Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Christmas Morning

Thank you all so much for your kind contributions. I am quite overwhelmed. All I want now for Christmas is well … Fitzmas. I knew the readers and writers of the left blogosphere were top shelf, super smart, generous and kind. What I didn’t realize was how brave you are: you must realize that the NSA Shift Supervisor assigned to this blog is harried beyond belief today tracking all those transactions, some of them from …. overseas. Merry Christmas, NSA supervisor.

Special thanks to the Mensches Who Saved Christmas, my fellow bloggers who linked to my post yesterday and sent readers over here, some of whom said “I’ve never read your blog, but here’s some money anyway, because (fill in the blank) told me I should.” Now that’s clout. Democrats take heed:

Jane at Firedoglake, Jeralyn at Talk Left, TBOGG, The Cunningrealist, Dave at Seeing the Forest, Kevin at Catch, A Tiny Revolution, Kevin at Lean Left, Fallen Monk and various commenters were kind enough to put out the word on the their blogs and in comment threads throughout the blogosphere. (Perhaps others who I failed to catch as well.) It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. And I mean that.

And thanks especially to Atrios, my blogfather, for using his valuable real estate to exhort readers to send me turkee. There are Democratic candidates out there who envy me today.

Thanks also to Sean-Paul over at the Agonist and Jake and Ellwood’s dad, who heard my plaintive cry and bought ads. Kos and Jerome too. Click through, people. It’ll be worth your while.

I will be sending you all individual thanks, of course, but there are quite a few of you so it will take a little time. (High class problem, eh?) I will also compile all the great advice and criticism about the site and will take it into account as I contemplate a redesign. Thanks for taking the time to let me know your thoughts and sending me your great graphic ideas. And thanks also to my pal (you know who you are) for insisting that I do this even though I was reluctant.

Finally, many of you requested a snail mail address and here it is:

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Checks can conveniently be made out to Digby’s Hullabaloo, as well. I have also been reliably informed that some of the Paypal problems may be related to stale old cookies. A few people have said that they had better luck when they cleared out their cache.

Thanks again for all of your donations and especially your kind words. They mean more to me than you will ever know.

d

Update:

More Mensches Who Saved Christmas:

John at Crooks And Liars

My good friend Peter Daou

Ian at BopNews

Da Man: James Wolcott

The fabulous Julia!

Matt at MYDD

Sadly No

The Moquol

The great Tom Tomorrow

Low and Left

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets

Three Bulls

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Stocking Stuffer Request

While everybody has their credit cards out buying a “secret Santa” moustache mug for their most hated colleague at the office, I wonder if some of you might want to throw a little cash my way while you’re at it? For reasons I haven’t figured out, this blog is doing miserably at selling blog-ads. Indeed, if it weren’t for my friend Michael Shaw at BagNews notes (whose great graphics make any blog look better than it already does) I would have no ads at all today. During the biggest shopping season of the year, no less.

I do not know how others sell blogAds on their blogs. I belong to the
“Advertise Liberally” blog-ad network which is designed to sell across the liberal spectrum. I don’t think my problems are because my ads are too expensive. I charge what everybody else charges. There have been some months that I collected a few sheckles and they really came in handy. But now, not so much.

I don’t have the kind of regular community that a lot of the more popular bloggers have (although I would argue that my commenters are among the sharpest in the blogosphere) but my traffic is within the top 20 of all liberal blogs, which isn’t bad for a solo blogger like myself. I’ve won awards, even. But one week shy of my third anniversary and I’m back to doing this for free. I may be a raving leftist, but I have to live in this capitalist world.

There is an element of the Bataan death march to daily blogging when you do it for three years running. I write slowly and do a lot of research and reading, so it takes more time than is readily evident. Every minute of it is fun, of course, but it’s still ridiculous. In fact it’s so much fun that I would never expect to make serious money doing it. Life could not possibly be that sweet. But I can’t justify doing this without any compensation at all either. I wish to gawd that I were an eccentric billionaire who blogs psuedonymously in order to see how the little people live. Unfortunately, that is very far from the truth. (Look at it this way. If I were an eccentric billionaire, I could afford to buy my own bandwidth instead of blogging for free on blogspot, right?) No, sad to say, like most people I have those boring financial needs — for things like shelter and food. And books. And MaxCat Senior in chicken and lamb flavor. In a blogging world where money is to be made, I just can’t justify to myself that I would do it for free. I can’t justify to my family that I continue turn down work for no other compensation either.

I’ve never asked for money on this blog before, and I will probably not ask again.(As you can gather, this embarrasses the hell out of me, which is why I’m rambling like a lunatic.) But, if you like what I do and have gotten something out of what I’ve written these past three years, a couple of bucks in the tip jar (in the left column over there) would be very greatly appreciated.

Oh — and if you don’t have any extra money, you could do me a big favor by just clicking on the ads I run. (I suspect that part of my problem is that I don’t get much click through.) So, if you want to support me but you don’t have any extra change (which I completely understand) just use my page to check out the ubiquitous blog ads. In fact, go over right now and click on BagNews notes and read what he is saying today. You won’t regret it.

And Happy Hollandaise to everyone.

digby

Update: And many, many thanks to the folks who have thrown me a tip already this year, a couple of you more than once. I am very grateful.

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Crying Wolf

by digby

Can someone please tell the Republicans that even if the NY Times had printed the NSA story next month instead of last week that there would not have been a great swelling of Bush love over the Iraqi elections last week?

The reason the story didn’t capture the public’s imagination is not because the other one stepped on it; it’s because we’ve heard it all before. The public has lost count of how many of these “milestone elections” have taken place. Each time, we are supposed to have a big group hug and congratulate ourselves for our great generosity. And then each time shit starts blowing up again in Iraq almost immediately.

The American public can hardly keep its attention on its own elections. Getting all excited about Iraqi elections that happen every few months and don’t seem to mean anything just isn’t going to interest them. The proof is in the pudding. Either the violence stops or it doesn’t. Either we get out or we don’t. The magic of the purple finger wore off months ago.

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Countering The Threat

by digby

Glen Greenwald takes the time to rebut Hewitt’s ridiculous argument that
United States v. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan et al gives the president the power to wiretap Americans at will, when the case actually does the exact opposite. Apparently, the right blogosphere is chattering about this absurd claim like a bunch of drunken magpies.

I have nothing to add except to point to my post yesterday, when I referenced the same case, to point out again the great irony in the fact that the author of that opinion was Lewis Powell, the man who inspired the Great Republican Political Machine.

Powell was not some bleeding heart liberal. He believed that the nation was under serious threat from the New Left:

William Kunstler, warmly welcomed on campuses and listed in a recent student poll as the “American lawyer most admired,” incites audiences as follows:
“You must learn to fight in the streets, to revolt, to shoot guns. We will learn to do all of the things that property owners fear.”2 The New Leftists who heed Kunstler’s advice increasingly are beginning to act — not just against military recruiting offices and manufacturers of munitions, but against a variety of businesses: “Since February, 1970, branches (of Bank of America) have been attacked 39 times, 22 times with explosive devices and 17 times with fire bombs or by arsonists.” Although New Leftist spokesmen are succeeding in radicalizing thousands of the young, the greater cause for concern is the hostility of respectable liberals and social reformers. It is the sum total of their views and influence which could indeed fatally weaken or destroy the system.

A chilling description of what is being taught on many of our campuses was written by Stewart Alsop:

“Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores of bright young men who are practitioners of ‘the politics of despair.’ These young men despise the American political and economic system . . . (their) minds seem to be wholly closed. They live, not by rational discussion, but by mindless slogans.” A recent poll of students on 12 representative campuses reported that: “Almost half the students favored socialization of basic U.S. industries.”

A visiting professor from England at Rockford College gave a series of lectures entitled “The Ideological War Against Western Society,” in which he documents the extent to which members of the intellectual community are waging ideological warfare against the enterprise system and the values of western society. In a foreword to these lectures, famed Dr. Milton Friedman of Chicago warned: “It (is) crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack — not by Communist or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.”

But nonetheless, he still didn’t believe that the threat was so overwhelming that you needed to discard the constitution and give the president dictatorial powers. He had another idea:

The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival — survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.

The day is long past when the chief executive officer of a major corporation discharges his responsibility by maintaining a satisfactory growth of profits, with due regard to the corporation’s public and social responsibilities. If our system is to survive, top management must be equally concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself. This involves far more than an increased emphasis on “public relations” or “governmental affairs” — two areas in which corporations long have invested substantial sums.

A significant first step by individual corporations could well be the designation of an executive vice president (ranking with other executive VP’s) whose responsibility is to counter-on the broadest front-the attack on the enterprise system. The public relations department could be one of the foundations assigned to this executive, but his responsibilities should encompass some of the types of activities referred to subsequently in this memorandum. His budget and staff should be adequate to the task.

But independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations, as important as this is, will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.

Clearly, they listened and created the most formidable national political machine in this country’s history.

And despite his clear antipathy to everything that the left stood for, Powell went on to rule in the above cited case that the president did not have the unilateral power to eavesdrop on American citizens, no matter what “national security” reasons were cited. Guys like him understood that protecting America meant protecting the constitution above all. The Federalist Society? Not so much.

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The President’s Program

by digby

Well now. Bush personally called the publisher and the editor of the NY Times in to the oval Office to get them not to publish the wire tapping story. Here’s Jonathan Alter in Newsweek:

I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

We know that Cheney was intimately involved with this what with his closed briefings to certain members of congress and all. But this is the first of these scandals that really lands right on Bush’s desk. It’s his baby. This one’s personal.

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TIA

Check out the handwritten letter from 2003 that Jay Rockefeller just released which completely obliterates the ridiculous defense that members of congress “approved” this action.

He makes it clear that he has very serious reservations about this program and says that since he is not a technician or a lawyer, and is prohibited from speaking with staff, experts or colleagues, he cannot properly evaluate this program.

He evokes Poindexter’s TIA.

And he concludes with this:

I am retaining a copy of this communication in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Intelligence Committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication.

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Efficiency Expert

Atrios and First-Draft have posts up highlighting one of the most egregious explanations for the NSA spying from this morning’s briefing by Gonzales and NSA chief General Hayden: they didn’t ask congress for permission because they were told by “certain” congressmen that they couldn’t get it passed.

Gonzales:…We’ve had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be — that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that — and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.

That’s not Brownie It’s not even Karl Rove. That’s the Attorney General of the United States talking.

But there’s more:

Q General, when you discussed the emergency powers, you said, agility is critical here. And in the case of the emergency powers, as I understand it, you can go in, do whatever you need to do, and within 72 hours just report it after the fact. And as you say, these may not even last very long at all. What would be the difficulty in setting up a paperwork system in which the logs that you say you have the shift supervisors record are simply sent to a judge after the fact? If the judge says that this is not legitimate, by that time probably your intercept is over, wouldn’t that be correct?

GENERAL HAYDEN: What you’re talking about now are efficiencies. What you’re asking me is, can we do this program as efficiently using the one avenue provided to us by the FISA Act, as opposed to the avenue provided to us by subsequent legislation and the President’s authorization.

Our operational judgment, given the threat to the nation that the difference in the operational efficiencies between those two sets of authorities are such that we can provide greater protection for the nation operating under this authorization.

Q But while you’re getting an additional efficiency, you’re also operating outside of an existing law. If the law would allow you to stay within the law and be slightly less efficient, would that be —

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALEZ: I guess I disagree with that characterization. I think that this electronic surveillance is within the law, has been authorized. I mean, that is our position. We’re only required to achieve a court order through FISA if we don’t have authorization otherwise by the Congress, and we think that that has occurred in this particular case.

Yes, the Bill of Rights is hell on efficiency. We really should do something about that.

They knew they were circumventing the law as written, that the congress would not agree to change it and they used a very dicey theory of presidential infallibility in wartime. They are saying that the president is re-authorizing “his program” every 45 days solely so that shift supervisors don’t have to waste time with paperwork.

The original NY Times article said:

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

I find that interesting, don’t you?

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.

For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone’s communications, several officials said.

Now, what do you suppose these “concerns” were all about?

Here’s a hint:

Those involved in the program also said that the N.S.A.’s eavesdroppers might need to start monitoring large batches of numbers all at once, and that it would be impractical to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first, according to the officials.

I would guess that these large batches of numbers were very large indeed. So large that it would be “inefficient” go to the FISA court and seek permission after the fact.

I would further guess that these large batches of numbers include a whole shitload of Americans who have nothing to do with al Qaeda. And since they had to suspend some areas of the program in 2004, I would suspect that those numbers include some people who are of interest to the administration for reasons other than terrorism.

If I were one of those “shift supervisors” (especially if I was one who had worried about John Kerry becoming president) I’d get myself a lawyer.

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Passion Of The Cowboys

by digby

Will “Brokeback Mountain” play in Plano? In the movie’s first weekend in the Dallas suburb where the 2004 Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ” earned some of its biggest grosses, the answer appeared to be yes.

After setting a record for the per-theater average for a dramatic movie in limited openings in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, critically acclaimed “Brokeback Mountain” faced its next obstacle as Focus Features expanded the so-called gay cowboy movie to strategically selected smaller cities.

The movie, directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two ranch hands who develop an enduring emotional bond, “Brokeback Mountain” took in an additional $2.36 million in its first foray outside those three metropolitan cities, rising to No. 8 at the box office, Focus Features estimated Sunday. Its 10-day total is $3.3 million.

The closely watched debut in Plano, Texas, “was a revelation about the accessibility of this movie,” said Focus head of distribution Jack Foley. “This is not gay-dependent. Attendance at those theaters indicates the film has the attention of suburban moviegoers.”

It was the first time since Disney’s animated “Pocahontas” in 1995 that a movie in fewer than 100 theaters cracked the top 10 box office ranking, according to tracking service Nielsen EDI Inc.

Real America watches “Desperate Housewives” and drinks Starbucks and votes Democratic some too. Keep your eye on what people actually do, not what they tell some pollster they think. Popular culture is an excellent window through which you can view how people actually think and live. Right wing evangelical Christians are not a monolith, even in the red states. It’s a mistake to assume they are.

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Checks And Balances

by digby

I’m hearing various pundits discuss how bold-yet-cadid, manly-yet-sensitive the preznit is today after finally going on offense, hitting it out of the park and turning the corner. His numbers are shooting back up and he’s on firm ground.

They just love it when he spanks them:

QUESTION: I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a president during wartime.

And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we’re going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?

BUSH: First of all, I disagree with your assertion of unchecked power.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Hold on for a second, please.

There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters.

There is oversight. We’re talking to Congress all the time.

And on this program, to suggest there’s unchecked power is not listening to what I’m telling you. I’m telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times.

This is an awesome responsibility, to make decisions on behalf of the American people. And I understand that. And we’ll continue to work with the Congress, as well as people within our own administration, to constantly monitor a program such as the one I described to you, to make sure that we’re protecting the civil liberties of the United States.

To say “unchecked power” basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: I just described limits on this particular program, and that’s what’s important for the American people to understand. I am doing what you expect me to do and, at the same time, safeguarding the civil liberties of the country.

He’s not actually lashing out at the masochistic media, no matter how much they enjoy it. He’s lashing out because this is where his argument is weakest. He’s trying to make the case that the congress somehow “approved” this action as a check to executive power.

This is not true. Notifying members of congress in a classified briefing they cannot disclose publicly is not a check. Intelligence committee members cannot give authorization to the president to break the law in the first place And to say that “telling” them what they are going to do and then classifying the information so they cannot reveal it amounts to a check on executive power is to invoke dictatorial powers.

As an exasperated Carl Levin just pointed out, the check on executive power in these circumstances is written into the law. It’s called the FISA court. And they have not yet given any reasonable explanation as to why they could not have applied for a review within the 72 hour period they are alotted after initiating the intercepts. They keep saying that they have to move fast and cannot wait and other gibberish about “long term monitoring” none of which adequately explains why they had to break the law.

The only thing we can assume from the information we have is that they didn’t want anyone, not even a rubber stamp secret court, to know who they were monitoring. Now why would that be?

The NY Times withheld certain tchnical information about this program in their story last week because of alleged national security concerns. Now that the president has admitted to authorizing it and he and his flunkies have been babbling incoherently about “moving fast” and “long term monitoring” I think it’s now imperative that they tell the public the whole story.

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Hot Dick On Bush Action

I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country – victory or defeat. And the need for victory is larger than any president or political party, because the security of our people is in the balance. I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom.

Somebody give Richard Cohen a cigarette. (Let’s hope he didn’t watch this speech in public.)

I have one question for the media. Why is everyone so impressed that Bush is taking responsibility for going into Iraq? Has there ever been any question about that? We know he made the decision. He has made a fetish of taking responsibility for doing it. indeed, we watched him do it in defiance of virtually the whole world and half the country. This is not an admission of a mistake.

Likewise, admitting that there were no WMD is like admitting that the sun came up this morning. It’s true, yes, but saying it is not “candor” — it’s stating the obvious.

Saying that the intelligence was wrong is not taking responsibility for getting it wrong. We know it was wrong.

These are cheap rhetorical tricks and they fall for it every single time. Some GOP hack hands them a sheet talking up the president’s newfound “candor” and they all gobble it up like hungry little baby birds.

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