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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Makin’ It

by digby

I did not weigh in yesterday on the all time nobel prize for wankerism, Richard Cohen’s masturbatory love letter to himself because well … I just can’t write about all the clubby DC insiders having hissy fits these days or I’d do nothing else. Greg Sargent did a great job of analyzing this battle between the blogosphere and the Smart People Who Are Authorized To Have Opinions. Peter Daou is also covering this brewing battle between the unwashed masses and their betters over at the Daou Report. And Robert Parry has written what I think is a valuable analysis of why the Colbert routine confused the poor little kewl kidz.

I do want to take this opportunity, however, to congratulate our first blogospheric graduate to full fledged membership in the kewl kidz club of America. It warms my heart to see one of our own making it big by trashing lefty bloggers in the pages of Joe Klein’s TIME magazine. Our own little Wonkette is all grown up:

The low point in the fake controversy over Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner came when Gawker — the cracked mirror by which much of the media views its navel — ran a poll to determine whether, in fact, Colbert’s routine was funny. The poll determined that Colbert was an American hero, which may or may not make him funny, but the fact of the poll’s existence sure is. Talk about the politicization of comedy. Next we’ll get focus groups and image consultants (“Those clown shoes need to be three inches longer if you want to bring in the soccer moms”) and Joe Klein will write a book about how no one does improv anymore.

The politicization of comedy. Think about that. If you don’t see why that is an amazing statement, especially coming from someone who made her name by being a political humorist (of sorts) then it would probably be best to click over to Jeff Goldstein for some delicious paste and peanut butter sandwiches.

The blogospheric debate — whining, really — about the mainstream media’s “silence” on Colbert rumbled into existence with a post by Peter Daou. Almost 18 whole hours after the performance, Daou determined that the shtick — or, as one commenter put it, “a work of staggering genius that could only be pulled off by a man with testicles the size of Alpha Centauri” — was being ignored by the mainstream media in order to “shield Bush from negative publicity.” Daou even intuited why they didn’t laugh: because they were shamed “when Colbert put them in their place.”

Blindly pulling out quotes from comment sections — done like a pro. She’s getting her MSM chops perfectly honed. It’s important to portray the left blogosphere as not only absurd tin-foil hatters, but humorless and dull as well, which isn’t easy.

For the record, at the time Daou wrote his piece, there was tons of coverage of the dinner all over the television. The club was howling with delight at the good natured president laughing at himself with that impersonator. (Muy caliente!)

None of them mentioned Colbert. They didn’t pan him, they didn’t chastize him. They disappeared him. And if it hadn’t been for the blogospheric reaction, his entire performance would have gone down the memory hole. Now, I find that interesting, don’t you?

I agree completely that the press corps didn’t laugh because they were being put in their place — by Colbert. Two years ago they could hardly contain themselves when the good natured president exposed the entire press corps as idiots with his “jokes” about the missing weapons of mass destruction. Being put in their place by George W. Bush is something they positively love:

The Texas reporter began to ask his question, “You talked about the need to maintain technological”

But Bush, acting like an excited party guest who couldn’t keep a funny comment inside, interrupted the reporter to deliver the punch line. “A little short on hair, but a fine lad. Yeah,” Bush said, provoking a new round of laughter at the reporter’s expense.

The young reporter paused and acknowledged meekly, “I am losing some hair.”

The reporter then soldiered on with a question about whether the administration would “go forward with the V-22” warplane, a question of particular interest to the economy of Fort Worth, Texas.

Bush, however, wasn’t through having fun with the young reporter, who “represents Fort Worth,” Bush noted, prompting another round of knowing laughter from the national press corps.

Laughing along while the president humiliates one of their own publicly. Now that’s funny.

Cox then says this:

Daou didn’t actually make any specific claims as to the comedic value of Colbert’s speech, though if he were aiming to write something that would make Saturday night’s entertainment funny by comparison, he certainly succeeded.

How droll. And Michael Moore is fat, too. Snap! (Cue the kewl kidz to convulse in manly snorts.) Junior would approve.

Daou was obviously not trying to be funny with his piece. (He didn’t mention ass-fucking even once.) But never let that interfere with an opportunity to insult a lefty blogger for being humorless.

And then there is the requisite pulling of the most hysterical comments you can find and using them as an example of how crazy the left wing bloggers really are. It turns out that Ana Marie’s husband Chris Lehman didn’t find Colbert funny and wrote that Colbert was “shrill and airless” on the Huffington Post garnering a vitriolic response from Colbert fans. I couldn’t find the examples Cox used to illustrate this, but no matter. The Colbert lovers were often rude and we know how delicate the DC kewl kid sorority is. (Note to Mr and Mrs Wonkette: don’t become sports writers. You want to see rabid fans…..)

She goes on to explain that the unwashed hordes didn’t get what they wanted — an admission from the whole wide world that Colbert was like, totally funny — so we began to make too much of its “boldness” instead. And that is just naive. We lefty bloggers are nothing if not silly schoolgirls who don’t know how the world really works:

Comedy can have a political point but it is not political action, and what Colbert said on the stage of the Washington Hilton — funny or not — means far less than what the ardent posters at ThankYouStephenColbert.org would like it to. While it may have shocked the President to hear someone talk so openly about his misdeeds in the setting of the correspondents dinner — joking about “the most powerful photo-ops in the world” and NSA wiretaps — I somehow doubt that Bush has never heard these criticisms before.

To laud Colbert for saying them seems to me, a card-carrying lefty, to be settling. Colbert’s defenders might aim for the same stinging criticisms to be issued not from the Hilton ballroom but from the dais in a Senate Judiciary committee hearing. And I wouldn’t really care if they were funny or not.

Whose being naive, Kaye?

I’m actually fairly sure that Bush hasn’t heard these things before. The man is not exactly tuned into the zeitgeist. So we’ll take what we can get. Bush isn’t ever going to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee — and the press hasn’t exactly pressed him on these matters over the last five years, have they?

Which is the point. It’s not about Bush or the Judiciary Committee. Who before has ever stood before the Washington press corps, assumed their sycophantic persona, and hoist them with their own petard? I can’t think of anyone.

Ana Marie Cox used to do that online, along with the rest of us uncouth bloggers who rose up in frustration and screamed that the Emperor and his scribbling coutiers were dancing in the streets stark raving naked. (It wasn’t a pretty sight, I might add.) Colbert took our message to them, in person, the other night and we celebrate it. That this witty pioneer of the blogosphere, who made her name deflating the pretentions of the insider club of thin-skinned mediawhores no longer identifies with that sentiment is a cautionary tale.

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Foggo of War

by digby

Oh what a bunch of crap. All of CNN is parroting this stoooopid Snow job about Goss resigning with no notice to turf wars between him and Negroponte. Right.

Paul Begala pointed out that if this is true then Goss is unpatriotic for abruptly stomping off in a huff instead of waiting for Bush to find a replacement. After all, these are troubled times in the American intelligence community. You’d think that he and Negroponte could have contained their pissing match for the good of the country. Why does Porter Goss hate America?

Update: TPM Muckraker owns this story and says there is probably even more to it than the ookers-hay.

UpdateII: MSNBC is being a little bit less credulous. Isikoff is speculating that this may be more to do with Goss as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee’s asociation with Cunningham than anything he did at the CIA.

Andrea Mitchell is robotically regurgitating the spin that Negroponte is the hero who saved the CIA from Goss’ intransigence.

For Norah O’Donnell’s earlier report on this, check out Crooks and Liars.

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Let’s Talk About Morals

by digby

Man, you go to a dentist’s appointment on a Friday morning and all hell breaks loose. Porter Goss, the GOP hack that Bush put in charge of our nations intelligence(!) during a dangerous time for our nation, has abruptly resigned. He was, typically for this administration, a partisan loser who was appointed for purely political reasons. And like the vast majority of elected Republicans, apparently, it looks like he may be a crook. (I realize this has not been confirmed — but as Peggy Noonan memorably opined, in these troubled times it is irresponsible not to speculate.)

From shoplifiting to accidentally shooting people in the face, to graft, corruption, perjury, gay hookers, straight hookers, illegal wiretaps, dirty tricks and more, the list of crimes is getting so long that it would be easier to identify the Republican politicians who aren’t crooks, than try to name all the ones who are.

Now, I would be wrong if I did not mention that Cynthia McKinney hitting a capitol hill police officer with her cell phone and Patrick Kennedy driving under the influence are ample proof that the Democrats are just as bad or even worse. That goes without saying and I certainly hope that we will see headlines tomorrow making that clear. The TV coverage today certainly makes that case.

Still, I am enjoying watching Wolf Blitzer talk about prostitutes and Porter Goss in the same sentence. Goss was, after all, the same snide jerk who said about the Plame leak, “somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA and maybe I’ll do an investigation.” Who knows? There may even be some DNA involoved in this case. (I’m still holding out for the Big Kahuna, about which I responsibly speculated earlier. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Whatever it is, it’s fair to assume it’s something quite serious and something we will find out about quite soon. They aren’t even trotting out the old “wants to spend time with his family.”

Update: It has come to my attention that some people believe that I was seriously comparing McKinney and kennedy to the Republican Crime Syndicate. I wasn’t.

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Brother Guy, You The Guy!

by tristero

Exactly right. I’ve been saying for the longest time that creationism isn’t only bad science, it’s crummy theology. Looks like the Vatican astronomer agrees:

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.

Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods. “Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That’s why science and religion need to talk to each other,” he said.

“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god.

Yup.

Hat tip to PZ Myers, who rightly objects to Brother Guy saying science needs religion for a conscience, and who also has a great octopus pic for his Friday Cephalopod series. PZ, that is. He’s the one with the octopus pic. Just wanted to make that clear.

Digby Scoops NY Times

by tristero

Well, well, well. Finally, the New York Times noticed the article in the Boston Globe that Digby linked to on April 30, about Bush’s infamous signing statements. I told a couple of people in the meatworld about this, including My Smart Spouse, who don’t follow the crimes of this administration closely, and they found it very hard to believe Bush was that imperious. But he is, my friends, so much so that even the Times can’t fail to notice it anymore:

President Bush doesn’t bother with vetoes; he simply declares his intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750 “presidential signing statements” declaring he wouldn’t do what the laws required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners.

In this area, as in so many others, Mr. Bush has decided not to take the open, forthright constitutional path. He signed some of the laws in question with great fanfare, then quietly registered his intention to ignore them. He placed his imperial vision of the presidency over the will of America’s elected lawmakers. And as usual, the Republican majority in Congress simply looked the other way…

The founding fathers never conceived of anything like a signing statement. The idea was cooked up by Edwin Meese III, when he was the attorney general for Ronald Reagan, to expand presidential powers. He was helped by a young lawyer who was a true believer in the unitary presidency, a euphemism for an autocratic executive branch that ignores Congress and the courts. Unhappily, that lawyer, Samuel Alito Jr., is now on the Supreme Court…

Like many of Mr. Bush’s other imperial excesses, this one serves no legitimate purpose. Congress is run by a solid and iron-fisted Republican majority. And there is actually a system for the president to object to a law: he vetoes it, and Congress then has a chance to override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

That process was good enough for 42 other presidents. But it has the disadvantage of leaving the chief executive bound by his oath of office to abide by the result. This president seems determined not to play by any rules other than the ones of his own making. And that includes the Constitution.

In Barbara Kopple’s great documentary on Woody Allen’s Dixieland band’s tour of Italy, there’s a scene where the band plays its heart out in an Italian town. Kopple cuts to the audience to get their reaction, and the audience is just sitting there, expressing as much emotion as if they were watching a lecture on the industrial uses of zinc. The band plays even more ecstatically, but the audience remains unmoved.

After the concert, the Mayor of the Italian town goes to Woody’s dressing room to congratulate him. He smiles ear to ear – he’s talking to il Maestro! And he’s dazzled. Pissed off at the tepid reaction, Woody decides to avoid the usual exchange of compliments: “Such a pleasure to be in your charming town!” but instead waxes sarcastic, pulling out all the stops, something like, “Oh yes, what a wonderfully responsive audience! Why there were several times I could swear they were so moved I heard a couple of them tapping a foot or two.”

The mayor continues to beam. He knows enough English to understand exactly what Allen said. But the Mayor is so starstruck and Allen’s nasty comments are so far beyond the conventions of congratulatory discourse with entertainters that he can’t hear them. Woody, fully confident that his celebrity will insulate him from a bop on the nose, continues to get away with insulting the Mayor’s town to his face.

And that’s a little like Bush and the signing statements. Presidents of the United States don’t do things like that. They just don’t. There is nothing in American history that prepares us for a president who acts like he’s Louis XIV. Not even the odious Nixon. And so, Bush blithely issues his signing statements, telling the country over and over and over that he simply has no intention whatsoever of obeying any law he doesn’t like. And the country not only doesn’t bother to notice. The country doesn’t have the political/cultural framework to notice. Look, Bush’s signing statements can’t be compared to those of a tinpot autocrat. We’re talking the United States of America here, the very symbol of democracy – remember government of the people, etc etc?. So whatever he’s up to and as much as you dislike him personally, the president of the United States is not a fascist dictator, relying on his personal charisma to do anything he wants to. Of course, he respects and obeys the Constitution, no matter what the signing statements say.

Wake up, boys and girls.

If, at the moment, this president has reserved torture and long imprisonment without trial primarily for non-US citizens, or for deeply marginalized citizens like Padilla (Hispanic, a felon, and a Muslim), there is nothing to prevent either Bush, or some other crackpot, from extending such practices to members of the larger population they don’t particularly like. For example, liberals. Or the “wrong kind” of Hispanics.

Or maybe in the future, the president will follow the logic of the Pat Robertsons, decide that abortion really is murder, and have women stand trial for 1st degree homicide. And there’s nothing to stop Bush, or any future US president, from unilaterally deciding – as per the dictator in “Bananas” – that all US citizens must change their underwear twice a day; therefore, all underwear will worn on the outside, “so we can check.”

Why not? Think it’s so implausible?

If you had told me in 1999 that, by 2006, an American president could openly declare that he had no intention of obeying 750 bills he had signed into law, including a law ordering the US to refrain from torture, I would have assumed you’d been Bogarting one two many j’s from Tim Leary’s private stash. But it’s happened. If, back then, you had told me that the governor of Florida would try to kidnap a brain-dead patient, nearly sparking an armed confrontation between state and local officials, and that that governor was the president’s brother, I would have agreed with you, not tried to get you any more psychotic, and backed away very, very carefully until I was safe enough to run and call 911 to bring Thorazine and restraints, stat. But that, too, happened.

Slowly, but not stealthily, the movement of the American government away from any semblance of democracy towards some kind of fascism shows every indication it will continue apace.* The only serious setback I know of to this trend was Kitzmiller v. Dover. And that was only because a christianist-infected schoolboard jumped the gun and moved a few years too soon, probably because its leader had become addled from an oxycontin addiction.

The 2006 elections are crucial – even in its weakened state, can the Bush administration and the Republicans maintain their vice grip (literally) on the government? If they can, it will become exceedingly difficult – next to impossible – for this country to reverse its tracks and recover. Even if Republicans do lose a house of Congress, it remains to be seen whether Democrats have the will, and the skill, to lead this country back from the abyss. The politics of national opposition to Bushism are exceedingly complex, as Kevin Phillips’ book points out (that’s an optimistic reading of it).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. These upcoming elections, let’s return to them. Krugman has made the point over and over that there are so many crimes the Republican leadership has committed that they have a tremendous incentive to do whatever it takes to remain in power, if for no other reason than to avoid long incarceration. It is going to a long, ugly, expensive, and potentially dangerous summer for the United States. But it cannot be avoided and all of you need to vote, to get involved with campaigns you feel you can support (even if they are not perfect), and to get your friends and neighbors to go to the polls to vote these bastards out.

*To continue that hypothetical lookback: If, back in ’99, you had told me I would write a sentence like that, I would have laughed uproariously. The very notion that I would be that involved and have such a “radical,” pessimistic attitude! But I have, because I’m convinced the country’s federal government – and many state governments as well – have moved to the extreme right of American politics. Let’s not forget John Ashcroft with his white supremacist ties, my friends. Or the Hitler-admiring piece of trash that governs California, due to the recall of a Democrat and a special election.

Every Picture Tells A Story

by digby

Today I am breaking down the formidable Chinese Wall of the Hullabaloo Empire to editorially endorse my favorite advertiser, Michael Shaw at BagNewsNotes whose work this week is outstanding.

First,he has a take on Joe Lieberman that is both funny and inspired: Holy Joe as man-boy, which explains why he and Lil’ Junior get along so well. (It also explains his fear of sex.)

Without a better way of understanding such things, most people attribute the Lieberman – Bush attraction to a combination of political expedience and shared ideology. However, I think it’s more psychological than that.

When you look at relationships — be they marriages, or the working kind — you tend to find people with generally equivalent degrees of moral and emotional development. (To understand “delayed” moral development, you need only look at the way this country has been governed over the past five years. For example, you find a lot of black-and-white thinking, such as “good” versus “bad” and “us” versus “them”; a preoccupation with authority and obedience; and dramatic, self-centered acts mostly rationalized after the fact.)

Delayed moral advancement tends to go hand-in-hand with the lower rungs of emotional maturity. In kids trapped in adult bodies, you tend to see silliness substituting for wit; awkwardness in the place of poise; passion masquerading as love; aggression covering for strength; and rituals standing in for originality.

[…]

When the Senator says he will run as an independent if he gets knocked off in the Democratic primary, he’s not making a thoughtful judgement, he’s throwing a hissy fit. When Lieberman cozies up to Bush and the two embrace in the Senate chamber, the best analogy is not two mature gay men so much as innocent and excited children recognizing a possible new playmate from the other side of town.

It’s important to click the link so you can see the hilarious visual analysis that accompanies the story.

BagNews also covers the Colbert Miracle from the prespective of duelling screenshots of The Man and the president at the dinner, dissects the Flight 93 trailer, finds the poetry in the rally for Darfur and takes us back to New Orleans with more pictures from the great photographer Alan Chin.

And, by the way, BagNews is also up for best Political Blog in the Webby Awards, which is quite the honor. You can register to vote, here, if you haven’t already. The balloting closes on Friday night. Bagnews is one of the most original blogs out there. His analysis of politics and culture through pictures is incredibly valuable in a culture where “politics is TV with the sound turned off.” Michael has also been a great friend of the left blogosphere, (this blog in particular) buying ads since the dawn of our little venture always creating innovative and interesting visuals for any blogs that feature them. If you have a chance today to go over and vote for BagNews, it would be a nice affirmation of great blogging by a great guy.

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Lapdogs

by tristero

Salon has a nice, extended excerpt from what looks like a great book, Boehlert’s Lapdogs. This leaped out at me:

In truth, Bush never could have ordered the invasion of Iraq — never could have sold the idea at home — if it weren’t for the help he received from the MSM, and particularly the stamp of approval he received from so-called liberal media institutions such as the Washington Post, which in February of 2003 alone, editorialized in favor of war nine times. (Between September 2002 and February 2003, the paper editorialized twenty-six times in favor of the war.) The Post had plenty of company from the liberal East Coast media cabal, with high-profile columnists and editors — the newfound liberal hawks — at the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, the New Republic and elsewhere all signing on for a war of preemption. By the time the invasion began, the de facto position among the Beltway chattering class was clearly one that backed Bush and favored war. Years later the New York Times Magazine wrote that most “journalists in Washington found it almost inconceivable, even during the period before a fiercely contested midterm election [in 2002], that the intelligence used to justify the war might simply be invented.” Hollywood peace activists could conceive it, but serious Beltway journalists could not? That’s hard to believe. More likely journalists could conceive it but, understanding the MSM unspoken guidelines — both social and political — were too timid to express it at the time of war. (Emphasis added.)

Let’s assume Boehlert is right, that without the press playing along, Bush couldn’t have gotten away with invading Iraq. That argues for leaving no stone unturned to make sure the press doesn’t roll over for Iran.

(Note to rightwingnuts and other cognitively defective types: I’m NOT suggesting that the press should suppress prowar voices. I’m advocating that the press simply should do its job, which is critically to report a wide spectrum of information and viewpoints about Iran, to analyze what’s reported, and to investigate on their own. Which, to be kind, they did not do in re Iraq.)

However, I’m not entirely sure that Boehlert is, in fact, right. I remember 2002 and early 2003 quite well. This country had gone insane with fear after 9/11. Friends of mine, lifelong liberals, believed every word Bush said and were perfectly happy to believe that Saddam was somehow involved with 9/11. Had the press reported the truth, Bush would have demonized the press and invaded anyway, imo. Had Congress objected, Bush would have ignored them and invaded anyway. He made it quite clear in the spring/summer of 2002 that he believed he had the legal right to invade Iraq without consulting Congress; the resolution in the fall of 2002 was, from Bush’s standpoint, simply redundant. And what the UN does is irrelevant.

Nevertheless, things are different now. The military is publicly dissenting from Iran. The CIA is unlikely to be the fall guy for fixed intelligence given how they were dealt with over Iraq. The Republican Party is interested in winning in the fall elections and they seem to be calculating that opposition to Bush is more likely to play well than signing on without reservations to an Iran bang bang. And Tony Blair isn’t doing very well, either, so the coalition of the willing dodge won’t work this time.

It is extremely important, if you want the US to avert another war, for the feet of American reporters to be held to the fire by the public to report Iran in a truthful But imo, the forceful opposition of the military, Republican candidates, and perhaps the intelligence services to Bush’s jones for war will be just as, if not more, decisive. Note that I truly don’t think Bush – meaning the Bush administration – cares what the country wants; therefore the low poll numbers don’t factor into the decision to initiate a first strike nuclear attack on Iran.* Bush is confident, and probably correctly so, that at least 50.1% of the country will support what he does when the bombs start to fall and that is all that matters.** Of course, Democrats can be safely ignored, as always. And since, to Bush, the press is merely an especially obnoxious species of Democrat, they don’t matter, either.

Remember: he’s The Decider. He decides what’s best. And it is what’s best because he decided it was. The rest of us are, like it or not, along for the ride. That’s the problem with living in an authoritarian state, even one that doesn’t resort – despite Volokh’s fervent desires – to the public torture of its criminals before killing them. You really cannot affect its politics or influence its behavior very much. And if it frightens you to think that the fate of your country, if not the world, rests on the outcome of a desperate power struggle between a goddammed malicious idiot, the Joint Chiefs, the calculations of corrupt Republican politicians and no one else in the world, then… Welcome to the 21st Century, my friends. This ain’t your father’s Missile Crisis.

*Imo, I think it’s beyond serious doubt that if Bush is not stopped, the attack on Iran will be pre-emptive and include nuclear weapons. Both Hersh’s recent article and the response make that clear. Whatever they might be called – surgical, tactical, whatever – they are nuclear bombs, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They may be a bit smaller, they’re still atomic bombs and atomic bombs do rather nasty things to lots of people. Furthermore, given what we know of his personality from his past behavior, it’s safe to say that Bush has no intention of letting anyone – let alone the head of an official Axis of Evil country – be the first person since Truman to order atomic bombs dropped on people.

** Bush’s advisers have almost certainly estimated how low his poll numbers can fall and still ensure that, once the bombs fall, a majority in the US will bounce back to support him. I suspect that number is considerably below the current 1/3 approval rating, so Bush sees no reason to take public opinion into account, at least right now, in his plans for nuclear war. The support of the Congress (for money) and the military leadership (for execution) is more critical and if they don’t play ball, they very well could derail the invasion.

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Anonymous Putz

by digby

Joe Klein had an online chat at the Washington Post today. There are many amusing moments, but for me, this one took the cake:

Beeville, Tex: Without meaning offense, how responsible do you yourself feel for contributing to the political environment of canned political discourse? After all, you wrote Anonymous at a time when all political reporting seemed to center on undermining a sitting president.

Joe Klein: I always thought Primary Colors was a tribute to larger than life politicians. As for Bill Clinton, if I’ve been criticized for anything in my career, it’s being too favorable towards him. Primary Colors was a novel. No harm was intended. When Mike Nichols bought the film rights, he said: “There is no villain in this book.” Amen to that.

Oh really.

I’m tired and I can’t really write about this in the detail it deserves, but luckily Columbia Journalism review did a terrific post mortem on the “Primary Colors” fraud. Not only did santimonious prick Joe Klein personally help set the table for the asinine Monica Lewinsky scandal — he committed journalistic malpractice while doing it.

Here’s a highlight:

Once his Anonymous gambit took shape, Klein’s life, like Jekyll’s, became dangerously schizophrenic. Outwardly, he was the journalist-pundit, exuding moral rectitude, culling fact from rumor, reporting truth as he saw it – the man who once denounced as “despicable” those who were spreading charges about Clinton’s private life “to make money.” Yet secretly he worked to breathe life into the most scandalous suspicions about the Clintons in the course of making a pile. (Klein’s denial of any connection between the Clintons and his fictional “Stantons” is, of course, transparent nonsense.)

As the Newsweek pundit, he had written a scathing column (“The Politics of Promiscuity,” May 9, 1994) faulting Clinton for having a fragmented identity “composed of all sorts of persons”; for “always living on the edge, as if he were begging to get caught”; for “lawyering the truth . . . petty fudges, retreats, compromises, denials.” Sounds like a description of Klein himself.

He may have thought he could keep his professional duality concealed indefinitely. But ultimately he went the way of Jekyll, who lost control of his experiment and started turning into Hyde spontaneously, without warning, against his will, and was found out by suspicious colleagues. By the same token, Klein began wondering whether he was losing a grip on his original self (“I asked my agent: ‘Have I changed . . . ? Am I becoming Anonymous? Am I different now?’ ” he wrote in the Book Review piece.) Meanwhile, the relentless scorps closed in until, at last, The Washington Post hit pay dirt. The game was up.

Needless to say, in the frenzy that followed his unmasking (more than 500 articles and editorials, dozens of TV segments), Klein came under intense moralistic assault. The New York Times, for one, stung him in a lead editorial: “People interested in preserving the core of serious journalism have to view his actions and words as corrupt and – if they become an example to others – corrupting.” Meanwhile, Newsweek editor Maynard Parker was being lashed as well. He had known all along that Klein was Anonymous but allowed items to appear in the magazine which suggested that writers other than Klein were plausible suspects. The Dallas Morning News called this “a gross violation of journalistic ethics.”

Tell me again why Democrats are supposed to listen to insults about “inauthentic” politicians who listen to “self-serving” strategists from this man? I keep forgetting.

Hat tip to Tristram Shandy who has more here.

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Suit Turns Voting Rights Act on Its Head

by digby

It’s good to see the Gonzales Justice department has its priorities straight.

Ike Brown is a legend in Mississippi politics, a fast-talking operative both loved and hated for his ability to turn out black voters and get his candidates into office.

That success has also landed him at the heart of a federal lawsuit that’s about to turn the Voting Rights Act on its end.

For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites.

Brown, head of the Democratic Party in Mississippi’s rural Noxubee County, is accused of waging a campaign to defeat white voters and candidates with tactics including intimidation and coercion. Also named in the lawsuit is Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens, who has agreed to refrain from rejecting white voters’ absentee ballots considered defective while accepting similar ballots from black voters.

[…]

The Justice Department complaint says Brown and those working with him “participated in numerous racial appeals during primary and general campaigns and have criticized black citizens for supporting white candidates and for forming biracial political coalitions with white candidates.”

Can you believe it? Racial Appeals? And in Alabama Mississippi, too!

Noxubee County a rural area along the Alabama line named for a Choctaw word meaning “stinking water” has a population of 12,500, 69 percent black and 30 percent white.

Whites once dominated county politics here, but now only one white person holds countywide office, and he says Brown tried to recruit an out-of-county black candidate to run against him three years ago.

The federal case against Brown, scheduled for trial this fall, represents a change in direction in the use of the Voting Rights Act, says Jon Greenbaum, director of the voting rights project for the Washington-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The law was written to protect racial minorities in the 1960s when Mississippi and other Southern states strictly enforced segregation.

“The main concern we have in the civil rights community isn’t necessarily that that DOJ brought this case,” Greenbaum says. “It’s that the department is not bringing meritorious cases on behalf of African-American and Native American voters.”

Justice Department records show the department’s last voting-rights case alleging discrimination against black voters was filed in 2001. Since then, six cases have been brought on behalf of voters of Hispanic or Asian descent in five states plus the case involving white voters in Mississippi.

Well now, that’s how it ought to be, in my book. For too long this country has suffered under the yoke of the African American political power brokers. You can certainly understand why they have chosen to investigate this particular complaint as opposed to say, the voting irregularities in Duvall County in the 2000 election, or the oddly long lines in black precincts in Ohio in 2000. This one county with 12,500 votes is where the real action is.

“This case is real simple,” Brown says, stretching back in a maroon chair during an interview in Mickens’ office, where voter-registration records are kept. “Find me one white person that was discriminated against.”

The main white person who makes the claim is Ricky Walker, the county prosecuting attorney who believes Brown recruited an opponent for him simply because he’s white, an action Walker called “racist.”

Ah yes, the cursed legacy of the discriminated against white male in Alabama Mississippi. It’s a good thing the white citizens of Alabama supported that voting rights act. Where would they be now?

Walker says that when he qualified to run again in 2003, Brown brought in a black lawyer from another part of the state to run against him. A circuit judge found that the lawyer, Winston James Thompson III, had not established residency, and Thompson was not allowed on the ballot.

“I think he just wanted to have a person in that office that he had some control over, a black person,” Walker says.

Thank God racism against African Americans is solved in this country, eh? But gawd help us, we’d better get a handle on this scourge of black discrimination against whites if we ever hope to have a color blind society.

“I think Ike does play race politics,” Colom says. “He is a black political leader who fights the fight like we were still in the 1970s. He doesn’t recognize the progress that we have made.”

But Colom criticizes the Justice Department for filing a complaint against a black political consultant while ignoring similar behavior by white political operatives in Mississippi.

“It has overtones of politics and that’s the wrong road for Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department,” the attorney says. “It’s going to destroy their credibility the next time they ask black people to listen to them.”

No need to worry about that. The Justice Department is just evening the score for the little guy. The African American power structure is just going to have to get used to it.

Hat Tip to Eugene Akers
.

Lost In Translation

by tristero

There are those (heh heh) who think I’m picking on poor Ken Pollack ’cause he never bothered actually to become a Middle East expert before marketing himself as one. They think that fluency in a country’s language is optional in order to demonstrate expertise in a country’s culture.

Okay, my friends, try translating this into Farsi. Hell, I can’t even translate it into recognizable English:

President Bush said Wednesday the verdict rejecting the death penalty for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui ‘represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror.’

Without commenting directly on the jury’s decision, Bush declared, ‘Evil will not have the final say. This great nation will prevail.’

I have absolutely no idea what Bush is talking about.

Who ever implied that the “fight against terror” would “end” with the sentencing of Moussaoui? And what does a man receiving life imprisonment have to do with “evil” having the final say, or not having the final say? And how did evil have the penultimate say here? And what’s this about prevailing? Prevail against what? A man spending the rest of his life behind bars? The future of the United States is somehow called into question by the verdict? What on earth is Bush talking about?

Okay, I’m exaggerating. I do think I understand the remarks. Bush is saying to his fans – one of out three Americans, even now, can you fucking believe it? – that he thinks the jury was infested with liberals and they let him off the hook; Zac should be whacked.

But really, that interpretation doesn’t begin to do justice to the extremely weird way in which he said it – a fusion of mealy-mouthed Biz Speak, government double-talk, and American fundamentalist claptrap. And it’s just as important that Bush left things out, like, for example, a mention of the actual decision – life imprisonment. I’m sure you guys can find numerous other subtleties, but these will do for starters. Read more of the Bush remarks in the article to get a sense of how peculiar they all are.

There simply is no way in hell – none – that the uniquely bizarre nature of these comments – and their implications- can be crisply translated into, say, Arabic. You’ll inevitably lose the sense of vertigo Bush’s perversion of the English language induces, not to mention the cynical manipulation hidden within the remarks. The important cultural context is lost without access to the original language. Bottom line:

You need to understand Bush and explain him to the leaders of your country? You’ll personally need to read his remarks in the original. Need to understand Ahmadinejad to explain to the leaders of our country? Ditto.

QED.

[UPDATE: Correspondent WBC writes, ‘Okay, I translated it to Farsi and then back into English just to measure any loss in the translation. I think you’ll agree, nothing was lost. It translates to:

“We will continue our crusade with or without this death.” ‘]