Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

I’m Joining The Republic Party

With an appeal like this, who can resist?

Listen, before I want to say something, I’m traveling with a guest and a friend who represents thousands of people all across this country who are affiliated with the Democrat Party.

In fact, I believe my opponent is running away from some of the great traditions of the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party has also a great tradition of defending the defenseless.

If you’re a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat Party, I’d be honored to have your vote.

Those Republics sure know how to reach across the aisle.

Because One Must

Today, I would like to join my online brethren over at Slate in endorsing John Kerry, as distasteful as that particular chore is. Sadly, one doesn’t have much choice considering what we have to deal with. I only wish that the nominees could be more like, well… me. But that would be too much to ask so I will hold my aristocratic nose and vote for the lesser of two losers. Again.

You see, I am a beltway “independent” which allows me to criticize everyone and take responsibility for nothing at all. I would never actually vote for a Republican mind you — how could I align myself with all that tacky Nascar and gay bashing business? But, neither can I associate myself with the Democratic party what with its stubborn insistence on not being exactly like me in every way.

As a beltway independent, then, I can safely vote against the Republicans without ever having to compromise even one of my pet issues in order that anything actually gets accomplished. And, there’s no need to sully my clean hands with those tawdry fights against the opposition. Whatever I don’t like I blame on Democratic weakness and perfidy, thereby proving to the Republicans that I am independent enough to agree with them on a least that one issue if nothing else.

John Kerry, sadly, does certain things with which I disagree and I find that unacceptable in a politician. And even worse, instead of being as dazzlingly exciting as say…me, he is serious and plodding as are so many of these lowly politicians who cater to the unwashed hoi polloi. Frankly, it’s just a bit stomach churning to see a brahmin behaving as if he cares about what they want and need when we know that he couldn’t possibly.

Still, what choice to we really have? George W. Bush has made a hash out everything so even someone uninspiring and thick will just have to do.

Vote for John Kerry. He’s slightly better than that cretin George W. Bush but not nearly as perfect as I am.

FYI: Blogger is very bloggered so posting is by the grace of the goddess

Trick Or Treat

FAUX News is having a baby over Drudge’s screaming headline:

ABCNEWS HOLDS TERROR WARNING VIDEO

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11… ‘The streets will run with blood,’ and ‘America will mourn in silence’… America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush… ABCNEWS strongly denies holding back from broadcast over political concerns during last days of election….”We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate’… Developing…

Run for your lives!!!

I love this part, though:

The terrorist’s face is concealed by a headdress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual.

Golly, I don’t know why ABC might be skeptical of such a tape. It’s clear that this alleged terrorist is simply a member of the Kerry campaign who’s joined al Qaeda.

Setting Up The Fall

James Wolcott documents some more FAUX news atrocities. “Liberal bias” definitely made it into Moody’s memo this morning since virtually every anchor has opined on it today. This is definitely a preview of the new and improved wingnut whine and pout. It’s almost sweetly nostalgic, like a gauzy trip back ten or twelve years in time. I remember it well…

As Wolcott says:

I’m not saying Fox News is anticipating a Bush loss, only that they seem to be laying the ground work for the blame game should he cough it up on November 2nd. They are taking the first baby steps to denying the legitimacy of a Kerry win, preparing the first batch of sour grapes.

It’s all of a piece with the preemptive screeching about voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks. They are cataloging reasons to explain why the asterisk couldn’t pull it off. They will whine and fret and stomp their tiny little feet in a frenzy, earnestly claiming that Kerry didn’t legitimately win. And they will do it without even the slightest trace of irony.

Try to imagine how little I care.

Stench Of Panic

Amy Sullivan at The Washington Monthly post a very disconcerting piece about the Junta making a recess appointment to the Supreme Court.

Just when you thought the various post-election legal nightmare scenarios couldn’t get worse. U.S. News & World Report is emailing around some reporting that indicates the Bush White House may be considering a recess appointment (requiring no Senate approval, remember) to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist if he steps down for health reasons:

“Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has said Chief Justice William Rehnquist will return to the bench following cancer surgery, administration officials are quietly considering candidates to replace him and even the possibility of making a recess appointment. The officials said that they do not want to talk about the process publicly in the last week of the presidential campaign. However, one insider said that the West Wing is considering what would happen if the judge left the bench soon and if a close election next Tuesday meant an evenly split 4-4 court was to decide the winner. Such a situation would likely mean that a lower court’s ruling on an outcome would be final and officials are worried that it would go against the President.”

I have serious doubts that they could get away with this, but it doesn’t surprise me that they would consider it. They circumvent the letter of the law at every opportunity. To think they would observe the spirit of the law and our democratic system is laughable.

Family Fetish

Dear gawd. Via Media Matters I see that Dick Morris’s wife is making a pathetic living hanging on to Lil’ Dickie’s coattails:

McGANN: People have heart surgery all the time. They don’t have to go into hiding. He has been in hiding for the last six weeks.

And I think that it’s part of their plan to build up and hype him — at the end of the election, and for the opening of his [presidential] library. So, we have once again for — I don’t know what time, the 10th, 15th, 20th time — the new Bill Clinton. And I think it’s also what Dick [Morris] likes to call his ADD [attention deficit disorder] problem. That when he doesn’t get attention he’s disordered. And on the one hand, he I don’t think really wants to help the Kerry campaign because if Kerry wins, Hillary has less of a shot, if any, at ever running for president and becoming president. […] You know, there was no reason for him to be holed up. My uncle had the same operation two weeks before he did. And he [McGann’s uncle] called me yesterday as he and his wife were driving to Florida. And he’s 71 years old. People recover from this surgery and they can do other things. You don’t have to just sit in a chair. They have created this. This is — you know — just like the sensation he created when he walked into the [Democratic National] Convention, with the camera showing him in 2000. They have to do something — he has to do something dramatic or he’s not happy.

Jayzuz. A man spends six weeks recovering from quadruple bypass surgery and he’s “in hiding.” (There seems to be a lot of speculation about all this on the wingnutladies lunch bunch circuit because I heard Mrs. Alan Greenspan say that there was word that Clinton’s recovery wasn’t going well.)

The next time some GOP harpy brings up the fact that Hillary is a big lesbian or a self hating feminist because she didn’t drop Bill like a hot potato after he got a few furtive blow jobs, ask them how Eileen McCann can respect herself after having her dachshound-like husband splashed all over The Star as a connoisseur of prostitute toe-sucking.

From Howie Kurtz in 1998:

“He is deeply angry and resentful of the Clintons,” says one Clinton supporter who knows Morris well. “He feels they basically walked away from him at a time he was in need and in trouble.” Yet friends say Morris retains a psychological attachment to Clinton – a need to be needed by him – while reserving his strongest fury for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Two and a half years ago, Morris was a national punch line. While serving as chief strategist for Clinton’s 1996 campaign, Morris was fired after the Star tabloid revealed his longtime relationship with prostitute Sherry Rowlands. His marriage to attorney Eileen McGann broke up, and his $2.5 million book on policy-making in the White House was a commercial flop.

But the suddenly famous Morris refused to go into hiding. Determined to launch a punditry career, he explored different venues – trying out for a New York radio show, for example – before landing high-profile gigs with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV network and Post newspaper. Now Morris is back with his wife – the most important thing in his life, he says – and gaining new prominence as an expert on Clinton and sex.

Eileen apparently took the (pedi) cure and voted with her feet.

They sure have some kinky family values on FAUX News — you’d think the falafels and foot fetishes alone would make it distinctly spicy for the Gary Bauer set. Has anybody asked the fundies about this…uh…inconsistency?

Dancing As fast As They Can

On FAUX News, Hume just tried to make the argument that the missing explosives proves that Saddam had WMD. Kondrake and Liasson politely point out that while this is undoubtedly true, these weapons actually don’t fit the traditional definition of WMD. Hume appears to roll his eyes derisively. Krauthamer adds that it’s all the IAEA’s fault for not destroying the stuff as they were required to do in 1991. (They weren’t.)

Everyone agrees that it’s all a dirty trick by the New York Times, and they should have had “all the facts” before they put this on the front page. If only they’d sourced it to Ahmad Chalabi as they usually do, the Beltway Boyz would have had no room to complain.

Update: I missed the first part of the broadcast so I didn’t know what had made the panel look so sour and unhappy:

Fox News’ “Special Report” with Brit Hume

Brit Hume: As you saw earlier, when the 101st airborne division stopped overnight at that weapons facility south of Baghdad, there was an NBC news embedded reporting team with them, including correspondent Dana Lewis, who is now with fox news in Moscow, where he joins me now. Dana, tell me what happened. Now, this was the day after Baghdad had fallen. You were with the 101st. You were making your way up the spine of Iraq toward Baghdad. How did you come to stop there, and what happened?

Dana Lewis: Well, Britt, I mean, you know, put it into context of what was going on at that moment. The fighting wasn’t over. There was chaos everywhere on the roads, and we were with the 101st as it was pushing north to take the southern suburbs of Baghdad. And as we were driving up the road I can remember seeing this amazing wall that just seemed to go on forever. This thing was about 10 feet tall and it went on for at least a mile or two. I’ve never seen such a big compound in Iraq since I’ve been there for two years now. It was a tremendous compound. The 101st was ordered to go into the compound and spend the night there. They were not ordered to search that compound there. They simply used it as a pit stop so that they could then continue their mission on to Baghdad. In fact, I can tell you I was with the colonel of the strike brigade, the second brigade, Colonel Joe Anderson. He was frustrated they had to spend the night there because they wanted to get on to their mission in Baghdad.

BH: So you got inside this facility. I suppose some members of the unit might have heard of the place. What did you see when you got in there?

DL: Sure, they may have had information on what may have been in there, because they generally had that kind of information. It was a tremendously large facility. You got in and saw all sorts of bunkers inside. And, Britt, because we spent 24 hours there, I had the chance to walk that facility and I took it. It was a long walk as we went from bunker to bunker with me and my camera man. Most of the bunkers were locked at that point. You could not get inside. Some of them, though, appeared to have been hit by air strikes and we were told by some of the soldiers on the ground that they had been hit by bombs. So some of the concrete was split open and you could see munitions in a few of the bunkers. And then at one end of the facility I can remember seeing hangars full of rockets. I’ve never seen so many rockets in one place. It looked like that facility had also been bombed from the air and most of those rockets were bent out of shape and inoperable.

BH: Right. Now, we have seen pictures of these seals that the international atomic energy agency and the weapons inspectors used to

identify and to close off the bunkers where some of these heavy explosives were believed to have been kept. Did you see any of those seals on any of the facilities as you were walking through there?

DL: I’ve had those seals described to me, and I can tell you that as we went from the bunkers, certainly there were wires and there were locks. But I don’t recall ever seeing an IAEA stamp on any of them. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t any of them.

BH: I got you. Now, in addition to — you saw evidence of bombing, obviously. Was there any sign that this facility had been looted that

you could see?

DL: I would say at that point, no, Brit. I mean, as we went north, you could certainly see looting in Baghdad. And I know what looting looks like. Hundreds of kids and hundreds of people everywhere. This facility was basically abandoned at that point. There were lots of Russian tanks that had abandoned on the road around it. But it looked like it had been well guarded right up until the point that the army got in there. But I don’t know what happened between the point that the Iraqi army left that facility and then the US Army came in there. There would have been a gap. And who knows what would have gone on in there? But when I was there, we didn’t see any looting. And that’s not to say there couldn’t have been looting after we left, either.

BH: Right. Well, after you left, describe if you can – I mean obviously, we’re talking about a fairly large amount of explosives. The IAEA says it was 380 tons, that would be, we estimate, about 38 truckloads. That’s quite a lot. Was the situation that you witnessed around the facility such that it would have been easy for somebody to spirit 38 tons of explosives, or 38 tons of anything else out there, undetected by US Forces in the area?

DL: I think it would have been pretty tough. I mean, the roads for the most part were closed down. Not very many people were driving those roads, because there was still some shooting going on and people were worried about getting caught in the crossfire. It would have been hard to move trucks in there right under the army’s nose. But at the same time certainly there were vehicles moving on the roads as we got closer to Baghdad. But at that moment I certainly didn’t see any lines of trucks heading for that facility. And remember, who would have been ordering those trucks down there? For all intents and purposes, the regime had fled.

BH: So it would have taken an operation of some size, if the stuff was still there, to get it out of there. And you didn’t see, at least any

indications at the time you were there, that such a thing could easily have been done.

DL: We didn’t see any sign of that when we were there, no.

BH: Dana Lewis, glad to have you. Thanks very much for staying up late in Moscow to be with me. Thank you very much.

Oooops.

Here’s the video

Marshalling The Youth Vote

Kevin at Catch has all the info on Eminem’s new video (and a bunch of links if you want to see it.) It would appear that Marshall has pulled no punches and it also appears that MTV is airing it this afternoon. That in itself is amazing.

From Salon’s review:

…the just-released video for his new anti-Bush song “Mosh,” makes “Fahrenheit 9/11” look like a GOP campaign spot, and it will almost certainly reach an audience that wouldn’t think of shelling out for a documentary.

The beautifully animated video, which is directed by Ian Inaba, opens with a classroom. At the front is a man in a blue suit, his face buried in an upside down children’s book that says “My Pet,” with a picture of a bush. Just as the man is revealed to be Eminem, the scene changes, and we see the singer taping up newspaper stories to a wall — “Sick Wounded Troops Held in Squalor,” says one. “Civil Liberties at Stake,” says another. “Bush Knew,” says a third.

In five minutes, Eminem manages a furious indictment of the administration that will likely resonate among many troops in Iraq as well as disaffected kids here at home. In one scene, a smiling soldier returns home from Baghdad, only to be handed a notice announcing that he has to go back. As Eminem sings, “fuck Bush,” the soldier mouths the words.

Then we see a woman walking home in the rain, carrying groceries and an envelope. Inside is an eviction notice. As she reads it, we hear Eminem saying, “Maybe this is God just saying we’re responsible for this monster, this coward that we have empowered.” The woman looks at her TV, where Bush is speaking over a banner that says “Tax Cuts.” She looks at her terrified children, then back at the screen, which says, “Breaking News…Terror Alert.”

It all ends amazingly earnestly, with Eminem leading a black-clad army to the voting booth. Once again, Bush proves he really does have wonder working powers — by behaving even more callously and irresponsibly than the most outrageous rapper, he’s turned music’s foremost enfant terrible into a role model of civic engagement.

I don’t know how much impact something like this has, but it’s a big mistake to underestimate the pull of popular culture. Eminem is an icon for a large swathe of young disaffected men, some of whom, as the review mentions, are in Iraq getting shot at as we speak.

One of the reasons that we may expect a nice uptick in voters this year, particularly young voters, is the extent to which the election has found its way into the cultural zeitgeist. It’s not confined to its usual little corner of the media universe — it’s everywhere. It is culturally significant to people who are usually uninterested (meaning non-fundies) and it has insinuated itself into the media in such a way as to take on Big Event proportions.

We’ve had high hopes before in this regard and were sorely disappointed. 1972 is a compelling example. However, the media did not have the kind of pervasive influence it now has and people were not connected the way they are now. It was a political time, to be sure, but the strongest energy among young people went to cultural and lifestyle revolution. Politics was as much a matter of style as substance. Indeed, one of the stongest strains in American youth culture encouraged people to drop out entirely. There is nothing like that happening now.

The current culture war is not generational, it’s mostly urban vs rural. And popular culture is omnipresent and dominating — the internet bringing an entirely unprecedented new wrinkle. The conditions for a high turnout among people who don’t usually tune in to politics but who’ve been drawn by the buzz into the conversation has never been higher. This could be the election that merges the general “audience” with the electorate and makes it one.

From the way it looks a week out, we may actually have the culture warriors a little bit on the run for the first time in many years. I may have my problems with Eminem, but I’ve got to be honest. I consider him to be far less dangerous than the leadership of the modern Republican Party. If he can help get out new voters, I welcome his help.

A Votre Sante!

Dr. Vino has compiled the all important electoral guide for wine lovers.

Not exactly a surprise — Kerry wins.

Reading about the politics of wine reminded me of a legendary appearance on Crossfire by Justin Vaisse, during the pathetic “freedom-fries” era:

CARLSON: But just, honestly, just correct the misperception here. This is not simply an effort by the administration to beat up on France. This is coming — there’s a deep wellspring of anti-French feeling in this country, and it’s going to have consequences. This is a bottle of French wine. This is a bottom [sic] of American wine.

(SCORNFUL SILENCE)

VAISSE: It is bigger.

CARLSON: And it’s bigger. That’s exactly right. More forceful. There will be Americans who boycott French products. This in the end is really going to hurt France, isn’t it?

VAISSE: No, I think it is going hurt wine lovers.

Wine lovers have long memories. We will vote en masse for a fromage and pate-loving, Chardonnay-swilling liberal. Fuck that PB&J ‘n milk bullshit. Voting, like so many good things in life, is for adults.

Forgive Us, World

Via TBOGG I see that the amount of lead in our environment has finally reached critical mass.

Kimberly Parmer, 33, who works as a human resources manager in western Michigan, said the emphasis on national security issues had distorted the campaign.

“I don’t think terrorism is as big a threat as everyone is making it out to be,” Ms. Parmer said. “Yes, we have had a couple of incidents, but other countries have hundreds every year. Iraq is important, but so are things like Social Security and Medicare. Neither one has really touched on those subjects because no one is going to be happy, no matter what you do.”

Ms. Parmer, who said she is firmly planted in “the very low middle class,” also saw the Bush tax cut as poorly timed. She normally votes for Democrats, she said, but is not sure this time.

“One is too polished; the other one, I think to be honest, I don’t know how he ever got to be president,” Ms. Parmer said. “I am really surprised he has gotten as far as he has in life. I do think he’s honest.”

Even so, Ms. Parmer said, she thought she might vote for Mr. Bush. “If you actually look at him, and he stands up next to Kerry, you just kind of feel sorry for him,” she said. “I feel he’s more of an underdog, he’s had a hard go of it in the last four years.”

As we all sit here pondering how it can possibly be that Commander Codpiece is even in the running, this explains it. I think that what gets me the most about people like this is that they obviously pay a certain amount of attention, they know what the issues are yet they see the world as if it’s a TV soap opera.

I’ll bet this woman will vote for Bush. Here’s why. According to the LA Times Poll today:

In its final days, the race is blurring some of the electorate’s familiar divides but emphatically deepening others, according to the poll.

Much smaller than in recent presidential elections is the gender gap, in which the majority of men usually vote Republican, and women usually lean Democratic.

Bush’s message, which stresses his national security record and his commitment to conservative cultural values, is helping him gain ground among lower middle-income and less-educated voters ambivalent about his economic record. Conversely, the message is costing him with more affluent and better-educated families that have historically supported Republicans.

Strikingly, Bush leads Kerry in the poll among lower- and middle-income white voters, but trails his rival among whites earning at least $100,000 per year.

Bush also runs best among voters without college degrees, whereas Kerry leads not only among college-educated women (a traditional Democratic constituency), but among college-educated men — usually one of the electorate’s most reliably Republican groups in the electorate.

This tracks with the PIPA Survey which said:

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

When the inevitable forums and roundtables of beltway “intellectuals” chewing over the election coverage and results take place over the next few months, I would very much like to see somebody ask William Kristol and his buds over at the Weakly Standard and AEI how they square their grand global vision with the fact that the vast number of their followers are total morons. Indeed, the country seems to have divided up rather neatly into the dumbshits vs. everybody else and they represent the dumbshits. Do the cosmopolitan neocon elite believe that a country run on behalf of people like this can actually run the world? If they do, then all the hoo-hah about their Straussian allegiance was true.