Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Who’s Wanking Now

In case anyone still wonder why the cheese eating surrender monkeys and the ungrateful bastards we liberated from Hitler didn’t join in our war party, here’s the reason:

More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigated at the CIA’s request.

Chouet’s account was “at odds with our understanding of the issue,” a U.S. government official said. The U.S. official declined to elaborate and spoke only on condition that neither he nor his agency be named.

However, the essence of Chouet’s account — that the French repeatedly investigated the Niger claim, found no evidence to support it, and warned the CIA — was extensively corroborated by the former CIA official and a current French government official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity.

The repeated warnings from France’s Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure did not prevent the Bush administration from making the case aggressively that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons materials.

It was not the first time a foreign government tried to warn U.S. officials off of dubious prewar intelligence.

In the notorious “Curveball” case, an Iraqi who defected to Germany claimed to have knowledge of Iraqi biological weapons. Bush and other U.S. officials repeatedly cited Curveball’s claims even as German intelligence officials argued that he was unstable and might be a fabricator.

And remember, even our closest ally in the coalition of the willing was saying this at the time:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Let’s hear again about how every foreign government agreed with our assessment that Iraq had WMD.

Oh, and not that it matters, but let’s also remember what Karl Rove was telling Time magazine in July of 2003 about this:

“not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger … “

.

R.I.P. R.P.

by digby

If you would like to have a surreal experience akin to the effects of downing ten shots of cheap tequila, tune in to FoxNews as they eulogize Richard Pryor. Apparently he invented dirty words. (It’s going to come as a helluva surprise to Lenny Bruce — not to mention Redd Foxx.) He rejected the comedy of the good comedian, Bill Cosby, and went down the “wrong path” that led us to where we are today with all this R rated badness. One of the commentators said that when he went on TV in the mid 70’s he “wasn’t ready for prime time.” (Actually, prime time wasn’t ready for him.) Another said that “every black comic owes him something.”

(Is it possible that right wingers are all actually zombies who died sometime before the 60’s and have been walking among us as the undead ever since then? I just don’t know what else can explain their terminal cultural obtuseness.)

I saw Richard Pryor in concert in 1974 at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, California. I just realized that he was only 34 years old at the time. (Of course, I was only 18, so everyone seemed pretty old to me then.) He was on the cusp of achieving huge mainstream fame that year from his album “That Ni**er’s Crazy.”

I’d never seen anything like Pryor before. It was more than comedy, and it sure as hell was more than “R” rated. It was cultural observation so universal and so penetrating that I saw the world differently from that night on. He didn’t just talk about race, although he talked about it a lot and in the most bracing, uncompromising terms possible. He also talked about men and women, age, relationships, family, politics and culture so hilariously that my jaw literally ached the next day. He was rude, profane and sexist. But there was also this undercurrent of vulnerability and melancholy running beneath the comedy that exposed a canny understanding of human foible. His personal angst seemed to me to be almost uncomfortably plain.

I looked around me in that theatre that night, in which I and my little friend Kathy were among a fair minority of whites, and I realized that we were all laughing uproariously together at this shocking, dirty, racially charged stuff. As someone who grew up in a racist household (and had always had a visceral reaction against it) it was an enormous, overwhelming relief. I understood Richard Pryor, the African Americans in the audience understood Richard Pryor and Richard Pryor and the African Americans understood me. He was right up front, saying it all clearly and without restraint. He wasn’t being polite and pretending that race wasn’t an issue. And it didn’t matter. Nobody, not one person, in that audience was angry. In fact, not one person in that audience was anything but doubled over in paroxysms of hysterical laughter. He had our number, all of us, the whole flawed species.

He’s been sick a long time and so it’s no surprise that he died a a sadly early death. I’ve been missing him for quite a while. If you haven’t ever had a chance to see him in concert when he was in his prime, check it out on DVD. Maybe it won’t be funny or salient to people today, I don’t know. At the time, it was a revelation.

.

Who’s In Disarray?

by digby

In its relentless quest to abdicate global leadership and assume the role of rogue nation, the Bush administration is making a complete ass of itself in the global warming talks:

In a sign of its growing isolation on climate issues, the Bush administration had come under sharp criticism for walking out of informal discussions on finding new ways to reduce emissions under the United Nations’ 1992 treaty on climate change.

The walkout, by Harlan L. Watson, the chief American negotiator here, came Friday, shortly after midnight, on what was to have been the last day of the talks, during which the administration has been repeatedly assailed by the leaders of other wealthy industrialized nations for refusing to negotiate to advance the goals of that treaty, and in which former President Bill Clinton chided both sides for lack of flexibility.

At a closed session of about 50 delegates, Dr. Watson objected to the proposed title of a statement calling for long-term international cooperation to carry out the 1992 climate treaty, participants said. He then got up from the table and departed.

Environmentalists here called his actions the capstone of two weeks of American efforts to prevent any fresh initiatives from being discussed. “This shows just how willing the U.S. administration is to walk away from a healthy planet and its responsibilities to its own people,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate change project at the World Wildlife Fund.

In the end, though, some adjustments of wording – including a shift from “mechanisms” to the softer word “opportunities” in one statement – ended the dispute.

Hey, I like breathing dirt and I assume that everyone else in the world likes breathing dirt too. Good for us.

But that’s not all. This is downright absurd:

In his Friday speech, Clinton blasted the Bush administration’s opposition as “flat wrong.”

But the speech almost didn’t happen.

The contretemps started late Thursday afternoon, when the Associated Press ran a story saying that Clinton had been added at the last minute to the gathering’s speaking schedule at the request of conference organizers. According to the source, barely minutes after the news leaked, conference organizers called Clinton aides and told them that Bush-administration officials were displeased.

“The organizers said the Bush people were threatening to pull out of the deal,” the source said. After some deliberation between Clinton and his aides, Clinton decided he wouldn’t speak, added the source: “President Clinton immediately said, ‘There’s no way that I’m gonna let petty politics get in the way of the deal. So I’m not gonna come.’ That’s the message [the Clinton people] sent back to the organizers.”

But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.’”

Several hours went by, and at the Clinton Foundation’s holiday party on Thursday night, the former president and his aides still thought they weren’t going to Montreal. “The staff that was supposed to go with him had canceled their travel plans,” the source said.

At around 8:30 p.m., organizers called Clinton aides and said that they’d successfully called the bluff of Bush officials, adding that Bush’s aides had backed off and indicated that Clinton’s appearance wouldn’t in fact have adverse diplomatic consequences.

Karl had a bad week. You can always tell.

.

So, Like, Totally Funny

by digby

Via Wolcott I see that the spokesmodel of Open Robe Media, Atlas Shrugged, has a hilarious picture of Howard Dean up photoshopped as Hitler. But it’s ok because it’s totally funny:

Hey guys, its a joke. Helllllllllllllllllllllo, its F-U-N-N-Y (even if Dean’s remarks were far from funny, futile maybe, treasonous maybe, stupid for sure, humorous – not). Actually, the pic is hysterical. I never said he was Hitler, never even called him a Nazi. A clown for sure. That’s a clown pic – this is a clown pic too. Conversely, when the left calls Bush Hitler, they are dead serious. You can not compare the two. The above picture is hysterical. You clowns are as bad as the one in the picture. Sheesh.

Smart as a whip.

Update: For some real fun, read the comments. This one, I thought, was particularly insightful:

The country is driven by Cindy Sheehan. We republicans haven’t got a chance….until election day. You dheminnocrats are sure simple minded. You make up the news and then believe it. Then, you take a phony poll and declare victory. The only thing missing is reality.

But don’t worry, when the train of life is leaving you behind at the station of stupidity, I’ll fart in your general direction.

.

Pandamonium

by digby

I can’t stand this baby panda anymore. He is so cute it is almost painful to watch. He’s so cute I want to kill him. It’s just too much.

You can watch him live on the PandaCam at Animal Planet — if you dare.

Oh man, the San Diego Zoo has a cub too.

.

Just Don’t Call Them Special Interests

A Washington truism: Conservatives do meetings better than liberals. They get more done. They coordinate better. When it’s time to rally around John Roberts or Samuel Alito (or torpedo Harriet Miers), they know how to make it happen. Here’s a look at the conservative insider roundtables:

The Wednesday Meeting

HOST: Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform.

LOCATION: Americans for Tax Reform office, 20th and L streets, downtown DC.

TIME: Wednesdays, 10 am sharp.

SETUP: Norquist, flanked by invited guests, presides over a large conference table. Others sit in auditorium chairs.

FOOD: Delicious bagels, not-very-delicious coffee.

PHILOSOPHY: Leave-us-alone conservative crowd: Big government is bad; taxes are bad; liberal bureaucracy is bad.

PARTICIPANTS: 80 to 100 people, including elected officials looking for donations, Hill aides, state officeholders seeking tax-fighting help, even representatives of free-market think tanks in Europe and Asia.

KARL FACTOR: White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove has attended many meetings, including a “buck up the troops” visit before election 2004. Rove sends White House aide Tim Goeglein to take flak when he’s not there.

MEDIA: Conservative and some mainstream media attend with the proviso that the session is off the record.

CLAIM TO FAME: Seeded the 1994 Gingrich revolution. In time Newt’s informal policy shop became the connection between grasstops conservative activists and official Washington. The meeting helps the White House discern the mood of the movement.

NOTABLE GUESTS: Past speakers include Christopher Hitchens, Ralph Nader.

The Arlington Group

HOST: Donald Wildmon, American Family Association.

LOCATION: Family Research Council conference room in DC. Formerly based in the condo of Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America.

TIME: Every-other-month sessions last up to several days.

SETUP: Conference tables arranged in a square allow participants to look each other in the eye.

FOOD: Sandwiches, chips, and drinks.

PHILOSOPHY: Savvy Christian political action.

PARTICIPANTS: 30 to 45 social-conservative leaders, ranging from Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to the National Association of Evangelicals’ Reverend Ted Haggard, ex-presidential candidate Gary Bauer, influential South Florida pastor D. James Kennedy.

KARL FACTOR: He has briefed the meeting—and listened to complaints—several times via telephone.

MEDIA: None, though details often leak to New York Times conservative-movement chronicler David Kirkpatrick.

CLAIM TO FAME: Conservatives frustrated at the pace of social-conservative legislation convened the group in 2003, and it was instrumental in garnering grassroots support for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

NOTABLE GUESTS: Reporters would love to know.

The Weyrich Meetings: Lunches, Family Forum, and Stanton Group

HOST: Paul Weyrich and staff, Free Congress Foundation; Bob Thompson, Coalitions for America.

LOCATION: Free Congress Foundation, 717 Second Street, Northeast.

TIME: Wednesday Weyrich lunches; biweekly Family Forum meetings; every other Friday for the Stanton Group.

SETUP: Varies.

FOOD: Family Forum serves doughnuts; Weyrich lunches are catered; the Stanton Group offers box lunches.

PHILOSOPHY: American conservatism, broadly construed.

PARTICIPANTS: 20 to 25 social-conservative activists, Hill staffers, and occasionally administration officials.

KARL FACTOR: Rove has attended several meetings.

MEDIA: None.

CLAIM TO FAME: First established in 1979, the Weyrich meetings helped bridge the gaps between the Washington GOP establishment and conservatives backing Ronald Reagan. Coalitions for America, a group linked to Weyrich, coordinates all three meetings.

NOTABLE GUESTS: George W. Bush attended during his father’s presidency.

The Monday Meeting

HOST: PR executive Mallory Factor and hedge-fund director James Higgins; affiliate of the Free Enterprise Fund.

LOCATION: Grand Hyatt, 42nd Street, New York.

TIME: One Monday a month.

SETUP: Chairs face a dais at the front of the room. Factor uses an egg timer to keep things moving.

FOOD: Water.

PHILOSOPHY: Free markets, free minds, but uncertain about cultural issues.

PARTICIPANTS: 200 guests, ten invited speakers.

KARL FACTOR: He hasn’t visited yet, but several allies have.

MEDIA: Conservative writers and a few others attend with the proviso that sessions are off the record.

CLAIM TO FAME: A participant says, “If you’re a conservative and you want to tap into New York money, you have to go there.” Potential 2008 Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Sam Brownback have already stopped by.

NOTABLE GUESTS: Fernando Ferrer, onetime Democratic New York mayoral candidate, once spoke on taxes.

.

Campaign Troops

by digby

Via Dan Froomkin, I see that Fox News (of all places) is following this story of Bush making political speeches before military audiences:

… lately the president has been saying more than just “hello” to troops. Twice last month in speeches to military audiences, the president attacked Democrats and fired back at their accusations that pre-war intelligence was manipulated by his administration.

“It is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim we misled them and the American people,” Bush said.

On Nov. 11 at the Army Depot in Tobyhanna, Pa., Bush told the audience of servicemen and women that some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq have attempted to rewrite the past.

“The national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,” he added.

The attacks against critics at military settings may have put troops in the awkward position of undermining their own regulations. A Department of Defense directive doesn’t allow service members in uniform to attend “partisan political events.”

Questions have been raised about the military’s attendance at events where Bush says something like “they spoke the truth then, they’re speaking politics now.” Several members of the military told FOX News that Bush is inviting the troops to take sides in a partisan debate in his speeches.

“This is a very bad sign,” said retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, who led Central Command in the early 1990s and is an administration critic. “This is the sort of thing that you find in other countries where the military and political, certain political parties are aligned.”

Bush often appeared with troops in his 2004 campaign. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., endorsed him before hundreds of cheering soldiers.

“Where you have our uniformed members being put in a position where it looks like they’re rooting for one side or another is very disconcerting,” said Greg Noone, a former Navy lawyer.

Presidents have generally avoided such military settings due to the chance for attacks from opponents.

“They could be divisive,” said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “And as commander-in-chief, he represents all the people as does the military defend all the people.”

I wrote about this a few days ago. It’s not only the president, of course, who is doing this. The VP spoke before the troops this week as well. It’s done for the specific purpose of giving the impression that the military backs the administration politically. It’s inappropriate to give speech after speech before these captive audiences in the first place, but to take pot shots at the political opposition is really beyond the pale. There are Democrats among the troops, but they are not allowed to give their political opinion in this situation (by booing, for instance) the way a regular citizen could (theoretically, at least.)

And, as Stephen Hess points out, when Bush dons his Commander in Chief hat he’s no longer supposed to be partisan. In that capacity, he’s supposed to represent all the people. The military is always supposed to represent all the people.

Meanwhile, Dan Bartlet proves once again that the White House believes that they can speak gibberish and everyone will just let it slide:

“They’re the ones who are defending our freedom,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. “They should be able to listen to the debate, they should be able to hear both sides.”

I’ll be looking forward to seeing John Kerry and John Murtha addressing the troops every couple of days. After all, they should be able to hear both sides.

.

Thanks Bill

by digby

I’m not religious but I’ve always loved Christmas — the food, the lights, the tree, the music, the whole thing. Now the right wing pricks have gone and made it a cause in their goddamned culture war and I can’t enjoy it anymore. One sniff of fruitcake and a picture of Bill O’Reilly enters my mind. I’m instantly nauseated.

Everywhere I go, even here in the very heart of godless secular humanism, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, there are carolers on the sidewalk (singing songs like “Oh Holy Night” no less) “Merry Christmas” is written on store windows, decorated trees and twinkling lights are all over the place. And all I can think is “what in the hell are these wingnuts going on about? Christmas is everywhere! Are they nuts???” And then the pure, simple, childlike enjoyment I usually feel for the holiday just slips away.

I resent the hell out of these wingnut bastards turning Christmas into a political football. Is nothing sacred to these people?

Update: Oh, and please tell me again how secularists are declaring war on Christmas:

Many American “megachurches”, huge Christian ministries with thousands-strong congregations, have horrified traditionalists by closing on Christmas Day.

Sunday services on Dec 25 are being cancelled because clergy fear attendance will be poor. Worshippers are instead being encouraged to spend the day with their families.

[…]

Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, one of the six largest US churches with a weekend attendance of nearly 22,000, is among those closing its doors.

“At first glance it does sound contrarian,” the Rev. Gene Appel, its senior pastor, said. “We don’t see it as not having church on Christmas. We see it as decentralising the church on Christmas: hundreds of thousands of experiences going on around Christmas trees.

“The best way to honour Jesus’s birth is for families to have a more personal experience on that day.”

Christmas Sunday services were not the most effective use of staff and volunteers, a spokesman said.

Other megachurches closing on Christmas Day are in Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and Michigan.

“We feel that Christmas is definitely a time that should be spent with family,”said Kris McNeil of Michigan’s Mars Hill Bible Church.

Cindy Willison, a spokesman for the evangelical Southland Christian Church, near Chicago, said at least 500 volunteers were needed, plus staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 worshippers. Many volunteers appreciated the chance to spend Christmas with their families.

The closures contrast starkly with Roman Catholic parishes, which see some of their largest congregations at Christmas, and Protestant ministries, such as the Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran churches, where Sunday services are hardly ever cancelled.

The number of megachurches in America, defined as non-Catholic congregations of at least 2,000 people, has soared from 10 in 1970 to an estimated 800 today.

Many function like corporations, running businesses such as publishing houses.

I didn’t know that the Christmas tree actually functioned as an alter, but I’m not surprised. This is America and that’s where the presents are.

I’m awfully impressed by the piety of the conservative evangelicals who attend these churches and lord their superior religiosity over the mainline churches.

Update II: I missed this Atrios post yesterday making essntially the same point.

.

The System Worked

by digby

Kevin Drum is asking some questions about what happened on that flight in Miami yesterday. It all sounds a little “screwy” to me too, but not just because the witness accounts sound as if the marshalls may have overreacted. There’s something else screwy about this.

The marshalls were obviously persuaded that it was quite possible that this man had a bomb in his carry on bag. And apparently, the marshalls went through the plane after the fact, looking for accomplices, pointing guns at the passengers and knocking cell phones out of their hands ostensibly because they thought they might contain guns.

Now I know that the marshalls are taught to shoot first and ask questions later and all that, so no lectures please. But I still find it amazing that after all this time, they automatically assume that a group of people could get a bomb and “cell phone guns” through the gate security in a US airport. Goes to show you how useful all that boarding gate crap really is, doesn’t it?

My favorite comment on this matter is Monica Crowley this morning saying that the good thing about all this is that “the system worked.”

.

Foxocities

by digby

In the latest installment of the “Democrats are in Disarray” show, Fred Barnes just did a reverse triple axel that would make Michelle Kwan weep. After going on and on about how the Democrats are all over the map, they don’t know what they are doing, they are rudderless and lacking in ideas, he said that Nancy Pelosi has got the democrats voting in “lock-step” which is empowering the (apparently useless) GOP moderates. (Then he pouted and stomped his tiny foot in frustration.)

I assume that everyone can see the problem with Barnes’ statement, even if he is so unaware of his own illogic that he makes both of these statements in the same breath.

The best moment today, however, was watching these rich, privileged, middle aged fucks sit around chuckling at the prospect of Stanley Williams asking for clemency. I don’t know what it is these Republican assholes find so amusing about executions but they can’t seem to contain their mirth when someone suggests the possibility of redemption.

These are the same people complaining about a war on Christianity.

.