Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Your Lovin’ Don’t Pay My Bills

John Aravosis wonders if liberals have “issues” with money — he sees a hostility toward money on the left and wonders where it comes from. His readers offer some very interesting opinions on the matter, so be sure to read the comment thread if you find this topic intriguing.

I have a slightly different perception on the matter than most, it seems. I admit to having issues with it, probably because I always valued time over money. (Of course, as you get older you begin to realize that you run out of that too.) However, I don’t harbor resentment toward others. I made my choices and I don’t live a life full of regret about much of anything. I have no moral qualms about making money (in a decent way) and I don’t think that it’s my business to judge others on what they choose to spend it on. I appreciate what it can do to make life comfortable for the individual and how it motivates people to work. I certainly accept that there is something intrinsic to human nature in the acquisition of wealth and the desire to succeed. But I do have issues, nonetheless.

John’s readers more than adequately explain what I think is the common liberal argument against money and it’s the general belief in egalitarianism — that it is not really moral to have too much when others have so little. These are ideas that, ironically enough, stem from Christian teaching. So much for the godless heathens of the left.

I don’t approach this from a moral standpoint, although I’m sympathetic to the notion just from a human empathetic standpoint. If you’ve ever spent much time in the third world, you realize right quick that human life is valued very differently on our planet and it won’t make you feel particularly terrific about your own (except, of course, for the South Park Republicans who apparently can’t think beyond their good luck — what they would call their natural superiority — at being American.)

It has been my experience that money confers power over others and that is where I personally get uncomfortable. This is not directly related to marxist theory, although I would suspect that there isn’t a lefty (or a righty for that matter) who hasn’t been influenced to some degree by it, so it’s certainly relevant to my thinking on the issue. (He diagnosed the illness, it was his prescription that wasn’t so hot.) Mostly,though, I think it’s a matter of human psychology. People who work for wages, particularly those lower on the scale, are simply not in control of their lives in the same way as are those who work for themselves or those who are independently wealthy. From being treated like a lackey by the boss to having to answer to your mother-in-law because she loaned you money for the down payment, there is a slight, and sometimes not so slight, corruption of your freedom every time you are dependent upon another individual’s goodwill. And it is a rare person who will not immediately exercise this power over others if they feel threatened or angry and a rare person who will not feel the metaphorical lash at having to answer for it.

As much as I am concerned as they are with individual freedom, this is why I find it so hard to relate to libertarians; I think that the common experience of working for wages and being beholden to another individual is more of a tangible infringement upon personal liberty than the extraction of taxes for the greater good. The infringement on personal freedom that is most immediate and constant in most people’s lives is having to brownnose another human being or play fast and loose with the rules because their financial survival depends upon it. It’s why I support unions and workplace rules and consumer rights. In the everyday lives of most people, the biggest limits on their freedom and challenges to their integrity come not from government regulators but greedy and powerful employers.

And yet, it is the way of the world and we each have to find a way to live with a modicum of decency and integrity within it. And I think it is a much more complicated and difficult row to hoe than we Americans think it is. It is not as easy to obtain financial freedom as some would have it nor is financial success a perfect illustration of an individual’s merit. That’s why I don’t much like money, in a general conceptual way. It has corrupted friendships, family, jobs and relationships in ways that nothing else in my life ever has. It can and is used as a weapon as often as a tool. In a hyper capitalist society such as ours, it’s perhaps the single most powerful method the individual has (or doesn’t have) to create his or her own destiny. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a good thing to think about how you really feel about it — most Americans never question their assumptions. In many ways, it’s probably easier that way. Bravo to John for bringing it up.

And by the way, I hope this makes it clear that I do not hold with the idea that because a blogger accepted donations that he or she is required to answer to the donors. Indeed, I think the opposite. People give money because they appreciate the work. When they don’t appreciate the work they don’t give money. It’s one of the cleanest exchanges of goods and services around, fully voluntary and without further obligation on either part.

This reminds me of a relative who wanted to help out her grandfather in his later years. He was living with an aunt who also had little money. This relative agreed to send a hundred dollars a month. When she went to visit she found out that granddad was drinking a couple of beers every night and the aunt played bingo on Saturdays. The relative considered these expenses to be a waste. She figured her hundred a month entitled her to straighten up these people’s bad habits and she insisted that because she had sent them, by this time, more than a couple thousand dollars that they already owed her quite a lot, even if she withdrew her monthly stipend. They gave up the beer and the bingo but the relative continued to find their spending habits objectionable and made sure that they knew it and did as they were told. Granddad was reduced to sneaking around and the aunt was isolated from all the friends she used to see at weekly bingo. They felt like children. Luckily they both died before long and ended the ritual humiliation the whole thing had evolved into. The money was not worth it.

If Aravosis wanted to blow all his donations on lottery tickets they’d be his to blow. If that bothers you, don’t donate again. But making a donation doesn’t entitle anyone to think they own John or his blog. He owns himself, always.

.

Maybe He Won’t Be Back

Check out this fascinating pictorial deconstruction of Schwarzeneger’s ad on BagNewsNotes today. (Or just click the ad at left.) For those of you who don’t live in California, this ad is just pathetic, and it’s chock full of product placement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many brand names in a political commercial before.

But, as BNN points out, it’s also aesthetically just a terrible ad — even by political ad standards which aren’t very high. It’s not that it has some sort of cinema verite authenticity in its badness. It’s just ugly and ineffectual.

This is the mega star of the 1980’s we’re talking about here. The man whose entire claim to fame is his celebrity. Yet his people produce an ad that could have been done by someone(with lots of high placed friends in the food and beverage business) running for the San Bernardino school board. And it comes on the heels of months of very effective ads done by the public employees unions featuring the the sunny smiles of elementary schoolteachers and nurses and the rugged all American features of heroic firefighters. (Jon Stewart said “those are some MILFS.”)

I think that people expect Schwarzenneger’s ads to be professional show business quality. That is, after all, the only thing he’s got going for him. Nobody voted for Arnold because of his great ideas or policy prescriptions. He didn’t have any then and he doesn’t have any now. They did expect him to at least play the part of the Governor well on TV. But then again, he never was the actor Ronald Reagan was in the movies, either. And that’s saying something.

.

The Incredible Shrinking President

Funny how we haven’t seen any of the weekly news magazines do a cover story on the fact that Bush is the earliest lame duck in history. Considering that they were writing Bill Clinton’s epitaph within three months of his first term, one might conclude that they are using a different standard. How unusual.

But then again, it isn’t his fault and it isn’t his job. Unlike Clinton he doesn’t have a congressional majority of his own party to lead. Oh wait…

Bush Rejects Talk of Waning Influence:

President Bush dismissed yesterday suggestions that his influence is waning less than six months into his second term, blaming partisanship and timidity in Congress for the lack of action on his plans to bring change to the United Nations, restructure Social Security and enact a new energy policy this year.

“I don’t worry about anything here in Washington, D.C.,” Bush said during a news conference in the White House’s Rose Garden. “I feel comfortable in my role as the president, and my role . . . is to push for reform.” With Democrats and Republicans alike questioning the clout of a president whose approval ratings have sunk to new lows, Bush said it is Congress that must prove it is “capable of getting anything done.”

His job is to “push for reform?” I thought he was keeping the babies safe and fending off drone planes with his bare hands. What’s going on here? The man with the codpiece can’t get a Republican congress to enact his agenda? Man, those panting security moms must be disappointed. The difference between the 85% Collossus of 2002 and the petulant powerlessness of today is stark.

And he clearly didn’t like the way people were talking about his soul brother Vladimir:

Speaking a few hours after former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison after a trial that many democratic activists called politically motivated, Bush said he has expressed concerns about the legal proceedings to President Vladimir Putin and will watch the appeals process closely. “Here, you are innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial,” Bush said.

I guess he wanted to preserve his personal deniability for when he and Vlady next meet over beers and pork rinds at the ranch set. Or he just didn’t see the problem. After all, this is the man who said several thousand times that Saddam had to be disarmed and then pulled out the weapons inspectors when they didn’t find the proof. Seems to me that he has an affinity for the concept of judging guilty before having a fair trial.

And, of course he and everyone in the press corpse are too thick to see the utter vacuity of his statement in light of what he said just a few minutes before about alleged human rights abuses Guantanamo:

“It seemed to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth,’ Bush said.”

Yes, he actually said “disassemble” — and then had the nerve to be snotty about it and define it. There is no end to the man’s arrogance and ignorance.

Bush apparently has no idea that when he starts lecturing Moscow or Beijing about “fair trials” everyone now collapses in convulsive laughter. Guantanamo has changed forever the idea that Americans have a fair and impartial judicial system based upon the rule of law and the constitution. Bush and his cronies have shown that we are more than capable of suspending those things at will. If we ever had any moral authority, it has been officially flushed down the toilet.

Not that it really matters to these people. They don’t believe that it’s important to have moral authority. They only believe that it’s important to have big guns and a willingness to use them. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be all that good at the Empire building thing. Maybe keeping our moral authority backed by the threat of force rather than a clumsy and useless demonstration of our ineptitude might have been a better way to go.

This is going to be a long 3 and a half years. But I’m beginning to think I may enjoy them more than Junior will.

.

New Ideas

This is good. Some in the administration are apparently questioning whether waging a “Global War on Terror” is an effective way to deal with the threat of islamic fundamentalism. Wow. Next thing you know they’ll be wondering whether taxes and expenditures ought to be in balance or something. Weird.

The review marks the first ambitious effort since the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks to take stock of what the administration has called the “global war on terrorism” — or GWOT — but is now considering changing to recognize the evolution of its fight. “What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism,” said a senior administration official who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not finished. “GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at.”

Yeah. “GWOT” is a catchy phrase that’s been sweeping the nation like wildfire.

So they’ve decided that what we really need is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism. Hmmm. I have an idea. How about we invade and occupy a non terrorist country in the middle of the region, create political chaos and foment a civil war? Surely that can only be seen as a gesture of goodwill on our part. But just in case we should probably say that the country has nukes strapped to drone planes that are ready to attack the eastern seaboard at any moment. (Nobody will remember any of that in a year anyway.)

Well, maybe that’s not such a hot idea after all.

Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called “the bleed out” of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. “It’s a new piece of a new equation,” a former senior Bush administration official said. “If you don’t know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?”

Interesting. Who would have ever dreamed this could happen? Oh, that’s right. Those of us who were against the invasion. In fact, it was the central practical argument that I and most others I know set forth at the time. It was always obvious that invading Iraq was going to foment terrorism, not quell it. Anybody with a sixth grade education could see that. Well, except for some Republicans who went to Andover, Yale and Harvard, that is.

I really can’t believe it. After they just ran a ruthless, mendacious, presidential campaign of character assasination against anyone who diverted even a half step from their party line, here they are, basically admitting that their entire GWOT is a fucking goddamned mistake.

The good news though is that just as they were before 9/11, the administration is focused like a laser beam on combatting terrorism:

The review may have been slowed somewhat by the fact that many of the key counterterrorism jobs in the administration have been empty for months, including the top post at the State Department for combating terrorism, vacant since November, and the directorship of the new National Counterterrorism Center. “We’re five months into the next term, and still a number of spots have yet to be filled,” Cressey said. “You end up losing valuable time.”

The counterterrorism center was created nearly a year ago by Bush to serve as the main clearinghouse for terrorism-related intelligence but is not yet fully operational, and has been run by an acting director and caught up in the broader wave of bureaucratic reorganization that resulted in the creation of the new directorate of national intelligence, whose fiefdom the center will join.

As part of the reorganization, a new office of strategic and operational planning is slated to become the focal point for operations aimed at terrorists, but that, too, has yet to start working fully, the senior counterterrorism official said.

Townsend just hired a deputy last week, Treasury official Juan Carlos Zarate, to take on the terrorism portfolio at the NSC; Townsend had been doing that as well as serving as the president’s top homeland security aide for the past year. Several counterterrorism sources said the State job will soon be filled by CIA veteran Hank Crumpton and the counterterrorism center post is slated to go to Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, current deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe.

“They recognize there’s been a vacuum of leadership,” said a former top counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “There has been a dearth of senior leadership directing this day to day. No one knows who’s running this on a day-to-day basis.”

Well, that’s good. We’re creating terrorists by the thousands day after day but the administration can’t get it together enough to hire the people it needs to fill the anti-terrorist positions. The president himself is awfully busy, as we know, tilting at his private windmill accounts and riding his trike in the woods. Cheney is undoubtedly putting all his efforts into figuring out how to justify the use of tactical nuclear weapons on California. Who has time to deal with this terrorism thing? It’s so 2002.

Ooops, I forgot one very important member of the administration who is working night and day on this problem. Karen Hughes has the vital responsibility of changing the negative perception of Americans in the middle east, which is key to their new strategy of combatting violent extremism. I hear her latest campaign is about to be revealed: she’s going to tell those terrorists and jihadists that the US is a compassionate crusader — an occupier with optimism — an inspirational imperialist with integrity! Once those terrorists hear the mellifluous melody of her awesome alliteration, just like the Red States they will all fall in love.

Update: James Wolcott tells us that Michael Ledeen is just hopping mad about all this “re-evaluation” business. You can certainly understand why. He’s the guy who seriously made the case to invade France and Germany just two years ago. This has to be a blow.

Twice in the past, the president slid into a similar funk, first permitting himself to be gulled by the Saudis into believing he had to make a deal with Arafat before he was entitled to liberate Iraq, then permitting the British to drag out the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom with endless votes in the Security Council. Each time he realized his error, and pressed on with greater vigor. It’s time for him to do that again.”

The 101st Keyboarders need to saddle up their Aaron chairs and cock their control buttons. This is bigger even than the GWOT. It’s a fight for the Codpiece and that’s a battle only they know how to fight with the relish and expertise that’s called for. They may have lost their beloved leader General Sullivan, but they will valiantly carry on without him. These brave souls will never give in, never give in, never give in.

.

Spent Capital

I’m Baaaack. Sorry for the interruption in service folks. I’ve been indisposed, but now I’m right as rain and ready to rumble. Or thunder. Or something…

And what do I see first thing? Bush’s Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest. Sweet.

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of “political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees.

With his approval ratings in public opinion polls at the lowest level of his presidency, Bush has been stymied so far in his campaign to restructure Social Security. On the international front, violence has surged again in Iraq in recent weeks, dispelling much of the optimism generated by the purple-stained-finger elections back in January, while allies such as Egypt and Uzbekistan have complicated his campaign to spread democracy.

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides. Bush faces the potential of a summer of discontent when his capacity to muscle political Washington into following his lead seems to have diminished and few easy victories appear on the horizon.

Well, yes. But it’s because he never had any political capital to begin with. This was a big lie, just like the alleged mandate. He had neither. There was just enough of a fading vestige of 9/11 around (and enough of the media’s unctuous sycophancy) to keep a little of that hi-pro glow on the Prez. But he never had a mandate for any of his policies. These guys rode a wave, they didn’t win a landslide.

At some point hype, like helium, dissipates and you are left with nothing but the flaccid balloon. Junior and Rove are not geniuses or political wizards who have reshaped politics in their image. They are the guys who got in on a hummer in 2000 and were in office on 9/11. Period. The only truly impressive legislative victory has been passing massive tax cuts for rich people, which is hardly a difficult thing to ask politicians to do when you also break open the pork barrel and let them gorge on all the pig they can possibly stomach. That’s quite an achievement.

The fact is that Junior has been a lame duck since January 21, 2005. And I believe he’s happy with that. All he ever cared about was getting legitimately elected and doing what his father did not — win a second term. He doesn’t give a damn about legacy. As he famously said, “History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

He’s just going through the motions, like a high school senior who’s already been accepted to college. The Republican caucus is under new leadership — the GOP PepBoys Dobson, Frist and DeLay. I’m beginning to look forward to 2006.

.

Give ‘Em An Inch

TBOGG points to this statement by Dr. “Whip It Good” himself:

The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed. Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist would never have served on the U. S. Supreme Court if this agreement had been in place during their confirmations. The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

I assume he isn’t a complete idiot and is just playing to guys like the one who wrote that mess below. Surely he can’t be this stupid. Does he not know that Rehnquist and Thomas were confirmed under Democratic majorities and Scalia with a 98-0 vote?

Democrats confirmed his three ultra-conservative heroes and these are all the thanks we get. Clearly it’s time we stopped doing that. This thing doesn’t exactly go both ways.

The last ultra-liberal on the court was confirmed in 19-fucking-39, for crying out loud — William O. Douglas. The only liberals of the last fifty years have been Brennan, Warren, Blackmun, Marshall, Fortas, and Goldberg. The last of them, Blackmun, retired in 1994.

There are no actual liberals on the court today, ultra or otherwise. Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter and Breyer are moderate place holders under a conservative majority. They are only liberals by comparison to the ultra-conservative triumverate and the conservative twins.

Dobson seems to think that we tried to filibuster his three fave justices, when in fact, we made the terrible mistake of trusting Republicans to be fair, tell the truth and keep their word. A mistake we have, sadly, probably just made again. Not that any of our choices are very good. We really needed to win that last election.

.

You’re Going To Love This One

From my right wing e-mailer:

STEM CELLS AND LIBERALS

Firstly, we might thank the South Koreans for stem cells since they seem to be leading the way. If a loved one is saved from a slow horrible death by stem cells you might also thank conservatives since they saw fit to invade South Korea and save it from the Liberal Communists. Instead of starving to death under big government, the freedom loving South Koreans are now inventing stem cells to save your life. Oh how it must kill the cowardly liberals to see it.

As for the slippery slope objections raised regarding stem cells, one has to wonder, since every slope is slippery and everything is on a slippery slope. We have a well respected Constitution that has kept everything nicely balanced on the slippery slope for 200 years. We have a huge military, 1000’s of local police forces as well as about 22 Federal police forces, The Social Security Administration, an ever growing Federal Budget, the Supreme Court, labor unions, Congress, a one man Executive Branch who can take us to war with the phony Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or a phony search for weapons of mass destruction, but through it all our remarkable Constitution has kept power sufficiently divided so that our country has not fallen prey to many of the evils that had afflicted every society before it, throughout all of human history. And, as if that has not been enough, we have even created and preserved the freedom that much of the rest of the world enjoys.

In comparison to all the evil that might have afflicted us, stem cells seem like a trivial threat, but an incredibly huge potential benefit. The threat is that one day we’ll take stem stem cells from older and older embryos or even full grown human beings who are raised for spare parts or even as alter egos. The benefit is that stem cells might cure every sickness on earth. It might save billions of lives from death and excruciatingly painful illness! That this is a good thing ought to be the most painfully obvious thing in the world. If it isn’t obvious, it will be when they or a loved one is dying, at least to about 99% of us in that position.

Perhaps it feels like a threat to many because it is too good to be true; it is a threat to normalcy because eternal life removes too much of the normal burden of everyday life? Indeed, life would be totally redefined. Everything could be put off till tomorrow, but every goal could eventually be reached too. It scares the religious right to death given that their religion was conceived of at a time when science was not. Or, could it be that science, with its nuclear bombs, global warming, genetic technology, and abortions is merely the weapon with which we will finally manage to destroy ourselves as per biblical prophecy?

In any case we face an inevitable brave new world. The immediate problem in which is that you have to kill the embryo to get the stem cells. Never mind that the embryo was scheduled to be killed anyway, or that nature aborts most pregnancies spontaneously, or that we kill 40 million dogs from neglect every year or kill 100 million cows each year all of whom seem far more human than a few embryonic cells too small to even see. Yet to abortion opponents harvesting these stem cells is close to an abortion since there is an embryo or embryo like thing dying in each case.

In reality it is not an embryo since it has been especially prepared by removing genetic material from the mother (egg donor) to be replaced by genetic material exclusively from the patient who wishes to be cloned, or to merely harvest stem cells that eventually can replace damaged cells in his or her own body. The embryo is not put in a human womb or incubator where it might develop into a human being, although one assumes that it will be possible to do so in the very near future.

Personally, seeing an embryo meet its end this way, not even considering the incredible possible benefits, is less troubling than seeing a live lobster being dropped into a pot of boiling water, or a puppy dog being tossed into an incinerator, which we do and ignore millions of times each year.

But, in 100 years when each of us can whip up a nuclear device, weaponized anthrax, and a clone of ourselves that will live forever, sophisticated liberals might well wish quaint religious little old Bush had been taken more seriously. This seems especially true given that today’s liberals don’t have the brains or the guts to go to the Axis of Evil to take away the very deadly, but still very rudimentary, technology that they are manifestly far too immature to handle. Today’s liberals are failing brave new world kindergarten badly.

My own view is that the brave new technological world is inevitable, possibly very beneficial, but catastrophically dangerous as long as cowardly and dumb liberals are involved in the management of it.

This is the problem we face, ladies and gentlemen. Better learn to put on better show because reason is clearly inoperative.

.

Changing Their Tune

It appears that the word has gone forth. The GOP voices of God have said “ye shall spin it as a win.”

Sam Rosenfeld at TAPPED quotes Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

“… Majority Leader Bill Frist has displayed extraordinary patience and determination in the face of liberal obstinacy. We commend him and stand with him in his effort to end the obstruction and move forward with the task of restoring a judiciary that will interpret the Constitution, not legislate a liberal agenda for the nation.”

Rosenfeld comments:

That’s a lot of backpedalling for one day. Not only did the agreement go from “ignoble” to “long-overdue,” but the Frist commendation went from muted to slavish. These religious-right powerbrokers are some real tough guys. We’ll wait to see how the base they speak for reacts in the coming weeks and months. Far be it from me to call them easily led…

I’m surprised it took them so long to get with the program.

Has anyone heard Rush today? Is he still pissed or has he been “persuaded” that the Republicans are the winners in this deal?

.

Talking Our Game

Oh how I wish I weren’t so busy right now so that I could spend all of my time parsing the filibuster deal and thrilling my readers with my insights. Luckily, everybody else is doing it so I don’t have to.

There are a couple of points that I’d like to highlight, however. I think Dwight Meredith has the right of it in how low or high the bar has been set with Janice Rogers Brown. It’s actually a little bit more complicated than it seems at first glance.

On another point, I recognise that the right being upset and screaming about this is nothing unusual — they love to be victimized — and it doesn’t indicate that we actually won anything. In the post below, I was referring to the optics of the deal; as long as the right is screeching about this as a sell out and a Democratic victory there is good reason to think that many average folks will come to believe that it is so. The right wing noise machine bleeds into the discourse whether we want it to or not. This is one instance where we want it to.

According to Dobson and Weyrich, the Dems thrust their big swinging man(and woman)hoods at John McCain and they won. This is something we want the American people to think we are capable of. Remember, we are the party that is losing white males by the bucket load. It’s this kind of thing that may release them from their adolescent “manly” impulse to side with the alleged tough guys on the right against their own best interests.

The fact is that on the substance, this deal is a compromise that cuts both ways. That’s what compromises usually do. But for Democrats, who have virtually no power anyway, it is as important to be seen as strong and resolute as it is to actually win. The game we are really playing is for 2006. Because let’s face it, this is a Republican majority government and they can, if they really want to, do any damned thing they please whether we like it or not.

The far right and religious fanatic base is not going to convert to the Democratic party. We need to prove to the moderates, independents and western libertarians that we are tough enough. If James Dobson and Rush Limbaugh want to portray us as dragon slayers, more power to them. They have a big microphone. Let them use it to shout to the world about the big meanie Dems and the sniveling cowardly Republicans who buckled under to them. Works for me.

.

Live To Fight Another Day

My first reaction to the nuclear fizzle was disappointment, partially I admit, because I thought this was a very clever opportunity for Democrats to do the single most important thing they have to do improve their image with the public — stand up for themselves and show some guts. The “optics” of this were sufficiently murky to make that a risky play, but I felt that we had nothing much to lose. As the Milquetoast Party, anything that shows our willingness to stick together, act on principle and face down the Republicans is indisputably a good thing. This deal doesn’t exactly get that done, I’m afraid.

On the other hand, the way the wingnuts are whining and blubbering, it did, so maybe that’s all that matters. I’ll be very interested in hearing what Rush has to say today. If he’s gotten the word to spin this their way, that dynamic will change forthwith. The right prefers the fight so their first instinct when denied one is petulance. But they’ll fall into line if their voices from God tell them to.

My only question going forward is this: if Janice Brown is not considered to be an “extraordinary circumstance” then who in the world could Bush possibly nominate who would be worse? Ann Coulter? (She does, after all, call herself a constitutional scholar.) I’m not sure that there are any judges who are to the right of Brown or who express more hostility not only to the constitution but to the enlightenment thought that guides it. The only thing absolutely worse would be to put an Islamic fundamentalist on the supreme court.

I suppose that they may have made some sort of informal agreement as to what constitutes a circumstance more “extraordinary” than this, but I don’t know how much trust I would put in such a thing. If Brown, Owen and Pryor are confirmed, the bar has been set very, very low. It’s hard to imagine how Bush could come up with anyone even less qualified or philosophically unacceptable than that, but they seem to be able to find the worst judicial freaks in the country so maybe they’ve been holding out on us. It also pays to remember that Earl Warren wasn’t even a judge before he became Chief Justice. Bush could name James Dobson if he wanted to.

In the end, politically, I think the filibuster showdown is a wash. The Republicans didn’t get to turn the Senate into the House of Representatives but they will get three unabashed idiots, racists and pre-modern troglodytes on the federal bench. It could have been worse.

More importantly, the fascist element, led by Dick Cheney, was denied the opportunity to flush another little piece of of our system of government down the toilet as a fun exercise of pure power. Each time these bastards rip out another bit our of the constitution or “change the rules” to favor one party government or “reinterpret” the law to favor Republicans, we move one step closer to a country that we will soon not be able to recognise as the one in which we grew up.

This action put that day off — in the case of the nuclear option, maybe forever. That’s a good thing.

.