak. I’ll let you know if I find out when it is to be re-broadcast. It’s fascinating. The panel includes Larry Johnson, Joseph Wilson, Murray Waas, Christy Smith and Marcy Wheeler. Heavyweights all.
And yes, Jane Hamsher is a babe.
Update: You can also sign up for Air America’s streaming coverage, here.
Update II: For those of you at work, Skippy thoroughly liveblogged it, here!
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Epistomolia
by digby
I have written a lot about the right’s infuriating epistemic relativism over the past few years. It’s a difficult concept to discuss. I always liked Josh Marshall’s short tag, “up-is-downism,” but nothing has seemed truly sufficient to explain this strange amorphous thing until now. Finally, someone with writing chops and serious brain power has definitively observed this phenomenon. Behold, The Editors:
Far away, in the magical country of Epistomolia, there live two peoples. One people, called the Seers, believed that Truth is, that to know Truth requires Knowledge, and Knowledge is gained from observation, and from the application of reason. The Truth is the Truth is pretty much the Truth, the Seers believed, and the only trick was knowing how to see it. These people are, in many ways, much like you and me.
The other people, the Makers, believed that a tribe can create knowledge through the incantation of belief, and, either by overwhelming withvolume or harmonizing with the incantations of other tribes, truth becomes. When choosing to harmonize, ancient custom dictates that for something given, something must also be taken away, for the exchange must be fair – always “a lie for a lie, and a truth for a truth” as their ancient saying goes. At first blush this might seem a more generous way of that of the Seers, and in many ways it was. But the deals the Makers made were not meant to last – after you had agreed to meet them half-way, it wasn’t long before they came back a bit stronger and declared you had to meet them half-way to half-way, and then half-way to that, and so on until, after a while, it always seemed like one tribe had exactly what it wanted, and the other tribe had nothing. These people are, in many ways, much like certain people who shall remain nameless.
Read on. It only gets better…
I love The Editors. In a purely platonic way, of course. (I think)
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They Call The Windbag Pariah
by digby
Steve Benen wonders if Ann Coulter has finally reached pariah status. I doubt it very seriously. She entertains the media and that is what they like above all. And I suspect she says many things with which they agree — or , at least, find funny. She appeals to their puerile sense of humor.
This new controversy is just going to help her sell books. Conservatives love it when the alleged liberal media go after one of their flamethrowers. It validates everything they believe in. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brian Williams’ little scold the other night wasn’t designed for that very purpose. Has anyone done any research on what interests they might have in common? I’m serious. This “controversy” is simply not believable in light of the kind of things this shrieking harpy has been saying for years.
It’s ok for her to say:
“Liberals hate America, they hate flagwavers, they hate abortion opponents. They hate all religions except Islam post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do.”
But somehow, her saying that the 9/11 widows are exploiting their husbands’ death is beyond the pale? C’mon. The political media are very well aware of her schtick and know exactly what they have in this heinous bitch.
I have personally never heard anyone say something like this:
“Conservatives hate America, they hate blacks and they hate women. They hate all religions except Christianity. Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like conservatives do.”
Has Michael Moore ever said anything like that? I don’t think so. Indeed, I don’t think there’s any equivalent on the left to the kind of blanket condemnation of “liberalism” that the bully faction of the RWNM engages in with such relish. Coulter and her ilk don’t just attack liberal political leaders or the Democratic party. They go out of their way to attack their fellow Americans. They bring the fight to the dining room table and say, “If you, cousin Sally, don’t agree with me you hate America.”
Now, I’m willing to get down in the gutter if that’s what she wants. We can start calling out “conservatives” in general instead of Bush or Republicans. In fact, I suspect this may be where this ends up, unfortunately. And I’m prepared for the mainstream media go completely crazy decrying the “angry left” and it’s purveyors of uncivil discourse while Ann Coulter and her buddies lie on the fainting couch hiding their smug smiles behind their fluttering fans.
I. Don’t. Care. Ann Coulter is never going to be a pariah. Her nasty style appeals to the media. They enjoy it. Sadly, I suspect that her downfall will come when she loses her sexual appeal, as everyone does past a certain age. There can be no doubt that being the attractive rightwing dominatrix is a huge part of her appeal for many in the press corps. It goes right to their twisted little lizard brains.
Update: Nice post on the Coulter gaffe at FDL, here.
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It’s Now or Never
by digby
Most of you have probably seen this one by Glenn Greenwald today. It seems that Arlen Specter has introduced a bill that will give give blanket amnesty to the president and his cohorts for the wireless wiretapping:I
The idea that the President’s allies in Congress would enact legislation which expressly shields government officials, including the President, from criminal liability for past lawbreaking is so reprehensible that it is difficult to describe. To my knowledge, none of the other proposed bills — including those from the most loyal Bush followers in the Senate — contained this protective provision. And without knowing anywhere near as much as I would need to know in order to form a definitive opinion, the legality of this provision seems questionable at best. It’s really the equivalent of a pardon, a power which the Constitutional preserves for the President. Can Congress act as a court and simply exonerate citizens from criminal conduct?
I have two thoughts about this. The first is that this completely takes the wind out the wingnuts’ sails about amnesty for undocumented workers.
Specter’s bill, introduced yesterday at a committee meeting, was a compromise worked out with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and designed to gather enough Republican support so it can be taken to the floor for a vote. During a conversation with Cheney yesterday afternoon first disclosed by an administration official, Specter (R-Pa.) said he arranged to have Justice Department officials begin reviewing his proposal.
Let Cheney sign on. Debate it on the merits. Let the committee vote on it. And when the Republicans like Kyl, a harsh anti-immigration guy, vote for it, spring link a jungle cat on these hypocritical scumbags.
Amnesty for Bush and Cheney but not for some poor Mexican who’s only crime was working in this country for years to make a better life??? It would be a gift.
This will, of course, require that Democratic senators have some discipline. I’m not holding my breath.
My second thought about this is on the politics of accountability. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I believe that we desperately need to hold this Bush administration accountable for this power grab or this country will come to regret it. Back when I was very young, we had another president who attempted to create an elected dictatorship. Some of those at the very top in this administration learned at the knee of that man and admit that they came into office looking to restore the doctrine of presidential power that that disgraced president had instituted.
CHENEY: All right. But in 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. We saw it in the War Powers Act. We saw it in the Budget Anti-Impoundment Act. We’ve seen it in cases like this before, where it’s demanded that presidents cough up and compromise on important principles.
ROBERTS: And they always do.
CHENEY: Exactly, and that’s wrong.
ROBERTS: So in the end, it always comes out anyway, so why…
CHENEY: It’s wrong. And–well, but the…
ROBERTS: … go through this agony?
CHENEY: Because the net result of that is to weaken the presidency and the vice presidency.
And one of the things that I feel an obligation, and I know the president does too, because we talked about it, is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors. We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years.
Back in those days, I was in favor of pardoning Richard Nixon for his crimes. I thought it would be bad for the country to go through any more upheaval. I was wrong. As you can see from Cheney’s statement above, it never sunk in, despite the Church Committee, much legislation, the elections of 74,76 and 78 that the country had rejected this imperial presidency. Iran-Contra didn’t do it either. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this younger “revolutionary” generation of Republicans will not be even more adamant about restoring the ancien regime than Cheney and Rumsfeld.
It looks more and more to me as if installing Bush was a conscious decision to do this by these now grey eminences of Nixon’s administration. Cheney was, after all, a highly influential money man as CEO of Halliburton who was in charge of searching for the VP. Even more interestingly, he was the guy who put together the administration during the transition:
…Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hardline allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney’s right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
In the short term, I think that we are going to have a hard time winning elections if we don’t finally stand up to these people and force some accountability. We don’t have to go through their underwear drawers or impeach them for private behavior. Their unconstitutional power grab is quite enough to justify thorough investigations.
I believe the public expects it. The right is mau-mauing this because they know that after they umpeached a president for his private sexual behavior they lowered the bar so low that the public will not see this as outrageous. Indeed, they know that if they can successfully intimidate the Democrats into NOT holding them accountable at the first opportunity, they will have sealed the reputation of Dems as being cowards for another generation.
I know it’s fashionable to think that the Democratic party has been losing steadily for the last 35 years because they have been too liberal and the GOP has therefore been able to portray them as soft in all the manly virtues. I would suggest that the Democrats have been losing for the last 35 years because they have failed to beat the shit out of the Republicans when they pull this crap. The GOP smells weakness and the public loses their respect for us. We’re long past the “fool me twice” phase.
In the long term, this is important because we need to save the country. This has now been going on in one form or another during my entire adult lifetime. And I’m not young anymore. There is every reason to believe that the next time they gain power, these spawn of Nixon’s will do exactly the same thing. They are stubbornly determined to change the way our system works and undermine the constitution. They did it 35 years ago and they are doing it again today. And God knows how many of these little creatures have been born in this godforsaken administration and GOP congress. We must stop this now. It’s both good policy and good politics.
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by digby
I am attempting to post this by e-mail, which has not worked for me the past few days, but who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky tonight. (Not quite the same as some of my fellow bloggers “getting lucky” tonight in Las Vegas, but at this point it would actually be a bigger thrill to be able to post…)
Blogger’s latest excuse is this:
Down for Maintenance
We are migrating databases to make Blogger stronger and better.
Hahahahahaha…
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Polipapparazzi
by digby
This is fun. Politics TV is filming bloggers at the convention. Check it out over the course of the convention this week-end.
The Theme
by digby
I cannot say that I’m entirely surprised by the Busby results in CA-50 on Tuesday. The minute I heard her gaffe, I knew it would become an iconic symbol of the Republican’s meme for this mid-term — Democrats are stealing elections by having illegal aliens vote. They can piggyback on the Democratic drumbeat of the last few years about stolen elections and rile up their racist base all at the same time. It’s tailor made for them.
The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time thye become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.
In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now we know that it’s the Republicans who have been doing the stealing —- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is “stolen election” and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It’s like an ear worm. You don’t know the song its from, necessarily, but you can’t get it out of your head.
We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate — and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it. As I mentioned a month or so ago, Karl Rove was at the Republican Lawyers Association talking about how the Democrats are stealing elections. I can’t find an exact transcript of his talk, but it exists on C-SPAN for 30 bucks if anyone wants to watch it. Raw Story caught a few excerpts although not the ones I recall about about the dirty elections in the “state of Washington and around the country.”
I want to thank you for your work on clean elections,” Rove said. “I know a lot of you spent time in the 2004 election, the 2002, election, the 2000 election in your communities or in strange counties in Florida, helping make it certain that we had the fair and legitimate outcome of the election.”
Rove then suggested that some elections in America were similiar to third world dictatorships.
“We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today,” Rove said. “We are, in some parts of the country, I’m afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where they guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses. I mean, it’s a real problem, and I appreciate that all that you’re doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the ballot — the integrity of the ballot is protected, because it’s important to our democracy.”
Nobody can ever accuse these Republicans of not having balls. It’s really breathtaking sometimes. This is not an isolated remark. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Chris Matthews show:
MATTHEWS: … What did you make—we just showed the tape, David Shuster just showed that tape of a woman candidate in the United States openly advising people in this country illegally to vote illegally.
MEHLMAN: It sounds like she may have been an adviser to that Washington state candidate for governor or some other places around the country where this has happened in other cases with Democrats.
But the fact is, one thing we know, the American people believe that legal voters should vote and they believe that their right to vote ought to be protected from people that don‘t have the right to vote.
That is almost verbatim what Rove said at that lawyers conference. He also singled out one very special “voting rights” Republican lawyer named Thor Hearne, about whom Brad Friedman did a great deal of investigation last year. (Links here.):
Karl Rove spoke to Republican lawyers this weekend (carried on C-SPAN) and thanked them for their work ensuring “clean elections” in 2000 and 2004.
He singled out Mark F. “Thor” Hearne by name. Hearne was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney ’04 Inc. who, along with RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, created the so-called non-partisan “American Center for Voting Rights” (ACVR) just three days before being called to testify before Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-OH) U.S. House Administrative Committee hearing in March of 2005 on the Ohio Election. The front group, which declared tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, has still failed, to our knowledge, to disclose any information of it’s funders or proof of their 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan status. They operate out of a PO Box in Houston, TX, though neither of their founders live in Texas.
ACVR was the only “Voting Rights” group called by Ney to testify at the hearings, and identified himself only as a “longtime advocate of voter rights” in his testimony. He failed to mention his connections to Bush/Cheney ’04 Inc.
Hearne and ACVR have done little more since they opened shop beyond creating propaganda reports to suggest that their is an epidemic of Democratic voter fraud in the country to encourage state legislatures around the country to implement Democratic voter disenfranchising “Photo ID requirements” at the polls. Their charges of a voter fraud epidemic has been roundly disproven in various court cases around the country. (Though it does appear that at least one voter, Ann Coulter, seems to have engaged in voter fraud lately.)
They have been gearing up for this for some time. However, Rove had wanted to use this against African Americans, not Hispanics. He knows that alienating the Latino vote is the kiss of death for the party long term. But it’s out of his hands now. Immigration has a life of its own and I suspect it will be quite easy to adjust the plan and the machinery to try to 1) get out the base, 2) suppress the Latino vote which is now heavily leaning democratic and 3) serve as a rallying cry and cause when they lose seats and possibly their majority. This will be immediately played for 08 with a whole bunch of “voter integrity” legislation. They will be screaming to high heaven. Lou Dobbs will have his aneurysm removed on live television.
The Democrats could have innoculated against this when the Republicans stole the 2000 election, but they didn’t. Had they been screaming bloody murder for six solid years about Republican vote fraud, it would be much more difficult for the GOP to suddenly glom onto this issue. Instead, it was a mere underground drumbeat that was heard, but only in the vaguest way. Now the CW about stolen elections is going to be turned on us — and we will be on the defensive fighting both the charge of electoral fraud and being soft on criminal Mexicans because we need illegal aliens to stuff the ballot boxes for us.
Francine Busby couldn’t have done anything more helpful to the Republicans than saying what she said. (I know she was misquoted and taken out of context. That means nothing when dealing with the RWNM.) She gave them a test run on their November plan and it worked out perfectly. Here’s Robert Parry on how this works:
At dinner a few weeks ago, a well-placed Republican political operative was oozing confidence about GOP prospects in the November elections, not because the voters were enamored of George W. Bush but because the Democrats and liberals had done so little to improve their ability to reach the public with their message.
By contrast, he described to me a highly sophisticated Republican system for pouncing on Democratic “bad votes” and verbal gaffes and distributing the information instantaneously to a network of pro-Republican media outlets that now operates down to the state, district and local levels.
This huge conservative media advantage has now contributed to dooming Democratic hopes for snaring the vulnerable suburban San Diego seat of imprisoned Republican congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
In the June 6 special election, Republicans reported a last-minute surge of support after conservative media outlets trumpeted a verbal blunder by Democrat Francine Busby, propelling Republican lobbyist Brian Bilbray to victory by about four percentage points.
If we allow the Republicans to define this next election as they usually do, it will be about immigration and voter fraud. If I were in Vegas I’d be placing a bet on it. And it won’t take a gaffe like Busby’s. They will attempt to create a national story, which will be exploited in the last days of the campaign in various individual ways through their media infrastructure. If they lose it will be blamed on dishonest vote stealing Democrats and illegal aliens. If they win it will be be because they fought back against the dishonest vote stealing Democrats and illegal aliens. Unless the Democratic party wakes up and figures out a way to both define the election to our advantage and counter this move, it’s going to be much harder to dislodge those GOP incumbents than we think.
I think this election is going to be all about turn-out and Democrats are stupidly resting on their laurels on that count. More on that in the next post. (If I can access Blogger…)
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Blogging from Hell
by digby
No, I’m not in Las Vegas. I was actually hoping to be the official “not at Yearly Kos” liberal blogger. (Think of me as that one member of the cabinet who doesn’t attend the State of The Union in case somebody bombs the Capitol.) I figured there needed to be at least one of us out here who is not hungover, busy being feted by the Democratic party poohbahs or making time with some previously unknown blog-hottie and so would have the time to do serious blogging about serious things while everyone else was having too much fun to document the ongoing atrocities. Alas, I began to suspect last night that all the coolest bloggers in the world gathered in Vegas and conspired with BlogSpot to make me entirely irrelevant.
Unless, of course, I have managed to finally foil their dastardly plan and can blog throughout the week-end from my undisclosed location. I promise to give it my all, Blogger willing.
So, what’s been happening? Anything?
I heard that Zarqawi is dead. Again. Awesome. I’m hoping they lay out his corpse like they did Uday and Qusay because that goes over so well in Muslim culture. They love it when the infidel messes around with dead bodies and displays them publicly.
I shed no tears for the bastard, of course. But he’s just a convenient symbol the Bush administration glommed onto to “Al Qaeda-ize” Iraq. In fact, they had ample opportunities to take him out before the war started, but they declined for political reasons. (I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were actual deals made — these guys are nothing if not savvy marketers.)
And heck, if it weren’t for the fact that the war is actually a homegrown insurgency and civil war, taking out a satellite al Qaeda cell leader might make a difference. Unfortunately, the war the Bush likes to think he’s fighting and the one those poor schmucks over there actually are fighting are very different things. You don’t have to be a military expert to know that even if Zarqawi were the mastermind the administration portrayed him as, the war is a lot more complicated than the cheap Chuck Norris movie the Bushies have tried to market to the masses. (Think “Syriana.”)
So, the beat goes on. Bush is still incredibly unpopular, especially about the war. Which is a really good reason for Democrats to steer clear of criticizing him for it. It simply wouldn’t be sporting of them to take political advantage of the fact that Bush and his Republican lackeys in congress insisted that we invade a country for no good reason. The Marquess of Queensbury would give them all a damned good thrashing for even thinking such a thing.
More on that in the next post.
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