Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Dangerous Ally

On July 30, the day after Senator John Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, CNN Crossfire host Tucker Carlson stated, “His [Kerry’s] plan for Iraq, such as it is, is to have other people, dark skinned foreigners, from the Middle East fight our war for us. He said it last night in his speech. I watched his speech.

I heard that comment and I wondered what Carlson had been smoking. But I now realize that he was simply indulging in the usual right wing projection:

Few people likely paid attention last week when former President Clinton accused the Bush administration of contracting out U.S. security and the hunt for Osama bin Laden to Pakistan in its zeal to wage war in Iraq. In an interview with Canadian television, Clinton asked, “Why did we put our No. 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis, with us playing the supporting role, and put all our military resources into Iraq — which was I think at best our No. 5 security threat?” Clinton also observed, “We will never know if we could have gotten him [bin Laden] because we didn’t make it a priority.”

One consequence of the decision to subcontract the hunt for members of al-Qaida to Pakistan is that the terrorists appear to be regrouping. The Washington Post, quoting senior U.S. and Pakistani officials, reported “new evidence” on Aug. 14 that suggests “that Al-Qaeda is battered but not beaten, and that a motley collection of old hands and recent recruits has formed a nucleus in Pakistan that is pushing forward with plans for attacks in the United States.”

Despite Pakistan’s past role in propping up the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Bush administration — in one of its least transparent foreign alliances — continues to rely on Pakistani military and intelligence services to deliver bin Laden. Since much of the give-and-take in this relationship is covert, it is unclear exactly what is or is not taking place.

Pakistan sells nuclear and missile technology to Iran and North Korea and its internal political situation is so complex that probably half of the army and most of its intelligence service are sympathetic to al Qaeda. Yet we are depending upon that country to handle the most sensitive intelligence matters pertaining to islamic terrorism while we fiddle around in Iraq for no good reason.

The Bush Doctrine of “if you feed a terrorist, talk to a terrorist, or harbor a terrorist means you’re a terrorist” applies in every aspect to Pakistan. The country is a military dictatorship in which the general in charge suspends the constitution on a regular basis. The country is a powderkeg in a region that is a powderkeg. And yet we have put the real central front in the war on terrorism in their hands.

I know we had to keep them close, but our dependence on them has always seemed to me to be exceedingly dicey. As many commentators have pointed out recently, it’s created a dilemma for both countries in that Pakistan is motivated to keep dribbling out al Qaeda from time to time while never actually netting anything definitive or seriously meaningful because to do so would mean the end of huge amounts of American money and support. Crack diplomacy at work, once again.

One can’t help but wonder every day, for a hundred different reasons, what we could have acomplished in narrowing the threat of Islamic radicalism if we had focused our best and the best of all of our allies on that problem. It certainly would have been preferable to having Pakistan take the lead on al Qaeda while we fought a completely unnecessary war elsewhere.

It all comes back to the delusionary belief among Bush’s advisors, even after 9/11, that islamic radicalism is not as great a threat as rogue states. This fundamental error has almost driven us off a cliff and will definitely do so in the next four years if these people remain in power.

Bist meshugeh?

Ryan Lizza tells us that aside from blacks, Hispanics and catholics, Rove hasn’t managed to bring in any Jews either.

A poll out today by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research confirms that Bush has made no inroads [among Jews.] The numbers look almost identical to what VNS exit polls found in 2000. Here are the highlights:

Senator Kerry maintains a very strong lead over President Bush within the Jewish community. Senator Kerry leads President Bush by a margin of 75 percent to 22 percent. Senator Kerry’s lead is as strong as the American Jewish vote was in 2000 for then-Vice President Gore over then-Governor Bush; respondents voted in 2000 for Gore over Bush by a margin of 76 percent to 21 percent.

[…]

** President Bush is deeply unpopular among American Jews. President Bush is seen as favorable by only 20 percent of respondents; a stunning 73 percent see him unfavorably. Conversely, Senator Kerry is seen as favorable by 59 percent of the respondents, while only 27 percent view him unfavorably.

This doesn’t surprise me. Members of groups in this country who have historically been discriminated against by nativist whites and waspy elitists have good bullshit detectors. They are the last people in this country who would be fooled by this GOP flim-flam.

Rove thought they could back Ariel Sharon and American Jews would just follow Junior off a cliff. I think he spent a little too much time with the radical fundamentalists. American Jews aren’t cult members. They are cosmopolitan Americans who think for themselves and have a very long tradition of respect for liberalism and intellectualism, neither of which are concepts that Bush understands, much less stands for.

So, after three years in office and a one time 90% approval rating, Bush has wrapped up the fundamentalist and CEO vote. Quite an achievement.

Don’t Go There

Kevin Drum does a masterful takedown of Jonah Goldberg’s ridiculous assertion that the “Bush haters” are more extreme and nasty than the Clinton haters were. He reminds him of the murder charges from the WSJ editorial page, the videos about cocaine running in Arkansas and, of course, the $70 mil spent chasing Clinton’s mighty member.

But, he is too polite (and I’m not) to mention that Jonah’s dear mother was the shrill, shrieking harpy from hell who committed a litany of heinous and disgusting acts during the era and “secured her footnote in American political history as Linda Tripp’s accomplice, delightedly hawking a story to the equally spiteful New York Press about Clinton “finger-fucking” his daughter Chelsea.”

Now, when Michael Moore or MoveOn come out with sewage like that we can talk. Until then, Lucianne’s little boy ought to shut the fuck up about Clinton-haters and Bush-haters. It’s not exactly a topic that benefits the family name.

Darby’s Nightmare

When it was revealed that Joseph Darby came forward about the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, many of his friends and neighbors turned on him and his family. I’m sure they all were listening to Rush and Sean who told them it was just “blowing off steam” and Senator Inhofe who said he was “outraged by the outrage.” This is the president’s base, the heart and soul of wingnut America:

Each day, she [wife, Bernadette Darby] would catch another snippet of the hostility brewing around her. There was the candlelight vigil in Cumberland, Maryland, to show support for the disgraced soldiers, including the ones who did the torturing, about a hundred supporters standing in the pounding rain, as if beating and sodomizing prisoners were some kind of patriotic duty. Or the 200 people who gathered one night in Hyndman, Pennsylvania, waving American flags to honor Sivits, the first soldier tried in the scandal. They posted a sign in Hyndman. It said JEREMY SIVITS, OUR HOMETOWN HERO. And the mayor told reporters that even though Sivits would sometimes do “a little devilish thing,” on the whole he was “a wonderful kid.”

Where were the signs for Joe? Bernadette had to wonder. Where was his vigil? Where was his happy mayor? Where were his calls of support? Down at the gas station, Clay overheard some guys say that Joe was “walking around with a bull’s-eye on his head,” just casually, just like, oh, everybody knows Joe’s dead. Some of Bernadette’s family even let her know that other members of the family were against her now, that they couldn’t support a traitor. The more Bernadette heard, the more paranoid she became. How serious was this? Her nerves were so fried from the media onslaught that she couldn’t be sure what was serious and what was just talk. Had those cops really ignored Maxine because they were against Joe? And if so, what else would they ignore?

[…]

When they got to Bernadette’s apartment in Corriganville, they went inside, and the cats rushed to Bernadette, and she held them in her arms and talked to them while Maxine and Clay tried to give her space.

And then the phone rang.

It was a major from the U.S. Army, and he was coming over. Within a few minutes, everything began to shift around Bernadette, and it was hard to tell what was happening. She found herself in the passenger seat of an unmarked government vehicle, speeding down the highway to some unknown destination, Clay’s truck right behind her with Maxine and the kids packed inside, the whole group snatched up by military protective custody without any prior warning or even a clear idea of why. Bernadette called Virginia and said, “We’re in protective custody now. I don’t know where we’re going, but we’ll call you when we get there.”

Mrs. Darby hadn’t heard from her husband, but he’d been taken into protective custody himself, sometime before. The military knew that his life was in danger.

You know, I don’t know how much more of this Bush administration-style honor and integrity this country can take.

Spoonfed Gibberish

Some Deep Thoughts from our president on the campaign trail in New Mexico:

I understand the limitations of government. I understand that government is not a loving organization. (Laughter.) But government can stand side-by-side with loving organizations to help improve the lives of people from all walks of life.

And there is nothing I love more than a fabulous, loving organization. As long as they’re not too sensitive. I’m against that.

The only reason I ask is that people have got to understand when you hear the tax relief encouraged investment, investment means you’re purchasing something, and somebody has to make that which you purchase and sell that which you purchase. And that’s how the economy works.

And people have got to understand that when you fall down and go boom it means you’re no longer standing. And that’s how gravity works.

It’s one thing to have justice; it’s another thing to go overboard with justice, because people start to lose work.

Especially my close personal friends and political contributors.

I think a healthy society is one in which people own something. If you own something you have a stake in the future of your country.

And if you don’t you are a fucking loser who has no stake in the future so just go die.

You can’t have a hopeful society if you’re not allowed to express your opinion or worship freely.

And you can’t attend or speak at this rally unless you agree to express the opinions we want you to express.

You see, it’s a different kind of war. It’s a different kind of war. We cannot hope for the best anymore. In the old days, we could, because we thought oceans would protect us. It wasn’t all that long ago that we thought we were safe from harm’s way.

Well, except for the thousands of Soviet ICBM’s that were aimed at every American city for almost 50 years, that is.

Q: We are praying for righteous leaders in Washington and throughout our country, because we know that it’s time for America to get back to its moral roots that our founders put in place for us when this country was founded. And it is time for the people in this country to realize and to call out for righteous leaders. That is our right as God’s children. And we are doing that…And you will be in the White House.

God isn’t fooled by George W. Bush like you are. Don’t count on it.

Faultlines

Here’s an interesting article in TNR by Clay Risen about restiveness in the Chamber of Commerce, particularly the small business side, over its goosestepping adherance to the GOP line.

…at the same time the Chamber was drifting to the right, the interests of its larger members began to diverge from those of its small-business constituency. Several fissures have emerged. For one, the rise of offshore manufacturing means that smaller firms, which tend to be at the bottom of the supply chain, have been forced to cut costs significantly or lose out to overseas competition. “They are more and more being told that their prices have to look like what the big guys are getting from China,” says Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “If they’re not poised to do that, they lose out.” Meanwhile, chains like Wal-Mart are pricing small retailers out of the market, offering more products at lower cost. And because they buy primarily from other multinationals (who can supply large quantities of cheap products) small manufacturers are getting squeezed as well. But because big business invariably has more money to contribute, its influence in setting the Chamber’s priorities means that the needs of smaller firms have been largely ignored. “For small businesses, their adversary used to be government regulation,” says Marks. “Now it’s big business.”

For these guys, paying taxes is the least of their problems. They are concerned about health insurance inflation and low educational standards and a whole host of other things, while the Chamber is blathering on rellentlessly about tort reform. And, their biggest threat is the rapaciousness of the corporate oligarchy. The way it’s going the new ownership society is going to have a few successful owners and a whole mess of untermenchen serving them. (But, don’t worry, they’ll be able to save five dollars a week in their 401K’s, so they’ll be “owners” too.)

The story of how the Chamber became Tom Delay’s bitch is also quite interesting. It’s pretty much the story of how the GOP whips its own if it steps out of line. It’s not really a big tent; it’s a big S&M parlor:

The Chamber was initially supportive of Clinton’s plan; William Archey, its chief lobbyist, and Robert Patricelli, chair of the Chamber’s Health Committee, even met regularly with the administration to iron out key points of disagreement. The Chamber, as Patricelli said at the time, saw Clinton’s managed-competition proposal as a reasonable solution to what it considered a crippling problem for businesses. But Republicans feared that a health care win would solidify Democratic dominance in Washington, and so they began browbeating the business lobby into opposing the plan. In late 1993, Ohio Congressman John Boehner told Archey and Chamber President Richard Lesher that it was “the Chamber’s duty to categorically oppose everything that Clinton was in favor of.” Republicans made public statements about the Chamber becoming “irrelevant,” and a klatch of conservatives–such as Boehner and Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell, along with lobbyist Grover Norquist’s “Wednesday Group” of anti-Clinton, anti-health-care-reform lobbyists–hinted that unless the group changed its tune, they would retaliate, perhaps by telling constituents to quit the Chamber or by creating a competing organization more sympathetic to the right.

If Junior doesn’t manage to eke out another dubious “victory”, it’s going to be interesting to see some of these fault lines break. The problem with humiliating people by forcing them to pledge fealty against their will is that they don’t mean it. They’ll stab you in the back the first chance they get. The GOP fight over “who lost the permanent majority” will be a lot of fun to watch.

(Brain) Size Matters

I’ve been waiting to read this article for three long years. Bravo Yglesias.

This emperor has no clothes thing has been the single most frustrating thing about the Bush presidency. He is not smart enough for the job of president and he has been incompetent because of it, over and over again. The man isn’t up to the task intellectually and doesn’t have the temperament to privately trust someone else (like his father perhaps) to be the arbiter of disagreements among his advisors when he doesn’t understand the issues. Neither did he have the experience or instinct to effectively manage people to create consensus on their own.

You could argue that the family values that Yglesias says are not necessary in a president are actually emblematic of other desirable character traits like loyalty or honesty. (I wouldn’t.) But, what you cannot do is say that intelligence is not an issue and you cannot say that it isn’t an issue of primary importance. Obviously, the job of leader of the free world is complicated and one of the requirements is that you be able to understand it.

When Republicans tell me that it doesn’t matter if Junior is intelligent I ask them if they think it matters if a doctor is intelligent or a judge or a general and if they think the job of president requires any less of a brain than those jobs do. Then picture George W. Bush doing any of them.

He’s Quite A Little Man

Killing Goliath alerts us to the reliably reactionary Walter Scott’s Personality Parade® today:

Q. George W. Bush has occupied the White House for almost four years, yet little is known of his personal preferences. Can you fill in the blanks? — J. Brinkley, Los Angeles, Calif.

A. He’s a man of simple tastes whose favorite foods are peanut butter (creamy, not chunky) and jelly sandwiches and Fritos. According to Ronald Kessler’s A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush, just out, the health-conscious President brings his own treadmill and nonallergenic pillows on long trips.

The audacity of presenting this election as a choice between an effete French pussy and macho manly man is mind-bending.

Clearly, this election is a choice between a 60 year old man and a five year old boy.

Nuclear Advertising

Atrios has a fun example of a possible nuclear attack ad the Dems might have at the ready if Bush continues down the low road using 9/11 fearmongering to sell his floundering presidency.

Here’s one I’d like to see:

George W. Bush: I can’t imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th. We cannot hesitate, we cannot yield, we must do everything in our power to bring an enemy to justice before they hurt us again. (from TV ad)

VOICEOVER: Here’s what the families of the victims of 9/11 think about George W. Bush.

WOMAN: My husband was killed in the WTC

WOMAN: My father was killed in the WTC

SUSIE ELLIOT, Firefighter husband died in the WTC. : George Bush has not been honest about what happened on September 11th.

ALISON FRENCH, Father died in the Pentagon: He is lying about his record.

CINDY LETSON: Son killed in the WTC : I know that George Bush is lying about 9/11, because I saw the video where he froze up and couldn’t figure out what to do when he was told about the attack.

BETSY ODELL, Son killed in the WTC: George Bush lied when he said he did everything he could. I know. I’ve read the 9/11 report.

DINA CHENOWETH, Husband killed in the WTC: It took us pressuring him for months to even agree to a commission to investigate what went wrong.

MARY HOFFMAN, Son and daughter-in-law killed on Flight 93: George Bush didn’t want people to know that he had received explicit warning for months and did absolutely nothing.

KATHY LONSDALE, Sister of brother killed in the Pentagon: He lacks the capacity to lead.

KATIE THURLOW, Husband and son killed on flight 93: When the chips were down, you could not count on George W. Bush.

DEBBIE ELDER, Husband killed in the WTC: George W. Bush is no leader.

ANGELA HIBBARD, Daughter killed in the WTC: He betrayed us. He lied before the american people.

SHELBY WHITE, Husband killed in the WTC: George W. Bush has betrayed all the men and women who died on September the 11th.

BRENDA PONDER, Husband killed at the Pentagon: He dishonored his country. He most certainly did.

JANE HILDRETH: Wife of firefighter killed in the WTC: I watched George W. Bush try to cover up his administration’s actions leading to 9/11. George W. Bush cannot be trusted.

VO: 9/11 Widows for Truth is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

Offensive PR

Atrios and Bob Sommerby and others have been critical of Kerry’s campaign press operation lately, particularly the fact that the surrogates and pundits aren’t well prepared.

I’m often in the uncomfortable position of sounding like an apologist for the Democratic establishment because I don’t think it’s right to call them immoral or cowardly when the legislative or political strategy is more complicated than immediately obvious or when it is simply a failed tactic not a mark of poor character. I believe that the entire culture has been brainwashed to one extent or another by relentless right wing attacks against liberalism. But, I’m all for real constructive criticism and this is an example.

Our pundits and surrogates are often unprepared, poor public performers and they always have been. I have never felt that we had the same energy or the same charismatic self assurance that the other side does and it hurts us in the modern media climate. I often think that much of what we Democrats see as failure in our politicians is really failure in our pundits and spokespeople. We don’t have the message discipline that they do, particularly when we are on the defensive. And when we do, far too often we use it incorrectly, in my view, by clumsily inserting it into situations in which it’s clearly inappropriate and looks like a dodge. There are times when you simply have to be prepared to make an argument. Not to mention that our talking points sound about as interesting as reading the letters H through J in the Yellow Pages. We need a better PR operation desperately.

I do take issue with one thing that Sommerby says, however. He chastizes the Kerry campaign for putting out press releases in which they do not say specifically what they are rebutting. But, there is an old truism in public relations — you don’t repeat the charges against you. The press releases are sent to the media under certain headings that make it clear what they are rebutting and the press then uses the words in the release in their story about whatever the charge was. But, it’s never considered smart to have your opponents words come out of your own mouth. It’s just another way to get the charge out there. None of that is to say that I think Kerry’s rebuttals have been particularly effective either. It’s just that refusing to reiterate the charges is not the reason.

One thing they should do immediately is put out an order that the words “out of context” should never be uttered as a rebuttal again. Those words no longer have meaning in plain English. You might as well be screaming “no fair!” or putting fingers in your ears and humming the star spangled banner. It’s wasted breath. They need to reiterate specifically what they meant, not just say that the Republicans are taking it “out of context.” Indeed, sometimes it can work to your advantage by giving you an opportunity to lay your charge out more explicitly. For instance, on the “sensitivity” thing:

“John Kerry was saying that we need to end the bumbling Bush diplomacy that has recklessly alienated too many of our our allies. The stakes in the war on terror are much too high for such clumsy mistakes.”

Frankly, I don’t know why the Democrats don’t make better use of their natural constituency in the entertainment business. Those people know everything there is to know about selling “people” to people and they have been in the business of PR even longer than the business base of the GOP. There is much the Dems can learn about the marketing of politics from them.

It’s a part of the big modernization project that the Democrats simply have to keep working on. This is the new politics and we’re way behind.