Stars
by tristero
As Digby mentioned, the tale of Iran forcing Jews, et al to wear distinctive clothing or badges is apparently false. It seems to have been concocted by American rightwing propagandists and has no basis in fact.
On the other hand, Operation Red Scare, in which the Santa Rosa Junior College Republicans posted Red Stars on the doors of professors they identified as advocating communism is true.
Heathers Reunion
by digby
I don’t know it it’s coincidence or by design, but today I have seen three — count ’em — three different stories trashing the GOP’s favorite Democratic punching bags in that patented superficial tabloid nastiness that we have mercilessly been spared since the Bush administration came to town and trashed the country ( to paraphrase a famous insider bon mot.) Now why is that? I’m sure it can’t be because the GOP is back to its smearing ways just because they are on the ropes. They wouldn’t do that would they? Why we’re at war!
I wrote about the two Drudge blasts from the past earlier today. Now here comes another one, this time from the New York Times: what are all the wags saying about that famous Washington power couple who might be running for the White House? Prominent Democrats are very concerned about the state of their marriage and how that will affect the wife’s ability to run for president. He’s a playboy and she’s a frigid bitch, in case you didn’t know. But they pretend to love each other because they are both superficial, calculating power freaks, which sets them apart from most leading Democrats who are just plain crazy. The grassroots, we know, are very, very angry. (Joe Lieberman is really the only sensible one.)
I have to assume that it is a slow news day at the Times or that a big story fell out and they had to fill it with something because I can’t believe somebody thought it was actually newsworthy to put this on the front page. And it’s a doozy, filled with all kinds of juicy People magazine style armchair psychology as related by anonymous “friends.” Substitute the names and you could be reading about the travails of Brad and Jen or Tom and Katie — all that’s missing is the fake breasts, although it’s possible I missed a reference somewhere. Atrios wonders why they couldn’t get anyone on the record about the frequency of the couple’s lovemaking, but I think they actually hinted quite broadly that they aren’t getting it on often enough to satisfy the public. Page six couldn’t have done any better than this:
Friends — eager to smooth any rough edges on the relationship — tell old-married-couple stories of them gardening, playing Scrabble, and dining out at Le Cirque, Rasika, and Bayou in Harlem with old pals like the former party leader Terry McAuliffe, the power broker Vernon Jordan, and others. Last Christmas Eve, they wandered through the near-empty Chappaqua Village Market together, noticed by the occasional fellow shopper.
Rarely, however, do the Clintons appear in public when they are together. That physical distance is largely driven by their careers, but it is also partly by choice.
[…]
Democrats preparing for 2008 describe the political challenge this way: Clinton could prosper as a presidential candidate, yet the return of “the Clintons” could revive memories including the oft-derided two-for-the-price-of-one appeal of his 1992 presidential campaign, her role in the universal health care debacle, and the soap opera of infidelity.
No folks, that excerpt isn’t from Hello magazine or even Vanity Fair. That’s the New York fucking Times and it’s on page one. If people aren’t thinking about the Clintons in terms of infidelity and betrayal now, New York’s newest tabloid rag is going to make damned sure they are reminded of it.
I do not know if Hillary is running for president and I’m not making a case for her candidacy. I do, however, think she has the right to try to earn the nomination without this gossip-at-the-hair salon coverage by the NY Times. And believe me, it won’t just be her. Look at the spooky picture of Mark Warner on the cover of New York Times Magazine. He looked like something out of a David Lynch movie. I have no doubt that we are going to be reading many derisive accounts of Al Gore the bearded, earth toned circus freak. It’s quite clear that if the Democrats are are coming into power, the Times is going to pick up right where it left off when it was last obsessed with Clinton’s crotch and Hillary’s cold, cold heart. Or perhaps, more to the point, this piece is just a first notice that they plan to.
Democrats be advised: the press is a bunch of braindead robots who are uninterested in changing their puerile Democratic storyline even in the face of the most disasterous administration in American history.It’s shocking. You can love Hillary or hate her, I don’t care. But goddamit the intimate state of her marriage to Bill Clinton is nobody’s business and it NEVER HAS BEEN. If the gossip rags want to play this game, there’s nothing anyone can do. But it is just shameful that the New York Times would go back to their cheap, tabloid coverage of politics when the world is on fire. I’m honestly stunned that this is happening again.
I am writing letters to the editor about this and I urge everyone else to do it too. Perhaps we can request that they put other politicians’ marriages under this kind of scrutiny. John McCain’s wife had some problems if I recall. How’s she doing with that? Maybe a reporter should go around and ask all of her friends to comment off the record. The presidency is a very stressfull job for a first lady. Can she take the pressure without resorting to … well, you know. People are asking. It’s a factor. And hey, what about Rudy? He’s got a helluva marital track record. Matt Stoller has another suggestion, here.
Seriously, I think this deserves some pushback from the blgosphere. Regardless of your feelings for Hillary, this is obviously just the beginning of another trivializing smear fest against Democrats in general. This stuff is done for no other reason than to make Democrats appear unserious, immoral and halfway nuts. There is a concerted effort coming from somewhere to create a drumbeat that when Democrats are in the spotlight the country is going to be back in trivial tabloid scandal land. It almost has the feeling of being a threat. The mainstream press, having apparently learned absolutely nothing from their failures of the last decade are obviously eager to put on their Heathers costumes and have a little bitch party.
This time they need to hear from us. Here is the page with all the email addresses for letters to the editor and to the ombudsman. Let them know we aren’t going to let this happen again without a fight.
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Holy Hell
by digby
Ok. we are getting into some seriously weird territory now. This diary over at Kos about the Christian youth “Battle Cry” rally sounds so dangerous and creepy that I think we need to call in Dave Niewert to translate it for us:
BattleCry Philadelphia was more than just a vulgar carnival designed to suck donations into the coffers of Ron Luce’s corporation “Teen Mania”. Indeed, it had a point, to recruit the future elite “warriors” in the coming battle against the separation of church and state. It turned dark and frightening on Saturday afternoon. After Franklin “Islam is a Wicked Religion” Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s. They were hunting us, the future Christian leaders of America. Two teenage girls next to me burst into tears and even I, a jaded middle-aged male, almost jumped out of my skin. I imagined for that moment what it must have felt like to have been a teacher at Columbine high school. 10 seconds later they rushed out onstage and pointed their guns in our direction firing blanks spitting flames. About 1000 shots and bang, we were all dead.
WTF??? What does that mean (besides revving up a bunch teen-agers with violent sensationalism for no apparent reason?) It appears that the “Navy Seals” are a group of ex-special forces called Force Ministries who do this schtick at rallies and the like. Can you believe people make a living doing this stuff?
This story has been verified by others, who also report this little synergistic touch:
It began with fireworks so loud and startling I screamed. Lights and smoke followed, and a few kids were pulled up on stage from the crowd. One was asked to read a letter.
This was the letter that opened the event. Its author was George W. Bush. Yes, the president of the United States sent a letter of support, greeting, prayer and encouragement to the BattleCry event held at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on May 12. Immediately afterward, a preacher took the microphone and led the crowd in prayer. Among other things, he asked the attendees to “Thank God for giving us George Bush.”
Yikes.
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Sigh-Ops
by digby
I’m sure most of you have heard this bizarre story about Iran forcing Jews and other religious minorities to wear badges. (In a nice touch of historical color, the Jewish badges are allegedly yellow.) Well, it turns out this was simply made up out of whole cloth and filtered into the media through an affiliate of the Benador Group which include such credible wingnuts as Laurie “Saddam is comin’ ta git yah” Mylroie and Michael “let’s invade France” Ledeen. You have to wonder what they thought they would accomplish by putting out something so falsifiable. I think Jim Henley has it right:
Why? So that months from now, someone hearing about plans to bomb Iran, or seeing footage of bombing on TV, will say to themselves, “Didn’t I read that Iran was going to round up all the Jews and make them wear yellow stars like the Nazis? Something like that. Well, good riddance.” All the story had to do was live long enough to get into circulation.
I actually have a personal anecdote that pertains to exactly that. Before the first Gulf war I was talking about whether or not we should intervene with my brother-in-law, a decent liberal who normally is not one to get onboard military adventures unless something very important is at stake. He was a big supporter of the Gulf War based on that story about killing the babies in their incubators (which had set my bullshit detectors to screaming when I heard it.) He believed it and it made him very hawkish.
It’s as Henley says, these things make their way into the consciousness and pop out down the road when people are being forced to decide if a military action is necessary. They’re planting seeds.
The press is not running with this en masse the way they did with all the earlier nonsense, but it’s all over the rightwing noise machine so there will be plenty of people who believe this crap. Still, it’s a small comfort that the mainstream media is getting a little less easily played.
Update: Greg Sargent has more.
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You Oughta Know
by digby
Poor, poor Republicans. They are reduced to dragging out that poor old fossilized 90s retread Drudge to falsely smear Democrats again. (Geez, next they’ll be starting flame wars on usenet!) That’s a sad comment on the rightwing blogosphere if you ask me.
Old Drudge has found out today, however, that things don’t work quite the same way as they did back in the good old days of “Mad About You” and the screeching harpies of the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors. Drudge got a letter this morning from the DNC’s lawyer for libeling Howard Dean yesterday and took down his false story.
And later today there was this:
Matt Drudge is looking for any excuse to smear Al Gore and his new movie, An Inconvenient Truth. He’s been running this story, unsourced, all day:
Burn: Gore and entourage took 5 cars to travel the 500 yards from hotel to screening of global warming pic in Cannes.
ThinkProgress contacted Gore’s representatives, who unequivocally confirmed that Al Gore and his associates walked from the Majestic Hotel to the screening at Cannes. Further, Paramount has committed to making the entire tour promoting the film carbon neutral.
UPDATE: At 3:38 PM EST, about an hour after this post, Drudge yanked the smear on Gore from his site.
This is very reminiscent of another false story about Gore that the press refused to acknowledge was a GOP plant: that stupid canoe trip which, naturally, the Daily Howler has covered in depth.
They’re running the sad old Gore playbook, and some of the media is playing along like good little robots. But it won’t work like it did before. You want to know why? Because there is a counter force to that little weasel Drudge and his fellow character assassins this time — us. Lefty bloggers will be all over the mainstream media if they do this again. We will ensure they get a snootfull of our vaunted liberal anger if they decide that “it’s just fun” to destroy Democrats on behalf of Republican thugs.
(And I’ll add that if a liberal Drudge comes along who works as a tool of the GOP sludge machine and is used to discredit the left blogosphere — wittingly or unwittingly — we will not take the bait. Chris Bowers at MYDD makes this argument explicitly, here.)
I liked the 90s as much as the next person. I tried ecstasy and bought that Alanis Morrisette album and everything. But that was a long time ago. The rightwing noise machine will not be allowed to entertain the boys and girls of the press corps with silly, trumped up bullshit like this ever again without a price being paid. The political media really need to think long and hard about who’s their daddy this time out.
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Nothing To Offer
by digby
One of the things I find most interesting about the global warming debate is that the libertarian view of how to run the world is completely inadequate in the face of such a thing. Not that it stops them from trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, of course.
Last week the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” unveiled a couple of hilarious ads about global warming in which they literally extoll the virtues of carbon monoxide as “life.” But how else can a group that sells itself like this come to grips with a global, environmental problem:
We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.
That sounds awfully clever until you start talking about global warming, doesn’t it? Both Paris Hilton and I are in the same boat when it comes to being able to breathe on this planet. “Choices” in a free marketplace are beside the point when the very ground we walk on, the very air we breath, the very world in which all of us, rich and poor, live is under threat. Dealing with global warming is the ultimate example of the common good and it’s the most powerful issue upon which the right’s edifice of free market individualism crumbles into irrelevance.
Global warming is a mutual, planetary challenge and the conservatives and wingnut libertarians who see money as freedom can do nothing but put their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening. The only question is whether it will kill their bankrupt ideology before their bankrupt ideology kills the planet.
“An Inconvenient Truth” is coming to your town. Go see it. This is one where we are all, literally, in this thing together.
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Hmmm
by digby
Atrios wonders why everyone is so upset about Bolivia (and Venezuela) all of a sudden.
I have no idea. Certainly, there can be no domestic political considerations. I don’t get it.
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Military Chumps
by digby
Mercenaries. I’ve been wondering when this topic would finally make its way out of the ther and be discussed openly. Atrios links to a report by Ted Koppel in which Koppel wonders why we just don’t privatize part of the army, calling it:
“the inevitable response of a market economy to a host of seemingly intractable public policy and security problems.”
The issue is raised by our “over-extended military” and inability of the United Nations to form adequate peace forces. Meanwhile, Americans business interests grow ever more active abroad in dangerous spots.
“Just as the all-volunteer military relieved the government of much of the political pressure that had accompanied the draft, so a rent-a-force, harnessing the privilege of every putative warrior to hire himself out for more than he could ever make in the direct service of Uncle Sam, might relieve us of an array of current political pressures,” Koppel explains, tongue possibly in cheek.
“So, if there are personnel shortages in the military (and with units in their second and third rotations into Iraq and Afghanistan, there are), then what’s wrong with having civilian contractors? Expense is a possible issue; but a resumption of the draft would be significantly more controversial….
“So, what about the inevitable next step — a defensive military force paid for directly by the corporations that would most benefit from its protection? If, for example, an insurrection in Nigeria threatens that nation’s ability to export oil (and it does), why not have Chevron or Exxon Mobil underwrite the dispatch of a battalion or two of mercenaries?”
Koppel notes that Cofer Black, formerly a high-ranking C.I.A. officer and now a senior executive with Blackwater USA, “has publicly said that his company would be prepared to take on the Darfur account.”
He concludes: “The United States may not be about to subcontract out the actual fighting in the war on terrorism, but the growing role of security companies on behalf of a wide range of corporate interests is a harbinger of things to come.”
I assumed this was satire when I read it. But I didn’t chuckle knowingly and move on. It doesn’t work as satire because the nation is, in fact, actually doing this.
Rather than make arcane arguments about whether its right or moral to hire a private army, which will fall on the American public’s deaf ears, perhaps we should just talk about the fact that each “soldier” makes about six figures, can quit anytime he wants and is subject to no rule of law, either local, international or military. Clearly, the administration thinks the regular military are a bunch of stupid chumps. Why don’t Republicans support the troops by spending that money on real soldiers?
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Still Trying To Make The Case
by digby
The poodle comes to town:
The Prime Minister will appeal to his critics to look at his record in a different light after the formation of an Iraqi government. He will say the war in Iraq was in line with an interventionist or “activist approach” to foreign policy he also pursued in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, which enjoyed greater public support.
He will also say it was consistent with his policies on the Middle East, Africa and climate change.
Mr Blair will say he floated the idea of humanitarian interventionism, dubbed “liberal imperialism” by some of his advisers, in a speech in Chicago in 1999.
In the last of three speeches on foreign policy, Mr Blair will call for reform of the United Nations, saying that today’s international institutions were designed for the Cold War era.
He believes that the UN’s failure to approve a fresh resolution authorising military action in Iraq in 2003 showed that the organisation shies away from rather than confronts problems.
That’s the kind of speech that’ll make Peter Beinert feel all funny down there. This is the vision of liberal hawks who insist that we need to keep invading countries for their own good because underneath all the death and destruction is a humanitarian mission. (Meanwhile, in Darfur, well….)
I’m not sure if Blair has deluded himself into believing this horseshit to justify his actions or whether he really is a member of the future neocons club. (I suspect that Joe Lieberman, if he remains a Democrat, is going to be the new Scoop Jackson around whom all the little liberal hawks will flock.) It doesn’t really matter: he’s throwing down the gauntlet. What is the left’s foreign policy philosophy?
A lot of people are talking about this and it’s important. Foreign policy is not going to go away just because Bush has fucked things up so badly. And we can’t just accept the Beinert wing’s romantic WWII fighter ace version of liberal hawkishness just because it’s the only idea floating around. I’m waiting for a big name Democrat to articulate a foreign policy philosophy that makes sense.
In the meantime, I think I’ll go with a couple of big name bloggers’ approach as a starting point instead. Here’s Matt Yglesias:
Dan Drezner notes that “liberal internationalism” is a term “foreign policy wonks like to throw around, but often means very different things to different people” and offers his own definition: “A marriage between the pursuit of liberal purposes (security, free trade, human rights, rule of law, democracy promotion, etc.) and the use of institutionalist means to pursue them (multilateral institutions of various stripes — not only the UN, but NATO or the G-7 as well).” I prefer an alternative formulation of my own recent devising. Liberal internationalism not as a method, but as a goal: The creation of an international order that is effectively governed by reasonably just rules.
Clearly, in the wrong hands, ideas about pursuing liberal “purposes” can be very, very dangerous if they stand without any limits by law or philosophy. Might cannot make “spreading democracy” right all by itself as we have just proved to the entire world. Perhaps it would be best to be a bit more humble in our purposes than Drezner, but a bit more explicit in our methods than Yglesias.
In any case, it is impossible to withdraw from the world even if we wanted to so liberals do have to make a decision about our relationship to it going forward. Iraq was a nonsensical, inexplicable action, but that does not mean we will be spared having to make much tougher calls in the future. It seems to me that the best hope is through cooperation with others toward the plain goal Yglesias lays out. That is not a pie in the sky, kumbaaya dreamworld goal, nor is it mired in cynical, national interest “realism.” Indeed, it is the most likely to produce the kind of necessary coordination we will need to handle the emerging challenges and threats of a global nature, like terrorism and global warming.
Tony Blair is apparently still going to insist that Iraq was a “threat” that had to be met come hell or high water, (let no facts interfere with that judgment.) He will attack international institutions for failing to intervene. In truth, the international institutions (which are hardly infallible) made the correct decision this time. The alleged “liberal internationalist” Blair made the wrong one. The lessons there are clear. When a nation decides that it is “good” enough or strong enough to up-end the rule of law and international civilized norms, that is a signal that they are neither. Liberal internationalism, if it is to be credible, has to admit this, repudiate the actions of Blair and Bush and make it explicit that its goals are reasonable and constrained by the rule of law. Otherwise, “liberal internationalism” is just another way of saying we can do as we choose. I’m not signing on to that; I don’t care whether Joe Klein says that means I hate America or not. After Vietnam and this latest debacle, I’m through with both dreamy, romantic notions of interventionist foreign policy and manipulative Great Gamesmanship. Keep it simple stupid.
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Defensive Fatigue
by digby
“The president’s run into a perfect political storm where the confluence of natural disasters from last fall, gasoline prices, staff changes, the continuing war in Iraq, all are giving conservatives a defensive fatigue,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a California GOP strategist who served in Ronald Reagan’s White House. “And let’s put immigration in there, too. . . . There’s just wave after wave washing over them at this point.”
Oh please. This is not an act of God. There’s a tsunami of corruption and epic failure crashing over their heads — and it’s one of their own making. As for their “fatigue” maybe they should try being being on 24/7 defense for eight long years as Clinton was and then complain, the WATB chickenshits.
These fragile little flowers really should be frightened of the Democrats taking over the congress. If they are falling apart with “defensive fatigue” already, they obviously are not cut out for long term survival in the rough game they created. Bush was treated like a Roman god for more than four years. For a time it was patriotically incorrect to even utter criticism of him in public (just ask the Dixie Chicks.) He had a free hand and he fucked everything up royally. Now, after six months of pressure, they want to blame it all on external events and whine about how tired they are of being on the defensive. Boo fucking hoo.
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