Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Retro Wingnuttia

So The Huffington Post is up and right now it’s featuring Larry David at the top of the page supporting John Bolton. I guess he really is a conservative just like my favorite mainstream writers Ann Coulter and Tony Blankley said. First David Horowitz, now this. Where will it end, I ask you, where?

It is good to see that David Frum is seriously performing this week’s designated function of rewriting history in ways that would make Stalin proud. He claims that the cold war started on May 9th 1945 when the Russians inexplicably required that they be allowed to celebrate the end of the war on a different day than their allies. This is a new one on me. I had always heard from the wingers that the cold war started at the “sell-out at Yalta.” Frum sees this intransigence as another sign of foreboding which we presumably should have heeded and invaded Russia forthwith. (In any case, he thinks that it’s wrong that we haven’t established memorials to the Gulags in the same way that we established memorials to the Holocaust and I’m sure that liberals are to blame for this because you know how we love Gulags.)

Of course, this mainstreaming of standard John Bircher talk circa 1958 was actually validated by George W. Bush this week when he “apologized” for the so-called sell-out at Yalta in a speech that would have made Joe McCarthy proud as punch. Repeating that old canard was once considered the sign of an bloodthirsty moron who literally believed that it was better to be dead than Red and believed it would have been preferable to start dropping nukes on the Soviet Union at the earliest possible moment. (Think Jack D Ripper.) Hey the Soviets had already lost 20 million, what difference would a few more million make, right? Besides, they were commies, not humans. Lucky for the planet, seasoned battle hardened men instead of chickenhawk baby boomers were in charge at the time and cooler heads prevailed.

The most amazing response to this I’ve read is this one from The Belmont Club in which Bush’s apology was compared favorably to the apologies for slavery and Native genocide. Considering that slavery and native American genocide were perpetrated by Americans and sanctioned and financed by the American governments of the time it’s hard to make the connection between that and failing to invade Russia but I guess if you squint your eyes really hard you might be able to see some correlation. And, of course, one wonders whether we would have been able to actually occupy Russia as well as Europe and Japan, even after the inevitable nuking, but no bother. Russia had already been pretty much destroyed so we should have put the frosting on the cake of WWII and completely annihilated it in order to save it — our favorite rationalization for American bloodlust for the past fifty years. “We’re killing them for their own good.”

But my Gawd, the brass balls of Bush to make this fatuous boast:

We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability,” the president said. “We have learned our lesson; no one’s liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of others.”

Meanwhile:

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were “beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask.” Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly: “Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.”

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in the global fight against terrorism. The nation, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, granted the United States the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House, and the United States has given Uzbekistan more than $500 million for border control and other security measures.

Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan’s treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department.

The so-called rendition program, under which the Central Intelligence Agency transfers terror suspects to foreign countries to be held and interrogated, has linked the United States to other countries with poor human rights records. But the turnabout in relations with Uzbekistan is particularly sharp. Before Sept. 11, 2001, there was little high-level contact between Washington and Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, beyond the United States’ criticism of Uzbekistan.

And, as we all know, that is only the tip of the iceberg. There is the AQ Khan debacle wherein we have let the man who sold nuclear technology to every Tom Dick and Harry who wanted one, skate. Why? Because our ally, the military dictatorship of Pakistan demanded it and in the interest of the GWOT, we have let it happen. We have the recent presidential “man-date” which just shows how far Bush will go to debase himself tip-toeing through the bluebells with Prince Abdullah for the trivial purposes of showing the people that he’s serious about gas prices. Clearly, the principle of freedom doesn’t weigh heavily in his decision making. And everybody on the planet except the 101st Fighting Keyborders and the rest of the right wing press know it.

This insufferable self-serving sanctimony about freedom and liberty is more than just annoying, however. It’s dangerous. We’re now goading Vladimir Putin in ways that don’t make make sense and he is clearly not impressed. Pretending now that the waging of the Cold War was a mistake, when it was clearly one of the wisest and most intellectually evolved thing a great nation has ever done, is unwise. After a little more than four years in office, the administration has managed to almost completely destroy this country’s hard won credibility and it appears that Junior and his neocon cronies will not rest until it is completely gone. And pathetically, they are now reduced to using old chestnuts from the National Review of half a century ago to do it. Even though we actually won the cold war, apparently it’s more important that William F Buckley be perceived as having been right.

The most astonishing thing about this is that it appears this actually is the product of 40 years of heavily subsidized college Republican bull sessions and right wing think tank white papers. Tired, warmed-over fifty year old McCarthyite crapola. I thought liberals were the ones who didn’t have any new ideas.

Update: I know the Larry David piece is satire. I was being ironic and clearly, it failed.

Update II: Fixed ridiculous error on date of Yalta conference. Never post while doing somethiung else.

Biddy Values

When exactly did Cokie “she who shall sit in judgement of all who are not perfect” Roberts retire and name Michelle Cottle as her replacement?

Let’s be clear: This isn’t a question of vengeance or even of teaching the batty bride a life lesson. It’s about actions having consequences and the misuse of public resources (something you can bet Sean Hannity would be ranting about if the bride in question had been some homely piece of trailer trash). Hell, if my centrally monitored fire alarm accidentally goes off more than a couple of times, the D.C. Fire Department will start charging me for the cost of needlessly dispatching its trucks to my house, regardless of whether I’ve made every effort to control my temperamental system. Will I be miffed if this happens? Sure. But the city has a right to expect me to take responsibility for tying up its trucks and personnel. I don’t see why the people of Duluth should expect any less from Wilbanks–especially given that her false alarm was deliberate and at least partially premeditated.

So let’s stop all the bloviating about prosecuting Wilbanks, and let the now-humiliated bride start working out how to repay her very real debt to the people of Duluth. Maybe then her neighbors will be able to begin forgiving and forgetting. After all, while Wilbanks unquestionably made a stupid mistake, it’s not as though she slept with an “American Idol” contestant.

Michelle and Cokie heard all about it when they were getting a wash and curl down at the beauty parlor. The neighbors aren’t going to be doing any forgivin’ and forgettin’ until that little tramp gets every single one of them tickets to Oprah and a spot on Katie Couric.

The nosy old biddies really are back in charge, aren’t they? And they aren’t all named James Dobson, either.

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The Age Of Stupidity

DC Media Girl says this interview proves that the inehritance tax needs to be raised to 95%. I’m sorry to say that I think I’ve been unfair to all the religious types who believe the Rapture is imminent. Clearly, this is the end of the world as we know it.

Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

HILTON: I don’t know. Married to my boyfriend with two kids and a house. Still acting and doing stuff.

Q: What kind of wife would you be?

HILTON: A good one. I’d cook and clean.

Q: What would your children’s names be?

HILTON: Paris and London.

Q: Paris for a girl? London for a boy?

HILTON: Yeah.

Q: Why are you so popular?

HILTON: I don’t know, because of who I am. I’m not like anybody else. I’m like an American princess.

Q: What would you be like if you were — I don’t know — Paris Smith?

HILTON: I’d be the same. Maybe I’d be a veterinarian.

Q: In your career, what are you most afraid of happening?

HILTON: I don’t know. Nothing.

Q: Nothing? What about in your personal life?

HILTON: I don’t know. Death.

Q: Why? What’s so scary about death?

HILTON: Because I don’t know what happens.

Remember. She’s a productive member of society who will have no choice but to stop investing if she has to pay taxes. The middle class should be proud to subsidize the government entirely in order that leaders like her be given the freedom to create more wealth. She is the engine that runs this economy of ours and we need many more of her. That’s what makes this country great.

She’s a lot like this guy:

Bob Woodward: How is history likely to judge your Iraq war?

President Bush: History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.

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Homos Everywhere!

Check out the video on Rev-Mykeru showing what Robertson says when he doesn’t realize he’s being taped.

Pat Robertson thinks he can tell if someone is gay by the sound of his voice on the phone. He must get awfully nervous when Gary Bauer and James Dobson call.

Via Big Brass Blog
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Reefer Madness

Well, this makes good sense.

The focus of the drug war in the United States has shifted significantly over the past decade from hard drugs to marijuana, which now accounts for nearly half of all drug arrests nationwide, according to an analysis of federal crime statistics released yesterday.

The study of FBI data by a Washington-based think tank, the Sentencing Project, found that the proportion of heroin and cocaine cases plummeted from 55 percent of all drug arrests in 1992 to less than 30 percent 10 years later. During the same period, marijuana arrests rose from 28 percent of the total to 45 percent.

Coming in the wake of the focus on crack cocaine in the late 1980s, the increasing emphasis on marijuana enforcement was accompanied by a dramatic rise in overall drug arrests, from fewer than 1.1 million in 1990 to more than 1.5 million a decade later. Eighty percent of that increase came from marijuana arrests, the study found.

The rapid increase has not had a significant impact on prisons, however, because just 6 percent of the arrests resulted in felony convictions, the study found. The most widely quoted household survey on the topic has shown relatively little change in the overall rate of marijuana use over the same time period, experts said.

“In reality, the war on drugs as pursued in the 1990s was to a large degree a war on marijuana,” said Ryan S. King, the study’s co-author and a research associate at the Sentencing Project. “Marijuana is the most widely used illegal substance, but that doesn’t explain this level of growth over time. . . . The question is, is this really where we want to be spending all our money?”

Sure. Let’s spend billions on arresting pot smokers for absolutely no good reason. They should taking the purple pill instead like Real Americans anyway.

There is a rather large minority of Americans (or so I’ve heard…) who smoke marijuana or who have smoked marijuana and the numbers have stayed pretty much the same from decade to decade since the 60’s. Every once in a while the government and the moralists get hysterical like today’s “this is your brain on pot, oh my God, it’s not Cheech and Chong’s marijuana — it will drive you mad, I say, mad!!!” — and then it all quiets down for awhile.

That is not to say that we don’t have a problem with the drug culture. However, the drug culture I’m talking about is the one that’s advertised incessantly on television that tells people they should eat pills from dawn to dusk. Hey, it’s a free country, but if you’re going to pass moral judgments, how about taking a little look at the chemically induced burgeoning erection business?

(Meanwhile, in Bobo’s world, half of the heartland is blowing themselves up in meth labs and screwing themselves to death. But I think they tend to vote Republican.)

Seriously, this is one reason why kids do dangerous drugs. They find out quickly that this stuff about pot is nonsense and people who say it is as dangerous (or more dangerous by implication) than cocaine or methamphetamine, then lose all credibility. If they’re lying about this, they’re probably lying about everything.

I don’t know what it is about pot that upsets some people so much but it always has. Associations with race used to be the thing; now I think it’s lazy pleasure. These people apparently believe that pleasure has to be mixed with violence or punishment. Certainly, the right’s foremost expert on drug abuse, Rush Limbaugh, seems to think so.

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A Moronic Proposal

From “the sage,” Larry Elder:

Weyco Inc. and Investors Property Management may be onto something. If employers seek to control costs, improve morale, boost the company image and reduce workplace drama [by not employing smokers], why not refuse to hire … Democrats?

Democrats — compared to Republicans — on average are less affluent, more unhappy, more prone to anti-social behavior, more prone to self-destructive behavior, and more likely to have been shot at, robbed or burglarized. More of them see X-rated movies, more of them smoke, and they’re less likely to be married and more likely to have separated or divorced.

George Washington University professor Lee Sigelman looked at 22 years of survey data collected by University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. Overall, he found Democrats less affluent, more distrustful, more sickly and more suicidal, and thus doomed to an earlier death. In short, Democrats as a class — like smokers — have, uh, issues. So let’s just extend this hiring ban to cover unhappy, anti-social, self-destructive, unhealthy Democrats.

And what about last year’s “Primetime Live” sex survey? It found Republicans, more than Democrats, to be satisfied with their sex lives, more likely to wear something sexy to entice their partner and more likely to be in a committed relationship, in which they claim to be very satisfied. The survey also found that Republicans are less likely to cheat on their partner or to fake orgasms. No wonder Democrats are unhappy, unhealthy and anti-social.

And then there was the follow-up study that showed Republicans have on average 20 fewer IQ points than Democrats and are pathological liars, which explained the results of the first one. (And anyone should be able to understand why Democrats would be depressed, if not suicidal, when people who exhibit these traits are running their country. It’s a miracle we can get out of bed in the morning.)

As for the sex satisfaction comparisons, let’s just say life is always simpler if you keep your expectations low. Rush Limbaugh, Daryn Kagan. Nuff said.

I should make it clear for the Ann Coulter fans, that I understand that Elder was attempting to make a swiftian argument against he idea of banning smokers from the workplace, a sentiment with which I happen to agree. But as with all conservative would-be satirists, he completely misses the point. In this case, it isn’t Democrats using Big Gubbermint to outlaw smoking in the workplace, its the free market that’s doing it. If we had national health care, which would be less expensive for these companies than the system we have now, this “incentive” to keep people with unhealthy habits out of your workforce will greatly dissipate. And anyway, Elder’s supposed to be a libertarian, so what’s he bitching about? John Galt can fire anyone he damn well wants to.

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While The DLC Slept

Matt Yglesias and Atrios both take issue with Marshall Wittman’s comparison of Move-on to Tony Benn, british lefty leader of the 70’s and 80’s. Yglesias ably proves that there is very little actual policy difference between Move-on and the DLC but he gives short shrift to what I think are the underlying reasons for the comparison — style and temperament. Benn wouldn’t sit down and shut up and it drove the other Labour leaders insane as they were trying to modernize their image and transition from mild market socialism to savvy free marketers. They didn’t like the resistence and felt it undermined their goals. In those days it seemed important that the left shed its radical image.

When the Labourites were trying to change the party image 20 or 30 years ago, the Tories were, by contrast, a group of prudent yet forward thinking conservatives who had long believed that free enterprise was being stifled by outdated socialist schemes. And the economy was sick and seemed to prove their point. After the worldwide youth movement of the 1960’s reached its apotheosis, it sounded quite good to have some “grown-ups in charge.” That was the environment in which Michael Foot asked Benn to stop with the rabble rousing. We underwent much the same thing here, a little bit later, which resulted in Bill Clinton being nominated and running as a centrist in 1992. Liberals everywhere were redefining themselves in the face of a conservative backlash of one degree or another.

But, that was then and this is now. We are no longer in a period in which liberalism must tone down its radicals and burnish its management credentials. If anything, we must prove that we even exist and beyond that, that we stand for something. Even the liberal eliminationist mantra on the right has begun to sound stale and decrepit — the evil strawman they’ve created is as lackluster and dull as we are. We are in danger of simply fading away if we do not pour some some blood and nerve into our politics.

Furthermore, the consensus style of politics that the DLC depends upon to deliver its centrist vision simply is not possible in this political environment. The right has become radical and uncompromising, each of its factions growing more and more demanding. There is no middle in American politics today, as much as we might wish it to be so — and it’s not because of positions on the issues, it’s because of the zero sum politics the Republicans are playing. In order to provide some ballast, we simply must have some weight on the liberal side of our arguments or they will carry us all further to the right than even the DLC can live with. That’s where Move-on and Michael Moore and the left blogosphere come in.

This is not the kind of politics I would prefer. It would be nice if we could have some civility and comity for awhile; this is exhausting and mostly unproductive. And people in hell want ice-water. It is what it is and if there’s one thing we should have learned over the past 15 years it’s that being conciliatory with the radical Republicans and allowing them to take us further and further right is a recipe for losing. We’ve lost it all for the moment and we are barely hanging on to the possibility of getting a piece of it back.

Ralph Reed, Christian choirboy and corrupt lobbyist used to exhort new College Republican recruits back in the early 80’s repeat the famous “Patton” speech only substituting the words Democrats for Nazis. “The Democrats are the enemy!” Wade into them! Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!”

That is what the Republicans have been doing for more than 20 years now. These are the times in which we live, unfortunately. We didn’t create this environment, but we cannot ignore it and pretend that we are back in the Truman administration. And, even then let’s not forget that the anti-communists of that era are the granfathers of today’s liberal haters. We should have learned.

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Tin Soldiers

Wow.

Apparently, that execratory slice of gelatinous offal, Ann Coulter, spews her Nazi vomit with police protection these days. And when some wiseacre on campus asks whether her views on gay marriage apply to men who only fuck their wives in the ass, he’s manhandled and arrested.

And, as we know, they are strip-searching 50-something female schoolteachers who protest Bush now, too.

Oh. And by the way, today is the 35th anniversary of Kent State.

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Useful Idiots

Here’s another example of one of those allegedly liberal pundits who have been so tough on George W. Bush:

He proposed that the system be made solvent by reducing benefits on a sliding scale, according to income. This utterly responsible and progressive proposition was greeted by phony bleats of outrage from leading Democrats, who proved once again that they are more interested in the demagogic exploitation of the issue than they are in the impact of baby boom retirement on their grandchildren

Joe Klein, as I have written before, is invested in the idea that private accounts are one of those issues he and Bill Clinton cooked up when they were holed up in a bull session in the late 80’s together, creating the fabulous image of what the handsome and virile New Democrat would be like. Sadly when he looked at Clinton, he seems to have thought he was looking at himself.

I have long held that the biggest problem for Democrats is not the so-called “Vichy Congressman,” who at least has to answer to consitutents and has pressures that are not always apparent, but the goddmaned liberal punditocrisy that consistently writes trash like the quote above. Why, in Gods’ name, does any established mainstream writer have to brown nose and genuflect to the degree these liberal beltway pundits do? Common street whores don’t sell themselves so completely and maintain at least a modicum of pride.

This is the public image of liberalism, with its mealy-mouthed, enabling, sycophantic forelock tugging and constant expressions of obeisance to a GOP esatablishment that holds them in contempt. These are what the country thinks liberals are and why so many hate us so much. They think that, like Richard Cohen and Joe Klein, liberals are all a bunch of cowardly little ass kissers who don’t believe in anything, don’t fight for anything and don’t care about anything. These are the people who are killing us.

Update: And that goes for Democratic consultants, who as Atrios points out, are still partying like it’s 1994. The New Dems are now old. I know this because I am one. All the lefties put their marxist toys away a long time and nobody’s arguing anymore about whether we should have “free” markets. What we are arguing about is whether we should all be whores for big business, slaves to the theocrats, or some lukewarm version of both. Most of us learned from the past few losing elections that we cannot win by appealing to the middle with warmed over DLC talking points. It may have been fresh back in 1992, but today it has all the spontaneity of a Seinfeld re-run. The dream is over boys.

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McCarthyite Watchdog

I would imagine that most people have heard of Walter Winchell, the McCarthyite radio commentator and newspaper columnist. Fewer of you have probably heard of another influential McCarthyite radio commentator and newspaper columnist of the period, Fulton Lewis Jr. But, you should probably read up on him a little bit because it’s actually going to be important in your own life right here and now:

That he was considered a controversial commentator is mostly reflected in his strong conservative stances in a time of increasing liberalism. Throughout the Roosevelt/Truman administrations, Lewis continued to defend his beliefs. In pre-war America Lewis supported and encouraged the America First stance of Charles A. Lindbergh, which espoused that America spend its money and resources on building up our own defenses and stay out of the European conflict. Lindbergh was an admirer of the military capability of National Socialist Germany.

As the medium of radio waned during the rise of television in the late forties and early fifties, Lewis’ appearance on the small screen was simply not good television. He appeared too much out of place and so he continued on radio. It was in the fifites that Lewis’ star began to wane. He was a strong supporter of Joe McCarthy, the Wisconsin Senator who presided over the committee investigating communists in the government.

That really doesn’t give you the full flavor of Lewis’s right wing hackery. He was a Drudge of his day, the happy recipient of nasty information about McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies and targets. And unlike Winchell, who had at least been as hostile to Hitler as to Stalin, Lewis had a bit of a soft spot for Naziism, something that the liberals of the day (as they are today) were too polite to use as a weapon against his anti-communist zealotry and character assassination. Alan Ginsberg remembered Lewis speaking of the Rosenberg case:

…especially, there was one commentator on the air, called Fulton Lewis, who said that they smelt bad, and therefore should die. There was an element of anti-Semitism in it. But I remember very clearly on the radio, this guy Fulton Lewis saying they smelt bad. He was a friend of J. Edgar Hoover, who was this homosexual in the closet, who was blackmailing almost everybody.

(This “smell” thing, which Ginsberg notes is long associated with anti-semitism, is commonly used today by fine mainstream humorists and commentators like Ann Coulter to describe liberals.)

In any case, what makes Mr Fulton, long dead and mostly forgotten, important you you, my friends, is that his ghost writer for five years was none other than William Schultz, one of the new ombudsmen for the Public Broadcasting System.

I’m not kidding. The man who wrote Joe McCarthy’s stongest supporter’s newspaper column is now on the payroll of the corporation of public broadcasting as an ombudsman.

Here’s what the guy said in an interview with Rick Perlstein in 1997:

[Were you anamolous in New York?]

“well, I went to a high school where, for reasons I cannot figure out, there was a real conservative and libertarian nucleus: The Bronx High School of Science in New York. Bob Schuchman went Bronx Science, and others did who went on to positions in politics and academia. So I was not unfamiliar with it.

“As Allan said, we were journalists; Allan was, I was. I went to Antioch College in Ohio, and they had a work-study program, and I got a couple of newspaper jobs, and then I worked for Human Events, and worked for Stan Evans, who had a tremendous influence on me. Then I went to work for Fulton Lewis Jr., who was a radio commentator and columnist.

“He had a fifteen minute broadcast at seven o’clock on the Mutual Network and then a five minute broadcast at noon. And I arrived from Yellow Springs, OH, thinking I was going be his leg-man–I had never met him before–and the first thing he said was, ‘can you write a newspaper column?’ The guy who had been ghostwriting his five-day-a-week newspaper column had just went to work for Nixon getting ready for the 1960 campaign–this would have been 1959. So I said, ‘sure, I can write a newspaper column.’

“So I started ghosting his newspaper column! Then I would go back to Yellow Springs, OH every three months and write the ‘Inside Washington’ column from Yellow Springs and send it off to Washington by Western Union the time ’64 rolled around I had been writing the Lewis column for five years. So I was in San Francisco not as a delegate or an activist but as a journalist, but as one who believed fervently in Goldwater, and as I said that was the most…”

When they were out of power, the right wing insisted that public broadcasting was a commie plot and should be destroyed. It was a perennial in the GOP platform. Now that they own the government, the movement radicals of the GOP have discovered the joys of taxpayer sponsored government propaganda and they are seizing upon public broadcasting as a fine means to produce and spread it. “The Journal Editorial Report” is the likely future of Public Television. And now they have gone and appointed a real live McCarthyite as their “ombudsman.”

Media Matters has more on Schultz, and the contact numbers for him and his close personal friend Kenneth Tomlinson, the newly named Republican chairman of the corporation for Public Broadcasting who recently told members of the Association of Public Broadcasters that they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate. He later said he was joking. Except nobody laughed.

FYI, as Media Matters points out:

According to The Ombudsman Association’s code of ethics, an ombudsman is a “designated neutral” who “strives for objectivity and impartiality.”

It’s kind of hard to imagine how a Joe McCarthy fan can be considered a “designated neutral,” but then I suppose if Ann Coulter is considered good clean fun, then anything is possible.

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