Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Way Life Should Be

Dear Abby:

Q: I live in a family-oriented neighborhood. My next-door neighbor flies his gay pride flag in his front yard. Because we have a lot of families with young children who do not need to be subjected to that kind of thing, I have asked him numerous times to remove it.

His response is, it’s a free country and he does not subject anybody to his lifestyle.

I strongly feel that in a neighborhood devoted to children’s morals and the way life should be, he should not be allowed to have that flag in his front yard. I threatened to call the police.What should I do?

RIGHTEOUS in New Castle, Pa.

Dear Righteous:

A: First of all, calm down. Your neighbor is hurting no one, and “young children” will not understand the flag. Unless there are restrictions in your neighborhood governing the display of flags, your neighbor has a right to hoist his banner.

Good for Abby, the voice of common sense. I bet that mom is just fit to be tied. She’s probably going to immediately start coaching her kids to claim they were molested. That’s the only recourse the liberals have left her.

One thing I’d like to know is why so many of these people sound like they have only heard half of every argument? They write things like “a neighborhood devoted to children’s morals and the way life should be” as if it makes sense. Do they zone out in church and only catch half the sermon or what?

Our president does the same thing so it’s not surprising. But dear gawd, I cannot imagine what it’s going to be like once all these home schooled kids take charge of the wingnut infrastructure. I can barely understand what they are talking about now. I can’t imagine what gibberish they are going to be spewing in a few years.

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Beat Him To The Punchline

Considering his record and sophomoric tone well into his thirties, I have no doubt that John Roberts’ hilarious little quip, “Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide” is a jab at women. When he is asked about it at the hearing he will say it is a standard lawyer joke — and much laughter among the senators will ensue and the media will all remark about what a fun-loving and modest fellow he is.

I would hope that a Democratic member of the judiciary committee, preferably Diane Feinstein, is smart enough to bring this up immediately and rob him of that punchline with a clever question.

“Judge Roberts, when I was in law school I remember hearing a lot of lawyer jokes. One of my classmates used to tell one about the man who goes to the doctor and finds out he has only six months to live. He says to the doctor, “that’s such a short amount of time, doc. Is there anything I can do?” The doctor replied, “marry a lawyer, it’ll be the longest six months of your life.” …

Yes, my husband thinks that one is funny too…

Now the white house says that when you wrote “some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide” that you were just making one of those lawyer jokes. If so, it was pretty funny. But it does raise the question of how you feel in general about women’s role in society. You are nominated to replace the first female Supreme Court justice …

We can see this one coming a mile away folks. They’ve probably got Dennis Miller on the horn coming up with a zinger. We should beat them to it.

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Respectfully Decline

Why is it that sports guys are the only journalists with any guts? Keith Olbermann quit MSNBC when he just couldn’t take doing the Monica story night after night. Bob Costas refused to host Larry King last night when he was told he’s have to do another ridiculous navel gazer about Natalee Holloway:

Veteran sports broadcaster Bob Costas declined to fill in as host on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Thursday night because of the program’s focus that night on the missing Alabama teenager and on Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer.

Costas — who has been serving as an occasional substitute for King since June — bowed out of the Thursday show after he could not persuade producers to change the program’s lineup, which included an interview with Beth Holloway Twitty, the mother of the high school senior who disappeared in Aruba in late May.

“I didn’t think the subject matter of Thursday’s show was the kind of broadcast that I should be doing,” Costas said in a statement, adding that he “respectfully declined to participate.”

I’ve noted before that the sports writers are often the ones who call bullshit. I don’t know why this is so. Perhaps it’s because they aren’t dependent on the political media establishment for their daily bread. Or maybe it’s just a different occupational culture. Whatever it is, it’s clear to me that the political reporting fraternity would do well to take a lesson from their sports bretheren. Just say no.

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Psssst

Max Blumenthal has written an interesting article about Just-Us Sunday II in which he observes that the Christian right was not at all happy with the fact that John Roberts helped out the wrong side of the Romer gay rights case.

With the revelation of Roberts’s involvement in the Romer case, right-wing activists began jumping ship. The leader of a Virginia antigay group, Public Advocate, yanked support with the declaration, “‘Freedom’ is not embracing perversion.” Joseph Farah, editor of the heavily trafficked far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, attacked Justice Sunday’s planners in thinly veiled language in an August 12 column: “We now have ‘conservative’ organizations leading the fight for confirmation of a man [Roberts] who is certain to be a grave disappointment to them.” Perhaps most important, Gary Bauer, the former Family Research Council president who built the organization into one of Washington’s largest conservative operations during the 1990s, denounced the Bush White House in his daily newsletter for picking a “stealth nominee” and questioned their refusal to release 50,000 pages of Reagan-era Roberts documents.

The position of Justice Sunday II’s organizers consisted of halfhearted apologia through gritted teeth. “The Romer case was perhaps one of the most egregious decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court…and to have Roberts be part of that in any way was troubling,” Dobson said during an August 8 appearance on Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes. But, Dobson assured the audience, “he had a very minor role.” When host Sean Hannity peppered him with questions about Roberts’s role on Romer, Dobson was forced to concede that “the Republican senators need to vet him [Roberts] also.” It was a stunning role reversal, considering that Dobson and his allies had spent the past month attacking Democratic senators who vowed to question Roberts’s views on social issues.

What do you suppose these people would do if they found out that the Chairman of the Republican National Committee is gay? Or that one of the most successful Republican strategists of all time took his lover and two children and got married in Boston as soon as they made gay marriage legal?

Tom DeLay is feted as a Christian hero when he’s the crookedest politician since Boss Tweed. Laura and Barbara Bush are both on the record as being pro-choice. Do these Christians know this?

I can guarantee that if the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would find a way to make these things known. They understand the concept of divide and conquer.

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Mary and Wayne

Last night before I signed off, I posted an interview by Rose Aguillar with Mary Fowler, an Oklahoma Republican. At the end of the interview, I posted a comment from a disabled Oklahoman named Wayne Yeazel who depends on the government but who says he doesn’t vote.

Mary Fowler is an evangelical Christian who believes that Republicans pick their candidates based upon their devotion to Jesus. In fact, she sees republicanism as part of her church. For her, religion and politics are the same thing.

Wayne Yeazel and his family have terrible money problems. If you read the whole interview you can see they are all living on social security disability. Wayne Yeazel feels no connection to the party that has spent the last year fighting to save their only source of livlihood. His wife says she doesn’t like the government in general, which is quite astute considering that they are trying to destroy her family at the moment — but she doesn’t vote either. Clearly, they have no idea how directly politics affects their lives.

Mary Fowler can be dealt with only one way — we must separate Republicanism from her church. It won’t be possible to out church them but it can be done by exposing them. Republicans are not godly. When she finds out that they aren’t godly she will stop voting for them — most likely stop voting at all. (And unless she learns to separate religion from politics it is probably the best thing.) It won’t be easy to convince her, but she is much more attached to her vision of the Bible than the Republican party. She chose Republicanism after she was saved, not before. She will choose Jesus over Tom Delay if push comes to shove.

I urge you to read all the interviews. I picked Mary Fowler because she is probably fairly representative of the hard core evangelical Republican who is unreachable for Democrats because of our fundamental philosophy of pluralism and tolerance (and reason.) I harbor no illusions that she will ever vote for us. But she is fundamentally not a political person; she sees the world entirely through the prism of her church. The concept of democracy is meaningless to her. Until the Republicans realized that they had an highly organized consituency out there waiting to be plucked, people like her didn’t involve themselves in politics because they simply didn’t believe the secular institutions of government were relevant or important. They operated in the spiritual, personal, private sphere which is really where religion belongs and where it thrives.

I think Mary Fowler can be shown that Republicanism is not what she thinks it is and separate it from her belief system. It will take a lot of work because people like her place their trust in authority figures and believe what they are told. But over time these things can penetrate if the message is consistent and clear. We don’t have to convert them. We just have to sow doubts.

If we are to destroy the exploitative evangelical political machine the Republicans have built, the Mary Fowlers out there must open their eyes to the fact that the Republicans are tainting their church with their sin and hypocricy. Mary Fowler is a sincere fundamentalist Christian, not a political hack. Has anyone read “Elmer Gantry” lately? Mary Fowler is being sold a bill of goods.

Wayne Yeazel and his family don’t vote. Mary Fowler does. We need to switch that around.

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Stories In America

Rose Aguillar is interviewing people in states that overwhelmingly voted for George W. Bush. It’s a fascinating insight in to Real Murika. Here’s one from Oklahoma:

Mary Fowler, 54, Housekeeper

Why do you think gas prices are so high?

From what I’ve read, they say it’s because of the Iraq war. I’ve also read about alternatives to gas and even automobiles that use alternatives, but for some reason, the big oil companies bought up the patents for that, so it’s not just the Iraq war and it’s not President Bush’s fault. He gets blamed for everything, but it’s not his fault. It’s just greed from other people. I feel like the president is doing everything he can to help.

Like what?

For one thing, he is protecting our country by being in Iraq. We can’t pull out too soon because they’ll think we’re chicken and they’ll try to attack us again. We can’t pull out until they’re able to fend for themselves. Those who are strong are supposed to help those who are weak. We are strong and we’re that way for a reason. We’ve always been peacemakers. As long as we keep the peace, we’ll be blessed.

So you believe we’re acting as peacemakers in Iraq?

Yes and we’re protecting the innocent. Muslims want to rule the world. They want to take over the whole world. That’s their evil purpose.

Do you know any Muslims?

I’ve ministered to them. A few lived in my apartment building and they invited us over for dinner. I went with a Christian guy. They were nice. The food was nice. At the end, we said, ‘Can we pray for you?’ And they said yes, if we can pray for you. We prayed for the peace of god. Most of them are very harsh. There’s no tenderness or love.

Do a lot of Muslims live in this area? Have you met any others besides the ones who invited you over for dinner?

Most of them live in Tulsa.

Why do you think we’re in Iraq? People say we’re freeing the Iraqis one minute and then change their opinion and say they’re horrible people.

Soldiers over there say we don’t get half the news. There’s so much good going on. The majority of the people appreciate the help. The majority, not the weirdos who are deceived.

Where do you get your information about the war?

The Bible and the 700 Club. I also listen to preachers who know what’s going on. Pat Robertson.

What do you like about Bush?

He’s a praying man of god. He’s a family man and he does care. He gets blamed for everything. If this country would turn back to god, things would get better. You can’t go on killing babies and allowing homosexual stuff to stay. We do love the people, but we don’t love their actions.

Do you think talking about homosexuality does anything to improve healthcare or poverty?

I guess for me I’ve always had to trust the lord for the next job, which is usually housecleaning. If you have your eyes on him, he’ll take care of you. The government can’t help us.

Do you always vote?

Yes, I volunteered for the Republican Party and I enjoyed it very much.

Have you always been Republican?

When I first registered, I was a Democrat. Just from studying in school, I thought that’s what I wanted to be because I believed in government for the people, by the people and of the people. But after I was saved, I realized the Republican beliefs are me so I switched and I’m glad I did.

What does it mean to be a Republican?

Republicans pick the people who believe like we do.

You mean believe in the Bible?

Yes and godly principles. If we kick god out, we’ll be like other countries that have AIDS, sickness and poverty. God created the earth, he created the rules and he knows what’s best for everybody.

Unfortunately, we have AIDS, sickness and poverty in this country.

Yes, because we allow homosexuality.

You blame homosexuality for AIDS, sickness and poverty?

Well, sometimes people are innocent. This nation is in trouble. The ACLU are run by communists and funded by communists. What does that tell you? They want to take god away from us.

The ACLU once helped Pat Robertson’s son set up churches. They also helped Jerry Falwell fight church restrictions three years ago. If they wanted to take god way from you, why would they help Pat Robertson’s son and Jerry Falwell?

I haven’t heard about that. I’m sure there are a few good people in the ACLU.

I’ve interviewed a lot of people on this trip and while they want freedom of religion, none have said they want to take god away.

When they first started the country, those that didn’t believe in Jesus were put in jail. Once a country is dedicated to god and founded on its principles, it has to stay that way.

What issues are most important to you?

Getting the right Supreme Court Justice in you. I want god back in the schools. They kick god out of schools and they wonder why we have drugs and sex in the schools.

And then there’s this:

Wayne Yeazal: I was a truck driver until I got hurt. I had a bunch of surgeries and had a $300,000 bill. There’s no way I can pay for that. I’m on Medicaid and only make $400 a month from social security.

Do you vote?

Twila Yeazal: No. I don’t like the government.

Wayne Yeazal: I don’t vote. I don’t pay attention.

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Mexican Terrorists

I’m hearing Rep. John Culberson (R-Nutcase) on MSNBC saying that we know that terrorists are coming over the Mexican border, hiding among friendly illegal immigrants, and that we should trust American volunteers (with no history of mental illness — which leaves out his constituents) to patrol the border. Just the other day I heard Governor Bill Richardson on Fox going on and on about how illegal immigrants are mutilating animals but we should beef up the border patrol to deal with it.

This kind of talk, in my experience, always means that the economy is in deep shit. I don’t care what the numbers say and I don’t care how happy everyone is supposed to be in this wonderful growing economy — it obviously sucks. Illegal immigrant bashing never happens when the party’s in full swing.

I can see that we are going to spend a lot of time on this convenient scapegoating the next few years and judging from Richardson’s approach, the populist Democratic position is going to be that we need to bash Mexicans with professional border patrol agents as opposed to picking them off with vigilante posses. I guess we are taking the kinder gentler approach?

Economic populism does have an unfortunate history of teaming up with nativism and it looks like the Republicans and the Democrats are going to be racing to see who can get there first. Business always willingly puts up with a short term phony interruption in their cheap labor supply in order to feed the rubes, so no worries of a GOP crack-up on this one. The bigger question is whether the hispanic population is going to put up with the inevitable race baiting that underlies these periodic bash-fests. Whoever threads that needle the best is probably going to be the winner in the western swing states.

One problem with getting older is that you begin to see these pernicious patterns play out repeatedly within your own lifetime and it is profoundly depressing.

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Being Burketted

I try not to make sweeping claims about things for which I cannot possibly know the answer, but like most people I often have some sort of feeling about what the answer will be nonetheless. This is because when you examine certain odd claims your intuition and deductive powers kick in even when you don’t have all the evidence. I have that feeling about the Able Danger story, which is why I haven’t written about it.

First of all, anything that Curt Weldon is involved with is automatically suspect. It just is. He’s a nutball who shouldn’t be let anywhere near a position of real authority. That doesn’t mean he’s automatically wrong, of course, but when you combine it with the fact that his evidence is based upon memory, documents have disappeared and the guy backing up the claim has subtly changed his story — let’s just say my skeptical antenna are way, way up. Something is wrong with this picture. Particularly this part:

As to the timing of why this is all coming out only now, Shaffer revealed in his appearance on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Wednesday that it was Weldon’s idea to make a fuss over Able Danger being shut down, only after Shaffer and Phillpott recently approached him to get support for funding their new data mining proposal.

C’mon.

And if JPod and his ilk get covered in ignominy over it, so much the better. They want so much for it to be true, particularly the part about the 9/11 commission blowing these allegations off. They also want to blame it on Jamie Gorelick, which makes no sense whatsoever but it will mean they can exonerate the poor little Pentagon which just didn’t know what to do. (And did you know that Jamie Gorelick once worked at the Pentagon too, a long time ago? Coincidence? I think not…)

The whole thing sounds incredibly dicey to me. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m open to seeing some real evidence — I’d be happy to see Rummy’s Pentagon nailed for a cover-up. But I have a feeling that this is a Burkett special.

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Warm Feelings

A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “the lowest point” in his life.

“I wish I had not been involved in it,” says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. “I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”

[…]

Powell’s speech, delivered on February 14, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell’s presentation initially came from a document he described as “sort of a Chinese menu” that was provided by the White House.

“(Powell) came through the door … and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, ‘This is what I’ve got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'” Wilkerson says in the program. “It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose.”

Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.

“There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced,” Wilkerson says.

In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.

“In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator,” says David Kay, who served as the CIA’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as “Curveball.”

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.

“George actually did call the Secretary, and said, ‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you. We don’t believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'” Wilkerson says in the documentary. “This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it’s fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you’re telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It’s difficult to maintain any warm feelings.”

The president had no problems in that regard, did he? He still has warm feelings galore.

I’m glad to see that some members of the administration are coming forward to say they have regrets. It’s important for the historical record. But don’t expect the mainstream press to care about it. This is all old news, you know.

I do think it’s an important insight into the psychology of people who are involved with these things. There were a few who spoke out and a few who resigned in protest but not many. It’s important that we examine that phenomenon and try to figure out how this happens. It’s not unprecedented, of course. There have been many examples and some amazing analysis done on the subject. But here we have it in real time, someone who knew the government was taking the country to war for inscrutable reasons and yet he went along. He is not without a conscience. And conditions were such that he would have lost his career, but he wouldn’t have lost his freedom or his life if he had quit. But he didn’t. Neither did Powell, who could have changed the course of history had he resigned. Why didn’t they?

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Your elitist slip is showing

In an otherwise quite reasonable defense of Cindy Sheehan, Garance Franke-Ruta makes this statement:

Sheehan hails from a part of the country where, when she went looking for answers, the easiest ones to find are the ones that she found. There is no grassroots, accessible organizing by Democratic foreign policy centrists, for example, so when people outside D.C. start looking for answers, all they find is one part of the left spectrum of opinion.

I find it very unusual that someone who blogs would say such a thing. I very much doubt that Sheehan drove to a Berkeley Code Pink potluck for answers to her questions about Iraq. I know she lives in a regional backwater where the folks are all unsophisticated rubes who don’t know nothin’ bout foreign policy like all the smart people in Washington DC do, but I suspect they do have the internet and television. She may have even read a blog called TAPPED.

It’s patronizing to assume that her views are the result of being unable to access the sophisticated thinking in washington DC. I suspect she chose the people who are supporting her today as much as they chose her. After all, two years ago when her son was killed it was pretty hard to find any “sophisticated” liberals in Washington DC who gave a flying fuck. They were still waving flags and talking about kicking ass. It was only the “default leftist” hayseeds out in nowheresville who would give this woman the time of day.

I agree with Franke-Ruta that her power derives from her moral authority as a mother whose child was killed. What else would it be? She’s not a professional politician, analyst or activist. Her political views are secondary. But she isn’t a child, either. Her political views are no more spurious than any other American’s and I would give her more credit than to assume that they stem from an inability to obtain other opinions. If she wanted to read transcripts of Brookings symposiums about Iraq, she certainly could. And she may have for all we know.

Furthermore, as eRobin pointed out on the American Street yesterday, her peacenik beliefs probably stem more from her committed catholicism than anything else. There is a strain of serious lefty catholic politics in this country from long before the Berrigan brothers. Out here in the California boondocks, catholics tend to be very leftwing indeed.

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