Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Spurned Lover

And another party leaves him. Maybe it’s time he took a look in the mirror and asked himself what he might be doing to constantly alienate the ones he loves.

GOP backs away from Miller’s blast

Democrat ‘speaking for himself,’ Bush aide says

After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign — led by the first lady — backed away Thursday from Miller’s savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself.

Late Thursday, Miller and his wife were removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family’s box during the president’s acceptance speech later in the evening. Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said Miller was not in the box because the campaign had scheduled him to do too many television interviews.

There was no explanation, however, for why Miller would be giving multiple interviews during Bush’s acceptance speech, or what channels would snub the president in favor of Miller. Nor was it made clear why Miller’s wife also was not allowed to take her place in the president’s box 24 hours after his deeply personal denunciation of his own party’s nominee.

The change was made only a few hours after Laura Bush, asked about Miller’s speech, said in an interview with NBC News that “I don’t know that we share that point of view.” Aides to President Bush and his campaign said Miller was not speaking for all Republicans.

[…]

The Bush campaign stepped backed from Miller’s comments Thursday after it was received with almost immediate criticism, including complaints from prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“Well, Zell Miller is a very experienced politician,” McCain, who spoke earlier at the convention, told NBC News on Wednesday night.

“I’m sure he knew exactly what he was talking about. [But] I just don’t agree with the fact that the Democrats are unpatriotic or the assertion that the Democrats are unpatriotic,” he said. “I don’t think they are.”

In an interview Thursday, Laura Bush told NBC News’ Tom Brokaw: “I don’t know that we share that point of view. I mean, I think Zell Miller has a very interesting viewpoint, just like I had the personal viewpoint to talk about the president when I spoke on Tuesday night. …

“But, I mean, his voice is one with a lot,” the first lady said. “You also heard Senator McCain. You also heard Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor [Arnold] Schwarzenegger.”

A senior White House official, speaking to reporters before Bush’s address Thursday night, said, “Senator Miller was speaking on behalf of himself and obviously on behalf of himself.

Boy, those Republicans sure aren’t very steadfast and loyal, are they? But then, turncoat Zell couldn’t have expecting much on that score, now could he? As ye sow….

I imagine that overnight polling has shown that the frothing at the mouth wasn’t a big hit. I heard one of the pundits on CNN say earlier that polls showed Bush strengthening his support the red states and remaining static in the battle ground states. I haven’t seen any numbers, but that wouldn’t surprise me. If that’s true then their strategy may have failed. The speculation is that they were trying to cement their bond with white males in the mid-west with all the tough talk. It’s possible that they may have done that and lost an equal number of women and minorities.

We’ll see soon enough. But, clearly Zell was not a big hit, despite Maureen Dowd’s bizarre assertion that the convention was a masterpiece. (And she was acting so oddly that I was downright uncomfortable watching her. She is much too shy to be on TV, obviously.)

Demonstrators Were Held Illegally, Judge Rules

This was harsh. Two days in a holding pen is a long damned time. And, naturally, the police lied about it.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 — A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of anti-Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor.

Several dozen of those detained said that they had not taken part in protests. Police apparently swept up the CEO of a puppet theater as he and a friend walked out of the subway to celebrate his birthday; handcuffed two middle-aged women who had been shopping at the Gap, and arrested a young woman as she returned from her job at a New York publishing house.

[…]

Throughout this week, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne had insisted that just a few dozen protesters had spent more than six hours behind bars without being charged or released. On Thursday, Browne acknowledged for the first time that large numbers of demonstrators had endured long detentions. But he blamed them for overwhelming the police department.

“It’s a new entitled, pampered class of demonstrators who want to engage in civil disobedience but don’t want to be inconvenienced by arrest processing,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of reasons for a holdup. If you were in a group this morning you are going to go through the process very quickly; if you were arrested with 200 people it’s going to take longer.”

[…]

Michael Sladek, who owns a film production company in Brooklyn, was arrested in Midtown two evenings ago as he photographed the police and demonstrators. He spent 48 hours in custody without access to a phone before he was charged with obstructing a pedestrian — an administrative violation — and released.

“For us, it was very clear this was a detention to keep people off the street,” Sladek said outside the jail. “And the saddest thing was that so many people had nothing to with protesting the convention.”

This is terrible, but I must say that I’m proud of the people who are willing to engage in acts of civil disobedience to preserve their right to free speech. Use it or lose it.

The innocent bystanders who were swept up and held for more than two days should sue the City of New York. There is no excuse for keeping people that long without charging them. None.

He’ll Fight That Sucker In A Phone Booth

On Monday morning I wrote a post called Cold-Cock Him saying that I hoped the Kerry campaign would metaphorically stalk across the ring and slam Bush right in the nose on the day after the convention and change that storyline immediately.

It looks like they are going to do just that. Atrios has the link to the prepared remarks and they are very tough. As TAPPED notes, Kerry announcing this speech on the day of Bush’s speech seems to have knocked them off their game a little bit:

CNN, 8:42 P.M.: The Kerry campaign has begun to make an impact with the press conference they’ve announced tonight. At midnight, John Kerry will begin returning fire with a surprise press conference, for which they’ve already released excerpted remarks. It’s all over the cable shows; Karen Hughes is on the defensive on CNN right now, and the first question that set her back was on the press conference. They’re late to the party, but it is possible that they brought punch.

Even more intriguing, Ryan Lizza at TNR says:

…tomorrow there will be a significant announcement from the Kerry campaign about a new media buy that will be far tougher than anything Kerry has done this year.

I’ve been hoping for “My Pet Goat”, but whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it. I think timing is important and perhaps laying out a bit and then stepping hard on Bush’s night was smart. The press corpse is slavering over the notion of a knock down drag out fight and Kerry is making a big show of it.

Tough Guy

Fuck this little right wing prick. I think I understand why the smirking codpiece likes him so much:

Porter Goss, tapped as the next CIA director, says the Senate lacked “balance” in its public hearings investigating the Iraqi prison scandal and should not have plucked military commanders from the field to question them about the abuse.

Goss took a hard line on interrogations in interviews with The Associated Press earlier this year, saying “Gee you’re breaking my heart” to complaints that Arab men found it abusive to have women guards at the Guantanamo Bay terror camp _ statements that could draw scrutiny during his Senate confirmation hearing, possibly next week.

During one interview in May, the eight-term House Republican from Florida said he couldn’t count the number of ongoing prison abuse investigations, but “we’ve got the circus in the Senate, which is always the likely place to look for the circus.”

“Even though I say that lightheartedly, I do honestly question whether or not they have balance over there on this issue,” said Goss, who has declined interviews since President Bush nominated him last month.

Let’s let Porter spend a little time having Lyndie walk him around on a leash and see if he still thinks the Senate is “unbalanced” by asking the military to answer a couple of tepid questions about its immoral torture policy. He’s a smart ass wingnut who has absolutely no business being anywhere near real power.

If he wants to see a circus, he should take a look at this sickening medieval sideshow:

The Bush administration is ignoring, if not defying outright, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that all terror suspects must be able to challenge their imprisonment. The opening round of detainee military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay last week resembled something between a Mel Brooks farce and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Maybe Captain Kangaroo courts. The proceedings didn’t look anything like justice, military or otherwise. Meanwhile, two U.S. citizens still sit in military brigs, isolated from their lawyers and months if not years away from the hearings the high court says they deserve.

The U.S. criminal justice system, including its military stepchild, is supposed to stand for due process, impartiality and openness. These are the same principles, after all, that U.S. troops are fighting — and dying — to seed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the slapdash preliminary hearings for the first four of some 600 Guantanamo detainees violated basic tenets of fairness.

The tribunals are an ad hoc invention, authorized by President Bush three years ago when he rejected the established military court-martial system and the federal criminal courts, either of which would have worked more smoothly. As a result, military officials have few precedents to follow and last week seemed confused about which rules or legal procedures applied.

Members of these tribunals — the jury, in effect — are military professionals appointed by the Pentagon. The tribunal’s chief officer is a retired Army judge, the only member of the panel with legal training. He is both the judge and a jury member, ruling on motions and voting with the five other commissioners.

In a criminal court, the lay jury decides the facts and the judge rules on questions of law. Here, however, tribunal members decide on both. Yet the five nonlawyers were clearly befuddled last week when asked to define concepts such as due process and reasonable doubt.

The cards are stacked against detainees in other ways too. Government prosecutors got spacious quarters and their own staff to prepare for the hearings. Military defense lawyers were crowded into one room. Midway through the week, the conference table they all shared was removed. The Arab interpreters were so incompetent that the proceedings resembled a game of “telephone,” in which the message veered closer to gibberish with each repetition. Yet this game is about men’s futures.

Given the confusion, officials must feel justified in limiting reporters to pen and paper, which might as well be quill and parchment. No photographic, video or audio recordings of the hearings will ever be released. From the government’s perspective, perhaps the less that Americans know of these bumbling proceedings, the less they’ll care.

The two U.S. citizens that Bush has labeled as enemy combatants, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, haven’t gotten even this much. Years after their arrests, each remains in a military brig, often in solitary confinement. Even after the Supreme Court’s declaration that they have a right to a hearing, government lawyers outrageously are fighting every lower court petition filed by lawyers retained by the men’s families. And still the government has filed no charges against Hamdi or Padilla.

The Supreme Court made itself clear in its June rulings: Terror suspects are entitled to at least bare-bones due process. For government lawyers to insist otherwise is unprecedented. Their assertion probably doesn’t scare terrorists, but it throws a pall on the lush praise for U.S. freedoms that decorate the Republican National Convention.

The rank dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Republicans turns my stomach. Freedom and democracy, my ass. We simply have to defeat these people.

Bad Omen, George

2.5 Million Told to Flee Fla. Hurricane

Residents and tourists in cars, trucks and campers clogged highways Thursday in the biggest evacuation ever ordered in Florida, fleeing inland as mighty Hurricane Frances threatened the state with its second battering in three weeks.

About 2.5 million residents were told to clear out ahead of what could be the most powerful storm to hit Florida in a decade.

A Moving Tribute To The Man They Call Junior

Via Atrios and One Good Move, If you aren’t going to be home in time to see the Bush campaign video tonight, Jon Stewart was lucky enough to get a sneak preview:

George W. Bush: Because He Says So

Women Trouble

Matt Stoller has a fascinating post up in which he describes a Republican training seminar for women. They laid out the strategy for getting to their target group in this election — “married women with high religiosity, women who voted for Bush in 2000 and value their family’s safety.” This explains the bizarre babble I heard the other night on Matthews after Laura Bush’s speech. They were, unsurprisingly, parroting GOP talking points (which are pretty insulting if you ask me.)

However, they seem to have targeted a very specific group whom they evidently don’t feel they are insulting by characterizing them as something like nineteenth century farmwives with no knowledge of the world beyond their homestead. I guess the Republicans know their constituency.

What’s interesting to me about the data Matt compiles is the focus group comments from independent Republican-leaning women, 30% of whom are undecided:

*”I don’t believe anything anymore”

* “I don’t like slinging mud and they all do it…”

* “I can’t hear anything from a government and trust it.”

* “I don’t believe anything anymore and we can’t make a difference because we don’t have any truth…”

* “I don’t really know aht’s happening but I know someone knows what’s happening.”

* “I absolutely believe they have no clue.”

* “They tell us to keep doing what I’ve always done, but watch out for something. If there’s something I’m supposed to worry about why am I supposed to do what I’ve always done?”

* “Kerry hasn’t won my trust yet, I don’t feel safe with him. I’m waiting to see, I think we are vulnerable.”

* “If Kerry did win the change of hands of government would lessen the protection of the country.”

* “We’re putting money into the college funds every month and it seems like it stays at the same level.”

* “What’s going to be there when our kids are ready.”

* “What’s going on with the economy. I’m not happy with my job.”

* “Turning the corner – I didn’t get that one. I want to find that corner and stand on that corner.”

These are Republican leaning married women. And they do not sound as if they are very happy with the way our politics are being waged and they are very cynical. They don’t sound like nineteenth century farmwives to me, they sound like some severely irritated twenty first century citizens.

This issue of rabid partisanship is a difficult problem to engage right now because just as these women, and I suspect many others, are getting sick and tired of the yelling and screaming — the white male contingent is kicking it up a notch. And, if you don’t properly fight back you risk looking weak, which neither men or women want, but if you do fight back, these exasperated women see you as part of the problem, not the solution. It’s the old, “I don’t care who started it, you’re both grounded” routine. Not that I blame them. It is exhausting and you have to wonder sometimes if there will ever be an end to it.

But, I have to say that if those comments are representative of this group then the Zellfire and brimstone attack of the last couple of days probably has gone over like a lead balloon with these women. From Matt’s post it appears the GOP believes they are looking for someone to “protect” them and will respond to male strength. That sounds like wingnut wishful thinking to me. Those comments sound like some people who are sick of the bullshit and would like their leaders to shut the hell up and start dealing with reality. I don’t think many of them would have been impressed by this cock-of-the-walk chest thumping that’s been going on this week in NYC.

There’s a reason why the gender gap continues to widen. The GOP remains an old fashioned boys club that welcomes rich trophy wives and fundamentalist believers in female subservience. Until they figure out that those two categories are rapidly dwindling groups in this culture and that most women reasonably don’t see politics as a particularly heroic endeavor, all this strutting around with codpieces is pretty much playing to the locker room crowd. Women are their own heroes these days.

Read Matt’s post all the way through if you’re interested in this topic. He brings up one thing that is crucial and that is the the Democrats don’t do this kind of grassroots seminar teaching which is a big mistake. People on the ground want the talking points and the rationale, they just don’t know where to get it. If the Dems aren’t doing this they damned sure should be.

Update: John Edwards knows how to make this appeal for our side and it’s not because he’s so darned cute. It’s because he knows how to subtly aim the message.

“If you got up and went to the refrigerator to get a Diet Coke, you would have missed any discussion of what they’re going to do about health care, what they’re going to do about jobs, what they plan to do about this mess in Iraq.”

Diet coke, see? He’s not talking to some hairy mook.

Update II:

Here’s a little bit of the premiere wingnut talk radio harpy, Dr Laura’s, new book:

I believe [women’s self-centeredness] is a result of the women’s movement, with its condemnation of just about everything male as evil, stupid, and oppressive, and the denigration of female and male roles in families, as well as the loss of family functioning as a result of divorce, day care, dual careers, and the glorification of shacking up and unwed motherhood by choice. These are the core destructive influences that result in women not appreciating that they are perfected when they are bonded in wedlock and have obligations to family.

I think that says it all.

Coalition Of The … Never Mind

Kos tells me that Blair and his socialist comrades are showing their true colors:

That does it! Time for Republicans in Congress to adopt the metric system! We’ll eat Freedom Muffins. And we’ll rename our language “Freedomish”.

And long overdue it is, my friends. Why we ever trusted those limey bastards is beyond me. There’s that little Norman Conquest thing that nobody wants to talk about, but there’s more than one Frenchman in the woodpile over there, if you know what I mean.

Now This Is Just Sad

Don’t look now, but Karl Rove is the Republican Party’s newest sex symbol.

The bespectacled, wispyhaired political guru – known in some circles as “Bush’s brain” – had to be physically protected Tuesday night from a flock of lady admirers during a cocktail party at Gotham Hall.

“As soon as he got off the stage, he was mobbed by a group of women,” party volunteer Warren Seubel told Lowdown.

“Women were fawning over him. They were swooning,” said Seubel. “I’ve never seen someone so gnarly get so much attention from so many women.”

Things got a tad ugly when Rove’s handlers tried to separate the man from his fans.

“It was unbelieeeeevable. I had to start throwing elbows at senators and congressmen,” said Seubel. “But the real problem was the congressional wives.”

Maybe it was the 53-year-old Rove’s toast that had the gals excited. Addressing the crowd – which included human Uzi Ann Coulter, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, G. Gordon Liddy and Interior Secretary Gale Norton – Rove yelled, “We’re right, and they’re wrong! On the economy, we’re right, and they’re wrong! On the war on terror, we’re right, and they’re wrong! On marriage, we’re right, and they’re wrong!”

Yesterday, a Rove associate tried to knock down the sex-symbol scenario. “He’s like a rock star, and people want to shake his hand, take pictures with him, say hello, etc.” the associate E-mailed. “I’ve been here all week and it is crazy, but I don’t seriously think it is because he’s a babe magnet. He’s just the man!”

Having taken a good look at the men on the floor at Madison Square Garden this week, I can see that the GOP women are pretty hard up. But, there’s really no excuse for this. First it was Ari, now this. For Gawd’s sake, ladies, have some dignity.

Mark Your Calendars

Via Suburban Guerilla, I see that we have something very powerful and important happening on September 13th:

In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush’s “war on terror” and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. He reveals the connections between early missteps in the hunt for Al Qaeda and disasters on the ground in Iraq. The book includes a new account of Hersh’s pursuit of the Abu Ghraib story and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a crucial chapter in America’s recent history. With an introduction by The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.

And something powerful and trivial will be happening on September 14th:

Foes of the president are salivating over a description of Kitty Kelley’s forthcoming tell-all about George Bush and his kin. “The Family: the Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” goes on sale Sept. 14, and the description on Amazon.com promises that Kelley — who made international headlines with her scathing Nancy Reagan bio — will reveal “the matriarchs, the mistresses, the marriages, the divorces, the jealousies, the hypocrisies, the golden children, and the black sheep” of the first family.

I hope that operatives are preparing to milk this situation. Here we will have two book tours, one featuring a scathing indictment of the administration’s terrible (and immoral) decisions in fighting the war on islamic fundamentalism and the other a deliciously gossipy screed that will entice the tabloid appetite of the press corpse. In today’s media climate it isn’t about a specific fire, it’s the accumulating smoke that puts the other guys off his game. The timing here is no accident.