Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Drowning the 9/11 Cheerleaders

On Rush Limbaugh’s web site we find a transcript for January 3rd, called From Across The Fruited Plain: No Compassion for Saddam’s Victims; Tsunami Victim Sports Bin Laden T-Shirt:

“CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, ‘Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I’m seeing all these bodies,’ and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we’re going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Now, I love President Bush. I respect him. I voted for him, but when I saw him come out and I realized they were asking for more money —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — I got even madder, and I thought, ‘I don’t think we should be asked to give any more.’ “

Rush goes on to babble some blather about how we give because we are good and how liberals are “screwed up” because we supported Saddam and are taking Christ out of Christmas and that proves that we have no compassion for the people of Darfur. Typical hypnotic wingnut gibberish that doesn’t make any sense but sounds soothingly meaningful in that it identifies one thing clearly — liberals are the root cause of all problems.

Anyway, what interesting about this is what the caller said and I think it’s probably pretty common. I certainly heard quite a bit of it in my foray into wingnutland over the holiday:

Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, ‘Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I’m seeing all these bodies,’

Madder and madder the more coverage she watched. “Why am I not feeling so charitable?” That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Later, she saw a picture of one guy wearing a bin Laden shirt that the wingnuts have been circulating and she understood why she was so mad. These people are terrorists.

A couple of calls later a Sri Lanken man called in:

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, hi. I wanted to answer the lady called earlier regarding to the guy is wearing a T-shirt. I don’t know he was a dead guy or not. I’m from Sri Lanka. I’ve been listening to you for a long time. Sri Lanka is not a Muslim nation. Sri Lanka is 68% Singhalese people, that influence all the Catholics and the majority is Buddhist.

RUSH: Yes, yes.

CALLER: There are Muslims around that, you know, probably hate America, but we don’t hate United States of America. The Singhalese people do not hate America. I just want to tell you that because we have our own problem for years with Tamil, and Muslim people. I just wanted to tell you that.

RUSH: That woman was calling from Pennsylvania, and there’s picture going around the Internet, and I’ve seen it. Some aid is arriving while a body is being carted away, and there’s a kid, a young man watching it all with a bin Laden t-shirt. She said the picture is from Sri Lanka. I don’t know that it is. I don’t know the picture is from Sri Lanka, but you have to understand the power of pictures. You know, there are going to be some Americans who are just going to recoil at the thought that we are bailing out and helping people who swear an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, whether it’s in Sri Lanka or not. I don’t think her comment was actually aimed at Sri Lanka per se, specifically. It was just in reaction to that picture she saw. What are the Muslim nations that were affected by this tsunami, if not Sri Lanka?

Yes, which countries am I allowed to get “madder and madder” about and recoil at the idea of “bailing out” their innocent children, again? It’s so hard to remember which ones to openly hate and which ones I have to pretend to give a shit about. (And besides, those Sri Lankens are… well, they’re rather dark, aren’t they? )

Let’s not kid ourselves about the base of the Republican party, the dittoheads, the alleged Christian Right. A vast number of them are primitive tribalists at best and racists at worst. There have always been many Americans who are racists and many of those have always been and remain very political. It is part of our national psyche. They are now fully sewn into the fabric of the Republican party’s big tent (as they once were the Democrats’) and they wield considerable clout. They have made strides in accepting those African Americans who agree not to discuss race into the fold. (And the leadership have learned how to effectively neuter this entire debate by hoisting the left with our own petard by accusing us of racism whenever we criticize a Republican racial minority.)

But at the heart of their reaction to 9/11, the invasion of iraq, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror in general is a knee jerk racism that says “those people” are our enemy and they must die. Ann Coulter sells millions of books that say it right out loud. Michelle Malkin and Daniel Pipes are both making quite a respectable stir making the case for “muslim” internment. And people are getting all steamed up about illegal immigration again.

It is intense tribalism that fuels the right wing, not ideology. In fact their ideology mostly flows from their tribalism. It fuels their resistence to redistribution of even the smallest amount of wealth (the “wrong” people will be helped) and it fuels their hyper nationalism (those “other” people are our enemies.) They make no distinctions between the “wrong” and the “other”, it is anyone who isn’t like them.

The reason that the Senate of the United States is about to confirm a man who designed an illegal system of detention and torture against any Muslim or Arab (and others to come, no doubt) is because a fair number of people in this country believe that “they’re all alike.” It is a measure of progress, I suppose, in the fact that this Hispanic man is even given the opportunity to make his bones with executions, torture and lifetime detention for public relations purposes. Still, one wonders how long it would take, were he to stray from the party line, for someone to call Rush and say, ” I couldn’t understand why I disliked him so much…”

There are many cosmopolitan writers and think tank intellectuals on the right who have come up with some elegant ideological arguments that explain all this to each other in salons and greenrooms. But in barrooms and factories and churches in Republican dominated parts of America, the reason is pretty simple. Us against them. And basic human empathy for anyone who isn’t a strict member of their tribe is in short supply. Hence, this.

Too bad about this whole globalism thing. These people are going to be very, very angry for eternity. But then they always have been, haven’t they? At one time I thought our history of immigration and assimilation would be what kept us on top during this transition. I was wrong. Our original sin of slavery is probably what’s going to lead to our downfall. It’s infected us much too deeply for us to be able to handle the responsibility of being the world’s only superpower. When you get right down to it, it’s why a majority of the country supported the invasion of Iraq — all Arabs are the same — and that horrible miscalculation is very likely to be our Waterloo.

Armchair Hero

May I just echo Atrios’s outrage at Andrew Sullivan’s pithy little retort to the soldier who says that he’d much rather be helping people than fighting a war saying “Earth to Whitsett: You’re A Soldier.”

Earth to Sullivan: He’s a fucking human being.

Evidently Sullivan believes that soldiers are supposed to prefer killing over helping people in need. Indeed, they should prefer dying over helping people in need.

Here are some words that express this soldier’s humanity a bit more fully, from a man who also knew a little bit about war:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” –Dwight Eisenhower 1953 speech

What a wimp.

What’s The Real Skinny?

So the House Republicans have pulled back the DeLay exception to the no-sex-with-house-pages rule at the last minute and at the behest of The Hammer himself. How odd. Is it even remotely believable that Monsieur Delay had a change of heart and decided that he should face the music like every other public servent?

Well, maybe not so odd, really. He may have taken care of the problem another way:

In Texas, state Republican legislative leaders and party officials are considering some maneuvers of their own in light of the investigation. One proposal would take authority for prosecuting the campaign finance case away from the Democratic district attorney in Austin and give it to the state attorney general, a Republican. Another possible move would legalize corporate campaign contributions like those that figure into the state case.

Or maybe seomebody had a serious heart to heart with David Drier, the chairman of the rules committee, and explained to him that changing the no-sex-with-house-pages rule for Tom Delay won’t exempt him from the no-gay-sex-with-house-pages-for-GOP-hypocrites rule. You never know.

WTF

Via See The Forest I found this story.

AS MANY as 5000 Americans are still unaccounted for a week after the world’s deadliest tsunami pounded a dozen countries across the Indian Ocean, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today.

Mr Powell told reporters aboard his plane en route to Bangkok that the confirmed toll of Americans still stood at 15 with a defence department worker listed as missing.

“The number of private citizens or citizens unaccounted for still lingers around 4-5000,” he said, adding the figure was based on phone calls from relatives or friends inquiring about their whereabouts.

Mr Powell said this did not mean they were necessarily casualties in the catastrophe.

But he added: “We can’t ignore the very distinct possibility that there are Americans within this number who have lost their lives. We just don’t know that”.

Is this for real?

Camille at STF points out:

… the Swedes have declared a day of mourning for the Swedes who died in the tsunami. The Germans are preparing their citizens for the worst.

I certainly have not heard anything about this. Is there a good reason why the US government wouldn’t want people to know that American casualties are potentially so high? What gives?

It’s The Values Stupid

I remember that before the Iraq war vote, millions of Democrats wrote to their Senators begging them not to vote for the resolution. Many of them voted for the resolution anyway, some for regional reasons like Schumer and Clinton and some because of presidential ambitions. (And then there was Joe, true believer.) Ok. It was only a year after 9/11, Bush stood at 75% approval rating, an election was imminent and nobody knew quite how the wind was going to blow. But none of those conditions are currently present. There is absolutely no excuse for Democrats to compromise or preemptively cave on anything of importance. None.

The first thing on the table in this new congress is going to be Alberto Gonzales. He will be confirmed (barring naked pictures of him and Bush in a hammock drinking tequila slammers. And even then… ) But, because of that, the temptation for many Democrats will be to vote with the Republicans on this in hopes of holding a chit or two down the road on something that really matters to them. This is as dumb as it is wrong.

As Matt Yglesias says (regarding social security) today on TAPPED:

It’s compelling logic, that is, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past four years. Democrats have tried this approach several times during the first term, and with only the partial exception of No Child Left Behind, they’ve gotten screwed each and every time. At some point, you’ve got to learn the lesson that the White House and the GOP leadership isn’t interested in constructive compromise. Ask Charlie Stenholm where his bipartisanship on Social Security got him.

I honestly don’t know what it’s going to take to teach this to the Democrats in congress. It’s as if the Republicans have attached a “kick me” sign to their backs and nobody’s told them. We need to tell them in no uncertain terms.

Now, there may be some tactical usefulness in producing some sort of alternative to social security “reform.” There are those who think it will be necessary to do so in order to credibly obstruct the Republican plot to dismantle the program. I’m not convinced that this would be the best way to handle it, but I’m open to the argument. The Republicans used their alternative plans to continuously hobble Clinton’s health care plan as it wended itself tnrough the legislative process.

On Gonzales, however, there is nothing to be gained by doing anything but grilling him under a hot light with everything we have and voting no. As Michael Froomkin said:

Whether Sen. Schumer was expressing a normative or a positive view, that is whether the quote represented Schumer’s personal view or only Schumer’s impression of the views of his fellow Senators on the committee, it’s pretty horrible when the Senate’s advice and consent role is this stunted. The bar is pretty low when that “lowered threshold” will admit a nominee who, in commissioning and passing on the torture memos participated in a scheme to

1. attempt to put a patina of legality on war crimes and

2. totally twist the Constitution to suggest the President has powers akin to Louis XIVth’s and

3. mis-state the relevant precedents to make it seem like the above have substantial judicial support when in fact the opposite is true.

There is of course an element of political calculation here. Many chickenhearted Senators believe that they expend political capital by opposing cabinet nominations, when in fact opposing the right ones may create it. But even if I’m wrong about that, for some things — torture, fundamental constitutional principles — the calculations should be left aside.

As far as I’m concerned, Congress was almost as much to blame for Iraq as Bush — they wrote him a blank check, with the Gulf on Tonkin precedent sitting there in front of them. If there isn’t some serious attempt in Congress to come to grips with the torture scandal in the next year, then some of the torture dirt will stick to them as well.

I have long defended the Democrats from charges that they are “spineless” and “cowardly.” I think that character attacks on our own side mainly helps the Borg convince people that we aren’t worth voting for. But, I have no compunction about calling out our representatives when they are making a mistake. Capitulating on Gonzales is not only wrong it is entirely counterproductive to our cause.

If we are going to be fighting about “values” and “morals” over the next couple of election cycles (as the right seems determined to do) we need to throw down the gauntlet right here, right now. Torture is immoral and even the most craven right wing racist knows that he’s playing with fire to endorse it publicly. They don’t want to have this argument because they know they are wrong.

Torture is not an American value and it’s certainly not a religious value. If they are determined to elevate the architect of Bush’s illegal and immoral torture and detention schemes to the highest law enforcement office in the land then they are begging for a fight. It’s a fight we should be more than willing to wage because there is absolutely no doubt who has the moral high ground.

For once it’s our stance that benefits from today’s political requirement for simplicity and clarity. Torture is illegal,immoral and ineffectual. Period. Let Jerry Falwell dance around trying to explain why it isn’t.

Update: Attaturk points to this nonsense from Federal Judge Richard Posner in which he says:

I just think that almost all Americans would consider that turning back the civil liberties clock to, say, 1960 would be worthwhile if as a result some horrendous terrorist attack was prevented. I am of the same mind. I find it hard to understand the contrary position, but I would not argue against it. I would point out, however, the self-defeating character of civil liberties absolutism. If as a result of such absolutism another major terorrist attacks occurs, civil liberties are pretty sure to go out the window.

I would also argue against those who say that history shows that the threat of terrorism is much less than other threats that we have overcome. That is a misuse of history. History does not contain nuclear bombs the size of oranges, genetically engineered smallpox virus that is vaccine-proof, and an Islamist terrorist (Bin Laden) who visited a cleric in Saudi Arabia to obtain–successfully–the cleric’s approval to wage nuclear war against the West.

Yeah, living with thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at every American city and depending on the sanity and competence of a slowly dying super power not to miscalculate or have an accident was nothing compared to what we face now. Evidently, “Dr Strangelove” needs to be put into the curriculum of the University of Chicago.

(And what in the hell is this talk of nuclear bombs the size of oranges? Calling Richard Hofstadter.)

Priorities

This is very telling. Throughout the last week, everybody from schoolkids to major newspapers have been collecting money for the victims of the tsunami or at least publicizing where people should send it.

Except for one group. The Christian Right. This article by Bill Berkowitz from December 30th showed that none of the major Christian Right groups such as Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition had mentioned anything on their web sites. I just checked all the links and as of January 3rd, 8:25 PST there is still nothing.

I know Republicans hate to have their Christmas vacations rudely interrupted by disasters of Biblical proportions, but you would think that at least the Christian Right organizations would have sent somebody in to put up a notice about the tragedy and organized some fund raising. Like President like followers, I guess.

Christian right’s compassion deficit

It took President Bush three days to ready himself to go before the television cameras and make a public statement about Sunday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck southern Asia. Even though he was late, and much more money will be needed, the president pledged at least $35 million in aid to the victims of the disaster. But, as of December 30, some of the president’s major family-values constituents have yet to be heard from: It’s business as usual at the web sites of the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the Coral Ridge Ministries.

These powerful and well-funded political Christian fundamentalist organizations appear to be suffering from a compassion deficit. Organizations which are amazingly quick to organize to fight against same-sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose, and embryonic stem cell research are missing in action when it comes to responding to the disaster in southern Asia. None of their web sites are actively soliciting aid for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami.

In fact, there is no mention of the giant earthquake and tsunami that devastated southern Asia. There are no headlines about the dead, injured or the tremendous damage; there are no urgent appeals for donations; there are no phone numbers to call; there are no links to organizations collecting money and providing aid for the victims.

[…]

At the Reverend Donald Wildmon’s Mississippi-based American Family Association (AFA) web site, the preferred cause — and top story — concerns the upcoming battle over the president’s judicial appointees. The AFA hasn’t forgotten about gays and lesbians: Under the headline “P&G Chairman Gives Thousands to Promote Homosexual Agenda” the AFA claims that “A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, recently gave $5,163 in P&G stock to help the homosexual community repeal a law in Cincinnati that prohibited giving special rights to homosexuals.”

[…]

Over at the Family Research Council’s web site, the powerful Washington, DC,-based family-values lobbying group is outraged that Christians are getting cheated out of Christmas, with two stories, “Is the Grinch Stealing Christmas?” and “Merry BAH HUMBUG-mas!” focusing on this. There are no alerts about the earthquake/tsunami.

At the Christian Coalition’s (CC) web site, the organization’s president, Roberta Combs, is busy thanking CC supporters for their “time and effort in getting millions of Christian Coalition voter guides (English & Spanish) distributed to your family, friends, churches, Christian bookstores and neighborhoods all across America.”

Family.org, the web site of Dr. James Dobson’s Colorado Springs, Colorado-based multi-media mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, is all over the map with its features: From messages to “remember Focus on the Family in your year-end giving,” to helpful hints on how to survive Christmas without “The Lord of the Rings,” to movie reviews of “Fat Albert” (thumbs up), “The Aviator (thumbs down), “Meet the Fockers” (a disappointed thumbs down), and “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (a reluctant thumbs up). [They have put up a little blurb since then. They have their year end appeal to give to Focus on the Family on top of the page, however. There are priorities.]

First and foremost, Concerned Women for America (CWA) wants you to know “The Truth About Alfred Kinsey.” The twenty-five year-old organization, which bills itself as “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization,” is also offering a “Special Christmas Feature” from Dr. Beverly LaHaye, founder of the organization, and Dr. Janice Crouse. But not a word on the earthquake/tsunami.

Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM), Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based operation, is also looking in other directions. At its web site there are advertisements for the CRM’s upcoming Reclaiming America For Christ Conference, which will be held in mid-February, and for several of Dr. Kennedy’s sermons.

[…]

Over at falwell.com, the Rev. Jerry Falwell is explaining “The True Meaning of Christmas,” recruiting for his new organization, The Moral Majority Coalition, and soliciting cruisers for a late July sojourn aboard the Queen Mary II.

Lecture us some more about morals, guys.

But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? (John 3:17)

Update: Americablog has more

Let’s Rumble

The DAOU REPORT says:

Coalition to stop torture organizing advertising and public relations push against Gonzales nomination (includes MoveOn, True Majority, others) – plans to hit CNN, New York Times this week…

I’ll bet Al From is just frothing at the mouth over this one. Why, the Republicans are going to say that the Democratic Party is soft on terrorism, oh my gawd! Peter Beinert will caution that we are giving up the moral high ground by failing to show that we are serious about fighting islamic fundamentalism. Oh heck!

But then, others might think that SOMEBODY SHOULD STAND UP FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, goddamnit. Apparently that isn’t popular these days, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do the right thing. This is the right thing.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Many in the Republican party (some of whom I’ve just spent a week listening to gloat and strut about their dominance) are going to immediately attack with everything they have. This goes to the racist base in which it is assumed to be a-ok to torture “those who do not look or sound like us.” There are more of them than you think. But they are uncomfortable with criticism and their reaction is to lash out viciously. (Quite a few of the wingnut “Year End” lists were quite adamant that Abu Ghraib was overblown by the liberal media.) They will get hysterical about the existential threat we face and talk about the constitution not being a suicide pact. They’ll paint us all as a bunch of wimps who can’t stand up to terrorism.

Fuck ’em.

We should fight back with righteous anger and authority. We needn’t be reasonable and argue like lawyers. Make them go on the record defending torture, over and over again if possible. This is the real values fight for the heart and soul of this country, not Janet Jackson’s nipple or “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance. If we let them blatently despoil the Bill of Rights without a furious battle then everything else we care about will go right down the drain with it. It is the source of it all.

Let them call us shrill. At least people will know that torture is a line beyond which we will not cross. Jesus, to think there isn’t a consensus on even that…

Beat Them With A Neutral Object

It appears that the sadistic megalomaniac James Dobson has decided that he’s going to throw his mighty moral weight around in politics and smite politicians who don’t toe the line:

James C. Dobson, the nation’s most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators “in the ‘bull’s-eye’ ” if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises “a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea” if President Bush fails to appoint “strict constructionist” jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

[…]

Dr. Dobson’s activities represent a new level of direct partisan engagement on his part. Unlike other conservative Christian leaders, Dr. Dobson owes his grass-roots following primarily to his partly clinical, partly biblical advice on matters like marriage and child-rearing. Before supporting Mr. Bush, he had never endorsed a presidential candidate.

This is a new level of partisan engagement? Geez, somebody buy the NY Times a Lexis subscription (or show them how to use Google at least.) Here’s a story from US News and World Report from 1998 written by Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson when he was a member of the liberal media:

On March 18, in the basement of the Capitol, 25 House Republicans met with psychologist James Dobson for some emotional venting. But this was not personal therapy; it concerned the fate of their party. Dobson, long on loyal radio listeners and short on patience, was threatening, in effect, to bring down the GOP unless it made conservative social issues, including abortion, a higher legislative priority. “If I go,” he has said, “I will do everything I can to take as many people with me as possible.”

[…]

Many Republicans are taking Dobson’s divorce threats very seriously. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has hosted several meetings with other House leaders to discuss Dobson’s specific demands, which include defunding Planned Parenthood, requiring parental consent for abortions, and eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts. House Majority Leader Dick Armey has asked subcommittee chairmen to explore how Dobson’s agenda could be advanced. But Dobson will not be easily appeased. Of the assurances he has been offered that his issues will be taken seriously, he says: “We’ve got to see the proof. . . . If they will not change, I will try to beat them this fall.”

Dr Dobson has been just a teensy weensy bit involved in partisan politics for a while now. And it seems that he has a habit of issuing threats. Now there’s a surprise.

It may be true that he has more clout that he used to because of the media’s greedy consumption of Ralph Reed’s disinformation campaign that evangelicals won the election for Bush with their concern for moral values. The SCLM might want to do a little bit of research on this freak before they annoint him as a political leader for our time, however. I wrote about Dobson’s proud (and profoundly pychotic) abuse of his weiner dog named Sigmund Freud earlier. He is just as twisted about the idea of spanking children:

Q:There is some controversy over whether a parent should spank with his or her hand or with some other object, such as a belt or paddle. What do you recommend?

A:I recommend a neutral object of some type. To those who disagree on this point, I’d encourage them to do what seems right. It is not a critical issue to me. The reason I suggest a switch or paddle is because the hand should be seen as an object of love — to hold, hug, pat, and caress. However, if you’re used to suddenly disciplining with the hand, your child may not know when she’s about to be swatted and can develop a pattern of flinching when you make an unexpected move. This is not a problem if you take the time to use a neutral object.

Q:On what part of the body would you administer a spanking?

A:It should be confined to the buttocks area, where permanent damage is very unlikely.

Q:It just seems barbaric to cause pain to a defenseless child. Tell me why you think it is healthy to spank him or her.

A:Corporal punishment, when used lovingly and properly, is beneficial to a child because it is in harmony with nature itself.

Consider the purpose of minor pain in a child’s life and how he learns from it. Suppose 2-year-old Peter pulls on a tablecloth and with it comes a vase of roses that cracks him between the eyes. From this pain, he learns that it is dangerous to pull on the tablecloth unless he knows what sits on it. When he touches a hot stove, he quickly learns that heat must be respected. The same lesson is learned when he pulls the doggy’s tail and promptly gets a neat row of teeth marks across the back of his hand, or when he climbs out of his high chair when Mom isn’t looking and discovers all about gravity.

During the childhood years, he typically accumulates minor bumps, bruises, scratches, and burns, each one teaching him about life’s boundaries. Do these experiences make him a violent person? No! The pain associated with these events teaches him to avoid making the same mistakes again. God created this mechanism as a valuable vehicle for instruction.

When a parent administers a reasonable spanking in response to willful disobedience, a similar nonverbal message is being given to the child…I recall my good friends Art and Ginger Shingler, who had four beautiful children whom I loved. One of them went through a testy period where he was just “asking for it.” The conflict came to a head in a restaurant, when the boy continued doing everything he could to be bratty. Finally, Art took him to the parking lot for an overdue spanking. A woman passerby observed the event and became irate. She chided the father for “abusing” his son and said she intended to call the police. With that, the child stopped crying and said to his father, “What’s wrong with that woman, Dad?” He understood the discipline even if his rescuer did not.

Q:How long do you think a child should be allowed to cry after being spanked? Is there a limit?

A:Yes, I believe there should be a limit. As long as the tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall. But crying quickly changes from inner sobbing to an expression of protest aimed at punishing the enemy. Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining, and the change can be recognized in the tone and intensity of his voice. I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears.

I don’t believe in hitting kids but I know that there are many decent people who do. However, I think that we can all agree that Dobson’s rationales for it are pretty horrifying. Use a “neutral” object so your kids won’t flinch when you raise your hand? Spank on the butt so you will be less like to cause permanent damage? Parental discipline is like falling out of your high chair and hitting your head? The kid who wonders what’s wrong with the woman who is complaining about his public beating is assumed to be “understanding the discipline?”

There are so many disturbing aspects to Dobson’s childrearing advice that I think Tipper ought to be agitating that his books carry a warning label. It’s not so much what he recommends that parents do, it’s his reasoning and his tone. All this “asking for it” and “offering him a little bit more of it.” The Biblical stuff is the least of it — it’s his sadistic phrasing that creeps me out. (See the story about the dog. Jayzuz.)

There are those who claim that Focus on the Family is something of a cult. Sounds right to me. And it’s no surprise that an arrogant cult leader is running in the highest circles of this government, is it? After all, half the Republican Party is owned by Sun Myung Moon.

And they call us weird…

Update: speaking of weird

Q:I’m curious about the scary “baby” Satan was carrying in one scene of The Passion of the Christ. What was Mel Gibson trying to say by using that disturbing imagery?

A: Many people are talking about the “ugly baby” in The Passion. As Jesus is being severely scourged, Satan passes through the crowd holding a demonic-looking “child” in his arms. What does it mean? Perhaps the best explanation comes from Mel Gibson himself. In a recent interview, Gibson said of the unsettling scene:

“…it’s evil distorting what’s good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old ‘baby’ with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it’s almost too much–just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place.”

For our part, we feel this scene captures, as do so many moments in this film, the intensity of the cosmic battle between God and Satan. It illustrates even beyond what we may have previously envisioned the eerie, warped and perverted nature of our enemy.

Hoo boy.

Letting It Slide

I hardly know what to say about these new revelations about Guantanamo. I wrote many posts about it last summer in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal and it was clear then that we were torturing with impunity. These FBI memos revealed by the ACLU add new details to what was already known and reveal that there was dissent within the government at least at the lower levels that was ignored.

The New York Times has found quite a few people willing to talk, off the record, about what went on down there. If we had a real government the congress would immediately call for hearings and offer immunity to anyone who could speak to these issues. But torture is so 2004, so there will be no further outcry, I’m sure.

The information from the various sources frequently matched, providing corroboration of the use of specific procedures, which included prolonged sleep deprivation and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions for many hours. One F.B.I. agent wrote his superiors that he saw such restraining techniques several times. In the most gruesome of the bureau memorandums, he recounted observing a detainee who had been shackled overnight in a hot cell, soiled himself and pulled out tufts of hair in misery.

Military officials who participated in the practices said in October that prisoners had been tormented by being chained to a low chair for hours with bright flashing lights in their eyes and audio tapes played loudly next to their ears, including songs by Lil’ Kim and Rage Against the Machine and rap performances by Eminem.

In a recent interview, another former official added new details, saying that many interrogators used a different audio tape on prisoners, a mix of babies crying and the television commercial for Meow Mix in which the jingle consists of repetition of the word “meow.”

The people who spoke about what they saw or whose duties made them aware of what was occurring said they had different reasons for granting interviews. Some said they objected to the methods, others said they objected to what they regarded as a chaotic and badly run system, while others offered no reason. They all declined to be identified by name, some saying they feared retaliation.

None of these recent stories get into one of the more important aspects of this story which is that a great many of those who were shipped off to Gitmo from Afghanistan in the early days of the war had no intelligence value whatsoever. This was because they were “bought” from the Northern Alliance for $5,000 based on a warlord’s word that they were Taliban or al Qaeda. Nobody knows how many of these people are or were being held down there, but it’s clear that there were many.

They did, apparently, capture at least one allegedly “high value” target whom they proceded to torture in various inventive ways, including forced enemas:

None of the approved techniques, however, covered some of what people have now said occurred. Mr. Kahtani was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and degrading.

Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an especially difficult interrogation session. Another official, told of the use of the enema, said, however, “I bet they said he was dehydrated,” adding that that was the justification whenever an enema was used as a coercive technique, as it had been on several detainees.

Then again, the boys might have just been blowing off some steam.

This month a majority of the Senate, including many Democrats, will undoubtedly confirm the architect of our torture policy for the highest law enforcement office in the land. They issued new “guidelines” just last week in which they rescinded the finding that torture must consist of pain akin to organ failure so everything’s fine now. It’s time to look to the future. And it’s very likely that we are going to eventually put a war criminal and a soiler of the Bill of Rights on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Left unaddressed in the new memo was the monarch’s limitless power in wartime:

The 17-page memo does not address two of the most controversial assertions in the first memo: that Bush, as commander in chief in wartime, had authority superseding anti-torture laws and that U.S. personnel had legal defenses against criminal liability in such cases.

Levin said those issues need not be considered because they “would be inconsistent with the president’s unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture.”

The president said he doesn’t condone torture and he meant it. He says what he is and he is what he says. One might make the leap, however, to infer that he does still believe that he has unnlimited power to shred the constitution into little pieces and flush it down the toilet at will when you read this:

Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody . The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

If this is true, you have to wonder why a garden variety murder suspect should be allowed due process either. Really, why should we have to let a gang member have a lawyer and access to the courts? Why should a rape suspect from last week be any different than an Afghan driver whom somebody claimed chauffered Osama bin Laden around in 1999? If the criteria is that we can’t take a chance that these people, “whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts” might harm Americans in the future then isn’t our entire system of justice completely superfluous? And who exactly is supposed to stop the executive branch from deciding that very thing?

(Of course, my friend The Talking Dog would be the first to remind us that the Supreme Court has already pretty much held that this is legal under Padilla, so there’s no real surprise. The worst thing that would happen is that lawyers will run out of “erroneous” jurisdictions in which to file.)

It was always supposed to be that the checks and balances of the branches of government and the press would restrain such impulses and that the mob mentality would be balanced by thoughtful, learned citizens of good will who would raise the roof at such affrontery to democratic values. It’s not working. As long as the press believes that the Scott Peterson trial is more important to cover than these grievous assaults on the constitution then most of the country won’t care. And as long as the political opposition continues to validate them by voting to elevate war criminals to high office the entire nation will be implicated in the crime.

If fellows like Peter Beinert have their way, those of us not purged from the left will be forced to goosestep along in the name of fighting the most horrible scourge the world has ever known — since communism, anyway, lo those many (15) years ago. Joshua Zeitz points out in this week-end’s TNR that unrepentant hawkishness has rarely resulted in more liberalism at home. Indeed, it usually results in the opposite:

Beinart asserts that cold-war liberals found special strength for their civil rights program in the “linkage between freedom at home and freedom abroad,” a link that the Wallacites could never have drawn, given their tolerance of communism. Fighting the Soviets and advancing civil rights weren’t mutually exclusive, Beinart maintains; they were mutually reinforcing.

And perhaps they could have been. But in practice, the opposite was usually true: Having purged the Wallacites from their coalition, liberals lost their most strident advocates for racial justice. And more often that not, mainstream liberals urged civil rights activists to subordinate their interests to the more pressing need for national unity in the face of Soviet aggression. Far from neatly and conveniently reinforcing each other, the two great moral struggles of the time frequently seemed locked in a zero-sum game.

It will be even worse this time out because the left isn’t actually excusing islamic fundamentalism — indeed we are the last people to embrace an authoritarian theocratic worldview. The problem isn’t that the left is pacifist in the war on terror. It’s that it’s pacifist in the war on liberalism and that’s coming from both within and without.

The old saw about “the terrorists have won” is a cliche to be sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Bin Laden doesn’t have to invade with an army or even terrorize us further with bombings and terrorist attacks. His job is done. We are now fully engaged in destroying ourselves.

Too Many Brownies

Am I mistaken or is David Brooks saying that the best way to understand natural disasters is to believe that the victims deserved to die? Or is he saying that environmentalists deserve to die? Bush critics? It’s very hard to tell. But somebody must be paying for something or Bobo’s little world just doesn’t make any sense.

One thing we know for sure is that these deaths couldn’t have been the result of a random act of nature. Uh uh. That would be even more repugnant than the repugnance some feel for the idea that those who died deserved it. Perhaps Brooks would feel better if he read the ravings of Fred Phelps, who blames the Swedes.

It’s rarely interesting to read what someone wrote while they were stoned on totally righteous sinsemilla, but the NY Times pays big bucks for it anyway.