Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Stanislaw Lem

by tristero

Stanislaw Lem has died. I have to confess that I’ve never been a big reader of sci-fi. But I always loved Lem’s novels. Time to read some more of him. Try this or this or, of course, this.

Bad Precedent

by digby

I can’t help but feel a tiny bit confused by all this righteous rightwing aversion to “rewarding lawbreaking” with an amnesty program for immigrants. The argument seems to be that it sends a bad message to allow people to get away with unlawful behavior by legalizing it after the fact. What’ll they tell the children?

Of course, it all depends on who’s doing the breaking, doesn’t it?

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Bush’s Busboy Goes Bye-Bye

by digby

“Go get me Andy Card,” Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. “You’re the chief of staff. You think you’re up to getting us some cheeseburgers?”

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

I’m sure he’ll be missed. Perhaps we should all send Josh Bolton some McDonald’s menus. He’s going to need them.

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I just know there are a few of you who would love to take some action today to show the powers that be that the grassroots have a sense of humor. Christy at FDL has the next phase of the “rubber stamp” action plan ready to roll. Think of it as a way of bonding with our representatives — and telling the other side that we are on to them…

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Intervention

by digby

A couple of months ago when Deborah Howell was “deluged” with “uncivilized” comments about her failure to correct a blatant misrepresentation, the Washington Post ombudsman and others had a shrieking fit of the vapors and spent days on the fainting couch mumbling incoherently about the rude insults they had to endure. I thought Howell would have to take a leave of absense and get herself to a nunnery for a few weeks just to regain her belief in the goodness of mankind after such an assault.

As was amply demonstrated, the vast majority of the comments were not, in fact, crude or filthy. They condemned the Post for uncritically recycling RNC talking points and failing to provide proof of their assertions. And they used aggressive language to do it.

But as Busy, Busy Busy’s Elton Beard noticed, Howell only seems to be truly stunned, angry and upset by certain kinds of criticism. Others, not so much. Here’s Howell this past Sunday:

One critic of the coverage is John Dowd, a Washington lawyer: “I can’t subscribe to your newspaper anymore because you have lost all sense of balance and perspective in your coverage of the war in Iraq and against the terrorists. It is clear to those of us who have our sons and daughters who are in harm’s way that you support the terrorists and you are opposed to the efforts of our Marines, all who are sacrificing so that you are free to publish without interference.”

Dowd’s son Dan is a Marine captain, just back from his second tour as a helicopter pilot in Iraq. Dowd sees his son and other U.S. and Iraqi soldiers “as the most selfless people I’ve known in my life.” I found his letter haunting; it pains me that he would think Post journalists support terrorists.

Beard says:

Think about that.

A reader accuses Washington Post journalists of siding with Goldstein – er, terrorists – and Deborah Howell doesn’t think, this man is either demented or trying to manipulate me. She doesn’t crumple up and toss the letter and she doesn’t add it to her loony folder, already overflowing with missives from crazed liberals. She does not take offense at the slur on her colleagues. Quite the opposite. She takes the complaint seriously

It pains her to think this fine man believes that the Washington Post supports terrorists. She’s “haunted” by that criticism. But those of us who would like the Post to correct their errors are uncivilized beasts from the fever swamp who are dragging down the discourse. That’s very revealing, I think. Deborah Howell, like so many of her brethren, has so internalized rightwing criticism that it doesn’t even seem unreasonable anymore. She “understands” it. This man called her a traitor to her face and all it does is make her feel sad. She doesn’t even know that she has completely absorbed the right’s criticisms.

And when liberals point out that she has become subsumed by a radical Republican establishment, when they bring attention to the fact that she no longer even knows when she is being manipulated and abused — she gets angry and tries to kill the messenger.

The truth is that we are not trying to destroy the media with our barbaric uncouth ways and unflattering criticisms. We are trying to save it. It’s not surprising that they have become self-loathing, addicted to RNC spin and dependent on the approbation of the Republican establishment. We can all see why they would no longer be able to tell the difference between rational conservative discourse and RNC propaganda. They’ve been under sustained attack for years.

That’s why we’ve decided we need to stage an intervention. The first step is to wake them up and make them realize that when a reader calls them a terrorist sympathizer the proper response is not to “feel pained” or be “haunted.” It’s to recognize that the person who is saying it is a deluded rightwing nutcase — and then get righteously pissed. That is not a benign charge — they are fighting words.

And conversely, when someone calls them on an error, the proper response is to admit it and correct it, not become freaked out by the passion of those who demand it. These two kinds of feedback from readers are not equivalent and the second is certainly not more deserving of anger and shock than the first. Being called a traitor to your country is a deeply offensive insult. Being told you are not doing your job correctly may be insulting, but it’s hardly in the same league. The fact that Deborah Howell cannot see that — and takes the first one more seriously than the second — is the very essence of the problem with the mainstream press.

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Cheating By Reflex

by digby

If they aren’t plagiarising, they’re lying. If they aren’t lying they’re cooking the record. If they can’t win, they cheat.

And anyone who ever believes a word of anything coming out of the mouth of that unctuous phony Huckleberry Graham is just looking to get punked. Get a load of this, from Anonymous Liberal:

Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The Court will be called upon to determine–among other things–whether a provision in last year’s Detainee Treatment Act (“DTA”) effectively strips the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case. The Government contends that it does and in support of this position, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kyl have filed an amicus brief with the Court.

This amicus brief argues that the legislative history of the DTA supports the Government’s position. Specifically, the brief cites a lengthy colloquy between Senators Kyl and Graham themselves which purportly took place during a Senate floor debate just prior to passage of the bill. In the exchange, both Kyl and Graham suggest that the bill will strip the courts of jurisdiction over pending detainee cases such as Hamdan. But here’s where the story gets interesting.

Apparently this entire 8 page colloquy–which is scripted to read as if it were delivered live on the floor of the Senate, complete with random interruptions from other Senators–never took place. It was inserted into the Congressional Record in written form just prior to passage of the bill.

They even went to the trouble of making it appear to be a “real” debate with conversational asides and colloquial language. The very, very pious and godly Sam Brownback lied outright and said he’d participated in the debate when it never actually happened. (He’s got a bit part in the script.) This article in Slate leads me to believe that there may have been some collusion between the Justice Department and Graham.

They knew that the entire Senate did not intend that the court be stripped of jurisdiction in pending cases. It probably wouldn’t have passed if that had been the case. So they cheated. This has been the story over and over and over again with this rubber stamp Eunuch Caucus. If they can’t deliver for their Dear Leader by following the rules — even with a majority — they ignore them. They are the outlaw party.

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The Iraq Document Dump

by tristero

Shorter Peter Bergen: There is no credible evidence in the Iraqi document dump of a Saddam/Qaeda link beyond the most desultory of contacts, as the 9/11 Commission, et al. has already concluded.

And before taking a quick squint, finding something ambiguous and shrieking, “Smoking gun, smoking gun!” I’d like to remind our rabid friends on the right that, as the introduction to the documents clearly states: “The US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.” That should be taken as a very strong hint to be very skeptical about what you think you’ve found.

Of course, it would be outrageous to accuse the Bush administration of salting the document dump with deliberate forgeries. Completely outrageous.

It would also be outrageous to accuse the Bush administration of witholding documents that would tend to make their justifications for the war look even more specious than they already do. Completely outrageous.

I urge everyone on the right to drop everything they are doing for the next few years and carefully, carefully study this archive. And be sure to triple-check what you find. Studying this material with the detail it deserves will require your full, undivided attention.

Take your time, boys and girls, as much as you need. I can wait.

More Pretexts

by digby

In reference to my post below about Bush and Blair casually throwing around possible pretexts for the war, Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution pointed me to a post he wrote almost a year ago in which he showed that this was openly discussed at the time by none other than the likes of liberal hawk hero, Kenneth Pollack:

…The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack was the book all good liberal hawks claimed had convinced them we just HAD to invade Iraq. And Pollack spoke about this strategy quite openly.

And yet as far as I can tell not a single member of the media pointed out how weird this was. (Of course, it’s likely most of the people touting The Threatening Storm never bothered to read it.)

Specifically, Pollack writes about this in the “Case for an Invasion” chapter. He explains we have to invade Iraq because of Saddam’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, other countries refuse to recognize this grave, grave danger. So in order to build as large a coalition as possible, we need some help from Iraq:

Click the link to see Pollacks explicit advice that the government use covert action provoke Saddam into retaliation so that we might invent a cassus belli. Pollack patiently explains,however, that even if we are unable to manufacture a proper pretext, we must invade anyway.

This was the reasonable liberal position, you’ll recall. Those of us who were against the war because it made no sense were so beyond the pale that we didn’t even merit a mention. Those who argued that invasion was unnecessary to contain the threat were relegated to obscure foreign policy journals. Those who said that it was counterproductive were called appeasers. Kenneth Pollack represented the “respectable” liberal position — and he argued quite openly that the government should invent a pretext to invade Iraq — and if that proved impossible we had to invade anyway.

And nobody said a word. Of course, his book was nearly hysterical in its threat assessment, so the idea of having to create a pretext to invade another nation seemed a small thing to some, I suppose. (The NYRB didn’t mention it.) But why did no one note that the fact the US could not make its case straightforwardly may just have meant that it didn’t actually … have a case?

After excerpting Pollack’s blithe list of potential phony pretexts, Jonathan concludes with this observation — one that really takes the cake and shows how intellectually bankrupt the liberal hawks were:

The best part is that later ON THE SAME PAGE Pollack piously explains “the administration needs to do an honest job explaining to the American people… why the United States needs to undertake this effort.”

So, there you have it: we’re going to invade no matter what, but we should try to come up with some pretext, all the while being honest about why we’re invading. If you’re capable of believing that makes any sense whatsoever, you’ll be a welcome member of the US foreign policy establishment.

9/11 changed everything. It made people stupid.

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The Lowest of The Low

by digby

Andrew Sullivan has been writing about discrimination against atheists lately. Today’s post on the subject is particularly interesting:

Eugene Volokh has just written a law article (PDF file here) on how atheist fathers and mothers are routinely discriminated against in child custody cases. He cites over 70 recent cases across the country – and these were only the ones which were appealed, so they probably represent a fraction of the actual cases. Volokh recalls how Percy Byshe Shelley was the first father to be denied custody because of his atheism – but his dilemma doesn’t belong to a different time and place

The post goes on to show that this is actually fairly common. Frankly, I’m not surprised at all. Despite the ridiculous hype to the contrary, our society dictates that religion is required to be a decent person. If you can’t get elected to office as an atheist, why would a court grant you the right to raise children?

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Sullivan, in an earlier post on the subject, points out the obvious:

A government that screws with the rights of atheists is screwing with the rights of believers as well.

True, but then religious freedom isn’t really the point for most theocrats, is it?

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The Liberal Clergy Gets Serious

by digby

We’ve had quite a few discussions about religion on this blog lately, which led me to believe that there is a serious need for the religious left to assert itself and make a case for Democratic religiosity. The Republicans simply do not own the church and they have no right to claim they do.

But I, being a non-believer, cannot make that case effectively. I can’t even discuss it in terms other than dry pragmatic political language. So, I’m thrilled to read through Street Prophets that the United Church of Christ has teamed up with Media Matters to “fight the pronounced tilt toward the Religious Right in mainstream media news.” Pastordan writes:

The conclusion is hard to escape: unless you’re Jesse Jackson (and it’s before 2001), if you’re on Sunday morning television to talk religion and politics, you’re almost certainly white, male and conservative, and you probably don’t represent anyone other than your own advocacy group. Is it any wonder that public discourse about religion has become so distorted in the past few years? The news shows have stopped talking to people who do religion in favor of people who talk about “religious values,” and usually from a particular perspective.

That’s a real filter, and it doesn’t just hurt faithful progressives. It hurts our churches, temples and mosques as well, by buying into the spin that conservative activists – who can give great soundbite on politics – represent the true face of faith in America. For that matter, it hurts all denominations, who are usually more interested in doing good than playing political footsie with the Republican party.

So thank God there’s a way to fight back. The first action is a letter/e-mail campaign to ask ABC why it is there’s such an imbalance on their news shows. Drop them a line, and let’s get this party started. It really has been too long that we’ve allowed the hucksters and bigots to speak for us.

And the UCC will be running a new ad soon as well, if the networks will play them. Today’s New York Times reports:

The church will return on April 3 with a second commercial, also from Gotham, titled “Ejector Pew.” The spot depicts a smug, traditional-looking family looking askance as they are joined inside a church by worshipers who are significantly different from them.

Suddenly, the worshipers who are disabled or elderly, or who appear to be gay, Hispanic or of Middle Eastern origin, are forcibly ejected from their seats. “God doesn’t reject people,” the commercial says. “Neither do we.”

This time, the campaign, with a budget estimated at $1.5 million, extends well beyond television. The intent is to stimulate conversation and debate with so-called viral efforts that are to include a substantial online presence, on Web sites and blogs; chain letters, in the form of e-mail messages; audio podcasts; posters; events at local churches; and even merchandise like decals, tote bags, pens and golf balls bearing the phrase “God is still speaking,” which is the campaign’s theme.

Smart stuff.

Click over to Street Prophets for links to the ad.

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