Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

See What Sticks

I haven’t read the Spinsanity guys’s new book, so I don’t know the entirety of this thesis, but one of the authors, Bryan Keefer, said last night on Jon Stewart that one of the media manipulation techniques used successfully by the Republicans is to throw so much spin into the mix that the media isn’t capable of sorting it all out properly.

I think that lets the press corps off too easily — it is after all, their job to sort this stuff out and they are far too willing to adopt the easiest, most “entertaining” (to them) line. But, there is some truth to the idea that if you overwhelm the media with talking points and spin and propaganda the specifics start to sound like white noise and all you are left with is some basic, emotional understanding that something is wrong or right.

It seems to me that what they really do is throw absolutely everything out there and then hammer on whatever seems to stick with the media, which is often a rather snobbish, sophomoric narrative that casts the media in a superior role in terms of cool, status or morality. It worked with Clinton and it’s probably going to work with Kerry if he wins.

The question many of us have to start asking is how do you counter this effectively? Clinton survived by dint of his personal charisma and star power as well as the fact that his presidency was remarkably successful in a period of relative peace and prosperity. Kerry is a different animal facing a very different set of challenges. I believe that, as Dave Johnson at See The Forest predicts here the right will go completely insane — in my view, mostly because that asterisk next to Junior’s name is the coda to their fantasy of a “permanent conservative majority” — so they will go beyond even what we’ve seen before.

So, what do you think that Democrats should do to counter the slurs, character assassination and organized obstruction that President Kerry will inevitably face? And how can we better manage the media this time out?

Snark Attack

Readers, I think today might be a good day to write some e-mails.

LiberalOasis drew my attention to an impending bitchfest in the media over Kerry’s “sensitive” comment and maybe we should try to nip it in the bud this time.

This is an RNC special of the “Al Gore invented the internet” style. Jim Nicholson probably phoned it in himself. It’s the exact kind of high school kewl kid humor that sends the mediawhores into fits of laughter as they repeat it ad nauseum.

As I wrote earlier this week, Karen Tumulty in Time magazine illustrated how the word “french” has turned into a Republican code word for faggot, and how this “sensitive” talking point is being used to show Kerry’s essential “frenchness” not only by Dick Cheney, but by the press itself. It’s about to go hurtling out of control and the nasty little bitches of the press corps are the ones who are making it happen.

Liberal Oasis:

ABC’s The Note, surely speaking for the entire snarky political press corps called Kerry’s statement:

…the silliest thing John Kerry has said about national security since his “I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it” classic.

No doubt that gave the green light for the rest of the press corps to paint Kerry the loser in this skirmish.

Remember, all of these skirmishes, from swift boat liars to “sensitive” to “flipflopping” are being done to paint John kerry as an effete pussy in contrast to the horse fearing, Pet Goat reading, cheerleader.

I don’t know if it is possible to shame the little tarts by showing them that they are being Dick Cheney’s bitches, but it’s worth a try. Read LO’s compendium of Bush admnistration officials saying the word “sensitive” in relatin to the WOT and then perhaps send an e-mail to a couple of journalists to let them know you know that this is an RNC talking point — perhaps they didn’t realize this and that they should use caution in helping the RNC spin Kerry just because they think this is funny, yada yada yada.

It’s worth a try.

Update: You’ve got to read Charles Pierce on this.

Oh, and do send along a link to this fabulous web site. Talk about French!

He Fights

Yet another coward for Kerry:

General Wesley Clark, USA (ret) released the following statement today in response to Vice President Dick Cheney’s attacks on John Kerry:

“I spent almost all of my adult life in uniform serving this great nation in the United States Army. I have led American soldiers into battle and led an international coalition in the Balkans where diplomacy, backed by force, was the winning formula.

“George W. Bush failed to learn the lessons from his predecessor or history. His ideologues who control American foreign policy have squandered much of our credibility with our allies and failed to achieve victory in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. They gambled with a go it alone policy and our soldiers are paying with their lives.

“Today we Americans are shouldering the overwhelming costs of rebuilding Iraq without sufficient help from our allies. The administration’s incompetence in protecting our security effectively is rightfully a key issue in this campaign

“Today, Dick Cheney took the lowest road in politics — it was a cheap shot unworthy of the office of Vice President.

“The truth is that this administration has over-relied on the military in the war against terror – if we are to win, we must use all the means at our disposal – diplomacy, international law, economic development, law enforcement, and only as a last resort, military force.

“But then, maybe that’s to be expected. Neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney has ever heard a shot fired in anger. Never worried whether he’d ever see his family again or seen the destruction caused by the weapons he’s wielded. The losses of war are permanent. The consequences are unpredictable. That’s why John Kerry has always said force should be a last resort.

“John Kerry understands the risk and sacrifice that American soldiers undertake every day, in a personal way that neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney ever will. John Kerry has the physical courage, tested in combat, to hunt down and kill our enemies. He also has the moral courage and humility to avoid the arrogance, which has doomed this administration. John Kerry will make us safer at home and restore our credibility around the world.”

Oh yeah. This one’s crazy. Never mind.

thanks Armando

SupahStahs

Try to curb your excitement, folks. The RNC has announced its list of performers and celebrities:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Contemporary Christian musician Michael W. Smith and country music performers the Gatlin Brothers will entertain delegates at the Republican National Convention in New York City that starts Aug. 30, party officials said.

More than a half-dozen musical acts announced by the party range from country to classical to blues.

Bill Harris, chief executive of the Republican National Convention, described the group as the first to join the convention. Republicans say they will announce more performers in the coming days.

The performers to be officially announced Thursday include:

-Michael W. Smith, one of the top stars in contemporary Christian music who has occasionally crossed over to the pop charts.

-The Gatlin Brothers, who have been performing for four decades in country music and had a string of hits in the 1970s and 1980s. They cut back on nationwide touring in 1992.

-Daniel Rodriguez, a former New York City policeman and tenor who became well known singing a capella versions of “God Bless America” and the national anthem after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

-Sara Evans, one of the promising young performers in country music who has had a number of hits on the country charts. In 1998, she had a hit album “No Place That Far” and the title song on the album became her first No. 1 hit.

Other entertainers at the convention include Dana Glover, a young performer, who sang on the soundtrack for the movie “Shrek,” veteran actor Ron Silver, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of daytime talk show “The View” and surfer-turned-singer Daize Shayne.

Man, just think of the electricity in Madison Square Garden when that much star power comes together in one place. Wow.

If you’d like to read something really funny, check out this cached freeper thread (since removed) of all the “DNC” celebrities they should boycot. By the time you get to the end of a very, very long list, this is what they are left with:

“I’m thinking about doing a GOP list of Celebs that we should support pretty soon.”

Gonna be a short list:

Mel Gibson

Charlton Heston

and maybe:

Bruce Willis (though I heard he was at the People for the American Way dinner the other night – but he was also recently in Iraq)

&

Tom Selleck (did ads for National Review, but was lib on some public policies)

&

Kelsey Grammer (gave $$ to republicans or something, but not overt)

&

Dixie Carter (old chick from Designing Woman – she has made some favorible comments)

&

Kevin Costner (campaigned with Bush 1 – but went nuts for the environment)

&

ARNOLD – of course!

And now they have Ron Silver (on foreign policy, but he doesn’t agree with their social agenda)

The good news for them is that popular culture is way out of fashion in this country, expecially among the young. Nobody’s watching TV or going to movies or listening to music. The hip new thing is continuous prayer and barbershop quartets, so it’s sure to be a very exciting show.

This Is How They Stay So Rich

C’Mon, they’ve only got a couple of hundred mil to work with, people. You thought they paid the expenses when they hold their Republican only campaign rallies? Think again.

LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) – The Bush-Cheney campaign has paid La Crosse $7,822 for part of the city’s expenses from President George W. Bush’s May 7 rally, a newspaper reported.

But other Wisconsin communities that billed the campaign for expenses from Bush’s visit that day have not been fully reimbursed, the La Crosse Tribune reported.

Prairie du Chien, for example, has not received the $12,249 it billed for Bush’s visit.

“When I talked with the Bush/Cheney headquarters, they suggested they were not liable, and we should bill the Secret Service,” said Mayor Cheryl Mader. “I do not anticipate that we will be getting any payment.”

La Crosse, Prairie du Chien and Viroqua were among several communities Bush visited during his May 7 tour of the Mississippi River farmlands in Iowa and Wisconsin. He touted his tax cuts and touched on issues such as the invasion of Iraq.

The communities spent thousands of dollars in providing security for the president.

La Crosse Common Council voted to charge the Bush-Cheney campaign $7,822, rather than the entire bill of more than $60,000.

Dubuque billed the campaign $10,217, but received $1,400 paid at the time of the visit, said Jean Nachtman, assistant finance director.

Yes, Let the “Secret Service” pay for those Republican campaign events that only Republicans are allowed to get in to. I assume the “Secret Service” is also only using Republican tax dollars.

You Can Look It Up

Houston Chronicle, 7/14/99

FORT WORTH – In literature for his failed 1978 congressional campaign, George W. Bush said he served in the Air Force, a claim his presidential campaign says is legitimate based on time he spent training and on alert while a member of the Texas Air National Guard.

Asked Tuesday at an appearance in New Jersey whether he was justified in claiming Air Force service, Bush replied: “I think so, yes. I was in the Air Force for over 600 days.”

But the Air Force says once a guardsman always a guardsman, even if called to active duty for training or another temporary assignment.

The Republican presidential front-runner already has faced questions about whether he received preferential treatment when he joined the Guard during the Vietnam War. His father, former President Bush, was a congressman at the time.

A pullout ad from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on May 4, 1978, shows a huge picture of Bush with a “Bush for Congress” logo on the front. On the back, a synopsis of his career says he served “in the U.S. Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard where he piloted the F-102 aircraft.”

We know he didn’t ever get called to active duty, now don’t we? Anybody have a problem with him advertising himself as serving in the air force? I didn’t think so.

Thanks to Peanut’s amazing sleuthing skills.

Back To Reality

Brief reminder from the Poorman:

As I gather the standard of evidence for charges against the military service of your political opponents is essentially non-existant, let’s review Dear Leader’s service record.

A) As Atrios notes, all his recent troubles began when he lied about his military service in his autobiography. He claimed that he served out his term as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG). This is a lie. He received a transfer to Alabama, at some point after April 1972, after which point the record becomes murky.

B) The story of his “service” after April 1972 is summarized here by Walter V. Robinson of The Boston Globe:

Although he was trained as a fighter pilot, Bush ceased flying in April 1972, little more than two years after he finished flight school and two years before his six-year enlistment was to end, when he was allowed to transfer to an Alabama Air Guard unit. The records contain no evidence that Bush performed any military duty in Alabama. His Alabama unit commander, in an interview, said Bush never appeared for duty. In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical.

In May 1973, Bush’s two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had “not been observed at this unit” during the preceding 12 months. The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they believed Bush had been fulfilling his commitment at the Alabama unit.

There’s more at the link, but this does put it quite starkly.

Just keep in mind that the swift boat smear is being done to obscure the fact that our great wartime leader couldn’t even fulfill his pathetic little obligation to guard the Alamo during the Vietnam war, which is emblematic of his terrible handling of the war in Iraq and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Character will out. That’s all it is. And that all of these so-called patriots are willing to smear a man who volunteered and actually served in order to cover for this sad little fellow who never spent a minute outside the cozy comfort of his daddy’s protection says a lot more about them than it does about Kerry.

There were many honorable ways to behave during the Vietnam era. There were those who believed in the war and volunteered to fight it. There were those who were drafted and went as a matter of duty. There were those who fought the war, came to believe it was wrong and came back to change the policy. And there were those who believed it was wrong and refused to participate. All of those people stood up for what they believed in and did their duty as they saw it.

There was one group,however, who supported the war but didn’t stand up for their beliefs — refusing to take the heat that being a citizen, particularly a young man, in those days required. They played the system. Many of them “had other priorities” using every possible excuse, all the while vociferously backing the war effort — as long as someone else fought it. And, the worst of this group were the privileged who supported the war but merely pretended to fight it by having their connections pull strings to get them into safe stateside duty that they could later claim amounted to “service.” They would have pictures of themselves looking handsome in their uniforms. And they could swagger around with their buddies and drop casual hints for the rest of their lives about their days in the military. But even those phonies at least actually completed the minimal requirements to claim such affiliation.

It is very rare to find someone who finagled their way into the guard ahead of people who’d been waiting longer, had the government spend huge sums of money training him to be a pilot, quit flying less than two years later of his own accord and then dropped out of sight many months before his duty was fulfilled. It’s even rarer to find someone like this declared a fine figure of a man who served his country well — particularly when there are so many who actually did.

It is a very sad thing to see military men stoop to the level of smearing a combat veteran in a desperate bid to get a fey little richboy legitimately elected. I never thought I’d see the day they would debase their own service and that of all their comrades in order to play cheap partisan politics on behalf of such a man. As one who grew up in a military family, it makes me sick to see it.

Slick Smear

You know, I’ll be interested to read the swiftboat liars book because from what I read here the statements from all these guys don’t say much of anything about Kerry’s war record. When they say he’s “unfit” it’s because they are pissed about his anti-war activities.

This smear is slick. All these right wing vets get filmed saying “he’s unfit to be commander in chief” without providing any details. They don’t say specifically why, but you are left with the clear impression that 200+ Vietnam vets think Kerry’s lying about his record at best and that he’s a coward at worst. In reality, they just hate his politics. But, it won’t make any difference, because you have Rush and Sean and John O’Neill and Ted Sampley all the rest filling in the blanks and none of these guys are rushing to elaborate on what they are really talking about. (Lots of honor and integrity in this crowd.)

I think the way to frame this issue is that these men are smearing the United States Military by saying that all those glowing reports and medal recommendations were lies. Is Kerry the only one about whom they believe all these officers lied or were there others who recieved medals and commendations who didn’t deserve them? Do they think this kind of thing is this still going on today? It may force some of these men to come out and admit what they are really saying.

They obviously hate Kerry’s guts with a passion, and probably hate Democrats with a passion too. But, I’m not sure they’ll hold up if they’re accused of denigrating the military, which is what they actually are doing. I think, if pressed, they may want to explain that when they say he’s “unfit” they are talking about Kerry’s antiwar activity, not his combat experience.

And, that’s a very old argument that means absolutely nothing. Which is why they’ve decided to smear instead of taking Kerry on for what they really hate him for.

Lower Than Low

The redoubtable Hesiod, in the comments below, wonders why nobody has unearthed the story of George H. W. Bush Sr’s 1988 brush with controversy over his navy heroics in WWII. Apparently, there were some fellow aviators — not on his own plane mind you (ahem) — who claimed that he bailed prematurely on two of his comrades on the Barbara II and got them killed.

I only bring this up because it’s interesting that even though a man came forward to make these charges in an August 12, 1988 NY Post story by Allan Wolper and Al Ellenberg, called “The Day Bush Bailed Out,” the Democrats didn’t then use it as a line of attack to destroy Bush Sr’s reputation. In fact, the story died down quite quickly. Had they chosen to smear him, there was enough mud around to make it ugly. They didn’t.

And, it’s not as if Bush Sr. didn’t run on his war record. In fact, CNN is currently helping his son run on it too. In every campaign it was front and center. But, in all the years of running against George Bush our side never stooped to questioning his bravery or integrity in the Big One.

But somebody did. His name is Ted Sampley, Godfather of the Swift Boat Liars. If you’d like to read all about Bush Sr’s alleged cowardice in WWII, here it is, from the chief veteran smear artist himself. Seems he has problems with a lot of war heroes.

I have often said that Junior is a bad son. I can’t think of anything worse than standing with the scum who smeared your own father’s war record. Unless you hate your father, which it seems he does.

It’s going to take a Shakespeare to do justice to this sick little story.

Update: Here’s da word on Ted Sampley

The Choice

One the one hand you have the fellow who sits and read childrens books when he’s told that the country is under attack and on the other you have the fellow who rushes in to save lives over and over again.

Former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht of Nevada is a staunch Republican, but he thanks his lucky stars for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

On July 12, 1988, Hecht was attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in his throat.

Hecht stumbled out of the room, thinking he might vomit but not wanting to do it in front of his colleagues. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., thumped his back, but Hecht quickly passed out in the hallway.

Just then, Kerry stepped off an elevator, rushed to Hecht’s side and gave him the Heimlich maneuver — four times.

The lifesaving incident made international news, and Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the maneuver in 1974, called Hecht to say that had Kerry intervened just 30 seconds later Hecht might have been in a vegetative state for life.

“This man gave me my life,” the 75-year-old Hecht said Thursday.

Hecht said he was amazed that Kerry acted so quickly — some people were assuming that he was having a heart attack.

“He knew exactly what to do,” he said. “But a lot of people know what to do. They just don’t size up the situation immediately.”

I hadn’t heard about this one and I don’t think most other people have either.

Let’s just say some people are a little bit more quick and decisive under pressure than others.

Ask yourself which person you’d rather have running the country in dangerous times.