Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cutthroats

by digby

Both Kos and Atrios linked to this post about how Rove smeared John Kerry fior allegedly being in cahoots with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. It was bullshit, of course, and now we find out that Rove’s buddy Abramoff was selling Bush face time and cut a deal for a meeting with Mahathir for 1.2 mil. (And to think the Republicans had coronaries about those silly “white house coffees.”)

This post also notes some other dirty tricks from the last electionthat I was unaware of. From a Miami Herald article dated november 1, 2004:

The visits came as the ground war escalated. The National Jewish Democratic Council reported Sunday that Kerry campaign signs were defaced with stickers reading, ”Arafat Endorses,” suggesting Kerry has the backing of the ailing Palestinian leader.

Bush’s campaign has looked to siphon off traditionally Democratic-leaning Jewish voters, and the stickers echo a Republican Party of Florida mailer that also suggests Kerry is being supported by Arafat.

Kerry supporters have pointed to the senator’s 100 percent pro-Israel voting record to rebuff the Republican claims that Bush is a stronger supporter of the Jewish state.

Republican voters received a torrent of negative anti-Kerry campaign mailings Saturday, some from an organization with strong Republican ties, the Florida Leadership Council.

The group is headed by Cory Tilley, a former aide to Gov. Bush, and David Johnson, former executive director of the Republican Party of Florida.

The mailings range from images of the party’s stalwart leaders — like Ronald Reagan — to more ominous pieces that equate a vote for Kerry as the first step in leading to a terrorist attack on South Florida.

FAKE ARTICLE

The most negative mailing from the Florida Leadership Council has a fake newspaper story from the year 2007 underneath a photo of children in a classroom wearing gas masks.

The dateline is ”Florida Red Zone,” and the fake story reads: ‘President John Kerry warned parents and children in South Florida that mandatory radiation and chemical gear would be required to be worn `for the foreseeable future’ since the Suitcase Dirty Bomb terrorist attack on South Florida in the spring.”

On the reverse side of the mailing, it says “The last line of defense must be stronger than John Kerry.

These are the people who run and win on “moral values.”

Sometimes I get criticism from my readers for suggesting that the Democrats must play on the same playing field as the Republicans. They say, “we shouldn’t become them.” But I never suggest that the Democrats should lie, cheat or play dirty as the Republicans do. I suggest that they wise up and stop pretending that Republicans are anything but ruthless adversaries and adjust accordingly. They can be beaten with smart strategies, but not unless the Democrats internalize the connection between the nice men and women they are working with on capitol hill every day with the thugs they hire to get elected. They are all cogs in the same cutthroat political machine.

Update: When I went to put up the links, I realized that Atrios had written “Always project. Always.” it reminded me of a post I did before the election called “Projection Politics” in which I noted that Rove doesn’t actually attack the strengths of his opponents, as he like to say he does:

Rove has developed a campaign of projection in which he tars his opponents with his own candidates’ weaknesses and then attacks them.

He attacks Kerry for phony heroism thirty years ago when just last year his own candidate had himself filmed in a little costume prancing around on an aircraft carrier pretending he’d won a war that had only begun. But, by tarring Kerry with using war as a PR stunt for his own personal gain, people can process the uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing about Iraq as not really being caused by Junior, but by his rival who is the real shallow opportunist who only pretends to be a man of proven leadership and experience.

[…]

What is interesting about Rove is that his way of dealing with his own candidates’ even more glaring deficiencies is to build a Kerry straw man in Bush’s exact image and then set it afire. I don’t know if it will work, or even if he’s aware that he’s doing it, projection being epidemic in GOP circles. But, it’s disarming and confusing and it makes it difficult to effectively counter attack. You end up with some defensive version of “I know you are but what am I” which doesn’t really advance your position.

It’s projection/innoculation. And they are very good at it. Of course, you always run the risk that it will circle right back on you, which it seems to have done.

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Empty Veto

by digby

So Bush says he’ll veto any legislation to block the port deal. He says that his government knows what it’s doing and wouldn’t have ok’d the deal if it would harm the nation’s security. This is the same government that did such a great job with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

Assuming that we aren’t seeing some sort of kabuki here, it appears that the Eunuch Caucus is getting an earful from their constituents and see no margin in working with the lame albatross right now. He’s threatened vetoes before and the invertebrate Republicans have always fallen into line. This time appears to be different.

If this is true, the Bush administration may be effectively over.

Update: Dan Bartlett is going on and on about the “rigorousness” of the process the administration undertook with this port deal. He keeps saying that they have a lot of experience with this company and that the department of Homeland Security will be in charge of security. Apparently, they have no idea that they have lost the trust of the people on exactly these kinds of things. The rigor of their planning, the “experience” with private companies and the ineptitude of Homeland Security.

They have fear mongered their way to victory for four long years, going on and on about how “the oceans don’t protect us” anymore and now they act as if port security is just another contract and claim it’s important for “our image” to give security contracts to state owned middle eastern companies with ties to terrorism. Wow.

They are left with nothing but the president’s “resolve” to govern. They believe that if he digs in his heels everyone will capitulate out of sheer admiration for his machismo. At 39%, the power of his machismo has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. He’s in very icy water now.

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Mixed Signals

by digby

On CNN earlier today:

NGUYEN: Well, it wasn’t quite an apology, but it was an admission. Three weeks after his State of the Union address calling for energy independence, President Bush acknowledged today that his administration has been sending some mixed signals.

Mr. Bush visited one of the nation’s top renewable energy labs in Colorado. He praised the work that’s being done there and acknowledged that just two weeks ago the government laid off 32 workers there. Those jobs have now been restored, just in time for the president’s visit.

I’m sure those 32 workers are grateful, but really. This is becoming embarrasing. I don’t know if you saw him, but he was draped so far forward on the podium he looked like he was trying to crawl over it. Maybe there was a copy of “My Pet Goat” lying open on the floor.

Update: Here’s the full story from the WaPo:

President Bush, on a three-state trip to promote his energy policy, said Tuesday that a budgeting mix-up was the reason 32 workers at one of the nation’s premier renewable energy labs were laid off and then reinstated just before his visit.

Bush addressed the funding problem as soon as he began speaking here at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing the sort of renewable energy technologies the president is promoting.

“Sometimes, decisions made as the result of the appropriations process, the money may not end up where it was supposed to have gone,” Bush said.

Right. He never meant to cut those jobs. The money just ended up where it wasn’t supposed to go.

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Born Again Con Man

by digby

The Book Of Ralph

It’ll make you you hurl.

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The Trifecta

by digby

If there are three hallmarks of this failed Bush administration, it is hubris, incompetence and cronyism. This port deal features all three.

The hubris is illustrated by the fact that they actually thought after years of fear mongering and beating of Islamic terrorist war drums, they wouldn’t be questioned about a United Arab Emirates contract for port security. The king shall not be questioned. The incompetence feature is that they believe it is smart to outsource security, of all things, to another country. If there is one thing all sides can agree upon, it’s that the US should control its own borders and ports. It’s common sense.

And finally, as we should have known, via FDL, it turns out this is also another crony cock-up:

The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World – giving it control of Manhattan’s cruise ship terminal and Newark’s container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush’s cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World’s European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Bush Buddies: Doing a heckuva job, as usual.

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The Anti-Sentimental American

by digby

Knowing I have a penchant for Chayefsky, Arthur sent me a link to his discussion of “The Americanization of Emily” a film I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never seen. I’m going to get it today:

Many of the propagandists for war, 40 years ago and ever since — and up to and most definitely including today — consider Emily to be “anti-American” and “anti-war.” It certainly is all that and more — if your view of war is the mythic one. But Chayefsky rejects the myth and all its various aspects totally and across the board. It is unjustified to conclude that Chayefsky is “anti-war” in the sense of advocating pacifism: such a view finds no support in the film. But what Chayefsky does convey is just as threatening to the war lovers: while he may view some wars as absolutely necessary and required, that still does not make any war a “good” one, in the affirmative sense. Any war, even one dictated by the demands of self-defense, is immensely destructive and causes untold suffering. Much of that suffering is endured by people who are entirely innocent.

Chayefsky’s target is the one identified by Charlie: it is the glorification of war, and the countless ways in which all of us “honor the institution.” We build statues of our war heroes and name streets after them; we erect shrines to the dead. We insist on the “ideals” for which we fought, and the “goodness” of our intentions. Many of us do this in the misdirected and destructive search for “meaning” in our lives: our own stunted souls prevent us from finding fulfillment and happiness in our individual lives, so we look for “glory” by climbing over endless piles of corpses.

And what is lost in all of this is the unbearable horror and pain inflicted on individual human beings, and the particularized, specific costs of our quest for glory, or meaning, or “national greatness,” or honor.

Read the whole thought provoking essay.

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On The Internet No One Knows You’re A (Singing) Dog

by tristero

Thanks, folks, for all the nice comments about my music – including the ones that that truly were LOL. Just a few things before once again scooting back, more or less, into the closet.

I sent Digby the Times review and he asked if he could mention it. I said it was fine with me. The main reason I don’t write more about what I do is that I’m really not trying to promote my musical career in my blogging.* It’s not that I’m above promotion; no one is. Even Stravinsky was shameless when it came to hyping his work. It’s rather that it seems like a blog is the wrong place to flack external reputations.

For me, the most interesting aspect of blogging has nothing to do with anyone’s accomplishments but rather the present quality of their thought and the extent of their knowledge. While it is much less true now than it was in the olden days five years ago, it is still the case that prior reputation counts for much less in the blogosphere than it does Out There. You are read, or not read, based entirely on your ability to persuade from post to post. And in order to be persuasive, not only must you be a decent writer, but you damn well better know how to back up your assertions with convincing, relevant, links. Whether you’ve got a doctorate in political science from Stanford or are an 11 year old afraid to come out of your bedroom really is besides the point.

That is how it should be. If it does anything, blogging can make hash of the rhetorical fallacy of appealing to authority. One’s authority as a blogger, to the extent anyone has any, comes entirely from the merit of the posts. And that is wonderful. You don’t read Josh Marshall’s blog because he’s got a reputation as an ace reporter. You read his blog because with every post, he reports. He is actively making a reputation in a way that, say, a NY Times reporter doesn’t have to. The mere act of being hired by the Times confers (even now, of course) an authoritative reputation, whether or not it is deserved. To put it into big words: At its best, blogging transmutes reified power – authority – back into something contingent. Authority is no longer a noun, but a verb. You earn your reputation with every word. It’s never assumed.

And brother, do we need to stop listening to unearned authority.

In 2002, the experts in the press gave the experts in the Bush administration a free pass to market an insane, unnecessary war. It was so obviously a mistake that even a musician immediately could understand it was doomed to catastrophe. During 2002 and early ’03, I went all over the world for concerts of my music. It was an exciting time, and I loved every minute of it. But there was one thing that was quite striking, wherever I went. Everyone, and I mean I everyone from cab drivers to diplomats, thought the United States had gone insane in its advocacy for an Iraq invasion. And yet, back home the experts assured us it would be a cakewalk.

A few weeks after returning from Sydney, Australia where, John Howard aside, everyone was as alarmed as I was at the impending war, I began blogging in February, 2003. I figured that, artist or no, I knew an imminent foreign policy disaster when I saw one. And to my horror, I was right. I have never wanted to be more wrong than I was about the Bush/Iraq war, but I never doubted that it would end up, more or less, where it has.

And so here I am, still blogging and hoping against hope that this country I love will no longer heed the advice of people who understand the world a lot less well than a fellow who’s spent most of us life composing. It’s not that I know so much, although I’m not stupid or uneducated. It’s that the Bushites know so very, very little.

What the present crisis teaches us, a crisis in which the country is being led by clowns posing as experts, is that the opinions of ordinary citizens are vital to the running of a major democratic power. It’s not that expertise isn’t essential. Of course it is. But political expertise in a democracy must always confront the full range of public opinion in a meaningful manner. Otherwise, there lie monsters.

Today, the public discourse is so clotted and constrained, so limited to the right and far right, that it really is imperative for those of us who object to the direction the country is going to speak out, strongly and often. Not because we all deserve a prominent media role but rather in the hopes that eventually the media will be forced to broaden its coverage of political opinion to acknowledge voices like ours. Voices expert and persuasive enough to articulate alternatives to Bushism. Heaven knows we need them, and fast.

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*When I first started to blog, I was a bit concerned about how my politics would affect my career, but didn’t care that much. If anything, I care more now. By which I mean that I think it is extremely important to stand up and be counted in opposition to Bush. But I like being Tristero, it’s part of who I am, and I don’t see any reason to bump the guy off, any more than there’s a reason to promote my music.

Democrat Libre

by digby

Matt Stoller has a fiery exchange going with Hotline Blogometer and Washington Examiner opinion writer, William Buetler, about the normally navel gazing subject of the blogosphere’s influence on politics. I don’t have a lot to add, except to take issue with one little bit that Buetler writes in his piece:

The phrase [Vichy Democrats]was timely, punchy, and summed up the anger I saw directed against moderate and conservative Democrats.

No, no, no and no. The anger was not and is not against moderate and conservative Democrats. Paul Hackett is a conservative Democrat. It is against those who seek to either make deals with or capitulate to Republicans, particularly on issues of fundamental principle. “Vichy” is a term I don’t use because I think the Republicans do such a fine job of demeaning Dems that I don’t need to help them. However, it is a particular term of art that means something quite specific: to sell out your own people to the enemy.

The grassroots of the Democratic Party see something that all the establishment politicians have not yet realized: bipartisanship is dead for the moment and there is no margin in making deals. The rules have changed. When you capitulate to the Republicans for promises of something down the road you are being a fool. When you make a deal with them for personal reasons, you are selling out your party. When you use Republican talking points to make your argument you are helping the other side. When you kiss the president on the lips at the state of the union you are telling the Democratic base that we are of no interest or concern to you. This hyper-partisanship is ugly and it’s brutal, but it is the way it is.

It’s not “left” and “right” or “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative” that animates the grassroots. We argue some amongst ourselves on policy, of course, but that’s not the rap on the establishment. It’s the desire that our representatives wake up and recognise that we are in a new political era in which these designations take second place to “Democrat.” That’s the environment we are in whether we like it or not — a country sharply divided by party, not ideology.

The Democratic party did everything it could to alleviate the culture war and the partisanship in the 90’s by electing southern moderates to the white house and helping the Republicans pass a lot of legislation born of major compromise of Democratic principles. Nothing was good enough. The culture war raged, not on the basis of policy — there was much in Bill Clinton’s policies for a Republican to love. It was based purely on the tribal instincts of the culture warriors who insisted that liberals not only be marginalized (fair enough in politics) but that they be annihilated. They gave no quarter unless public opinion absolutely forced them to.

The grassroots believe that after all that, after moving to the right, after offering to compromise, after allowing our “red state Democrats” to run with the other side who then treated them with nothing but bad faith, now is the time for politicans to make a choice. Submit to them or stand with the resistance.

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What You See Is What You Get

by digby

I was just watching Bush give a speech and he said “it makes sense for the government to incent people.”

I’ve never really subscribed to the great man theory, but I have to say that in my experience organizations do take their cues from the person at the top. When you have a president who says things this ridiculous every single day, for more than five years, I think it’s safe to say that he is a boob. And his government is a perfect reflection of him: incompetent, arrogant, short-sighted, impulsive, secretive. A failure. That is the story of Bush’s life. let no one ever say again that it doesn’t matter who the president is becuase he’ll have great people around him. Bush’s government is as bad as anyone could have predicted when we saw him flub that answer about foreigh leaders back in 1999 — he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. And he’s proven it.

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Filling In The Blank Check

by digby

Be sure to read Glenn Greenwald’s piece today about the undercurrent in DC that suggests that the Republicans aren’t so sanguine about the NSA scandal accruing to their benefit after all. This is clearly becauase of the pressure coming from within, but I think that mostly has to do with Bush’s unpopularity generally (as I write below.) The bottom line is that the Eunuch Caucus needs some viagra, and quick.

Glenn links to this very revealing editorial in Pat Roberts’ home paper:

Many Kansans, including members of The Eagle editorial board, have long admired Sen. Pat Roberts for his plainspokenness and reputation for fair brokering of issues.

So it’s troubling that Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is fast gaining the reputation in Washington, D.C., as a reliable partisan apologist for the Bush administration on intelligence and security controversies.

We hope that’s not true. But Roberts’ credibility is on the line. . . .

What’s bothering many, though, is that Roberts seems prepared to write the Bush team a series of blank checks to conduct the war on terror, even to the point of ignoring policy mistakes and possible violations of law.

That’s not oversight — it’s looking the other way.

This is Kansas we’re talking about.

It’s also a sign that Rovism may have run its course. His MO, after all, is to entirely dominate the party from the top down, something that only works if the “top” can wield the whip. The Cheney episode was a window into the inner workings of the white house in this respect and it’s quite clear that Rove does not have the clout he once did. He couldn’t control Cheney. It’s going to be harder and harder for him to control this nervous congress. All lame ducks have a hard time retaining control — a lame duck at 39% is an albatross around his party’s neck.

Of course, Rove is probably a little bit distracted by certain personal matters too. And that’s one very good reason to keep the pressure on. Even if we can’t advance our own agenda, we can certainly help make it difficult for them to advance theirs. That’s just as important to successful politics as anything else.

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