Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Run For Your Lives!

Cheney said terrorists are as determined to destroy America as the “Axis powers” of Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. Borrowing a quote from the 9-11 Commission’s report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 2001, the vice president said the terrorists are “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.”

Jesus H. Christ. We really are one step away from proclaiming that terrorists are actually aliens from another planet replete with x-ray vision and the ability to fly.

As Juan Cole points out:

Although it may be true that al-Qaeda is as determined to destroy the US as the Axis Powers were in World War II, this observation is a Himalayan exaggeration if it is meant to suggest a parallel. Al-Qaeda is a few thousand fanatics mainly distributed in a handful of countries. If Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are any indication, a lot of them are one step away from from collecting old soda cans on the street in their grocery carts while mumbling about the radios the government implanted in their asses.

So while their determination may be impressive (or just creepy), they are not comparable to the might of three industrialized dictatorships with populations in the tens of millions. Some 13 million men served in the German army (Heer) alone between 1935 and 1945. (And WW II killed 55 million persons, not 3 thousand).

No shit. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat, but it is not an existential threat. And it is in no way comparable to World War II on any level.

You know, if these macho GOP pricks had really wanted to save the world from an existential threat you’d think they would have volunteered for the the hot war we fought in the midst of the cold war, wouldn’t you? It’s seems that only in their flaccid middle age that they got inspired to bloodlust and glory.

This theme is going to escalate through the fall and I would bet money that they will not hesitate to wag the dog. They have learned the valuable lesson that the media will jump on the jingo-wagon for at least a month after anything they do in the name of the GWOT. They also know that it doesn’t matter what anyone says after November. Once they win, they win.

Howard Dean said yesterday on CNN that he still believed that this campaign was going to be the dirtiest in history because Bush was going to find himself behind in september and that meant the gloves would come off. I think he’s right but I also think they are going to run on this fear track at the same time. They’ll attempt to trivialize Kerry to make him look insubstantial while simultaneously escalating the fear mongering to prop up Crusader Codpiece. It’s going to get ugly.

What VRWC?

So, it turns out that Sandy Berger didn’t actually, you know, commit treason after all. Not that this is news. Steve Buscemi had many important political things to say these last two days and everyone is sooo hungover. Still, it would be nice if some of the papers, wire services and TV networks just mentioned that the entire case constructed by the right wing against Sandy Berger was a complete crock of shit.

Here’s what Google news comes up with on the socks scandal:

Sandy Berger in trouble? Send in the media!

Town Hall, DC – Jul 28, 2004

… Consider the way the media treats the missing paper scandal involving former national security advisor Sandy Berger. In preparing …

Sandy Berger: Setting The Record Straight

American Daily, OH – Jul 27, 2004

… And now, Sandy Berger, former President Clinton’s national security advisor, is under investigation for stealing top secret documents from the National …

LETTING SANDY BERGER OFF

New York Post, NY – Jul 29, 2004

July 29, 2004 — We cannot afford to let the Sandy Berger affair be swept aside in the coming months (“Secrets in His Socks,” Editorial, July 21). …

Sandy Berger Has The Media On His Side

American Daily, OH – Jul 27, 2004

… you still believed the news media was fair and unbiased in their coverage of news-worthy events, the coverage (or lack thereof) that Sandy Berger has received …

Sandy Berger’s most likely explanation for ‘docs in his socks’

The Union Leader, NH – Jul 26, 2004

… explanation is the most likely one, particularly given the facts involved,” Bill Clinton said in defense of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. …

Sandy Berger’s Smoking Gun Is Hidden in the 9/11 Report

Insight on the News, DC – Jul 27, 2004

The documents slipped out of the National Archives by Clinton National Security chief Sandy Berger included a draft in which Clinton antiterror chief Richard …

Sandy Berger: A Case for Accountability

Washington Post, DC – Jul 23, 2004

… Did Sandy Berger violate the rules regarding the protection of classified information entrusted to him, and if he did, will he be held accountable for his …

Sandy Berger, America’s Newest Hero

Useless-Knowledge.com – Jul 22, 2004

I’ma little surprised the media hasn’t picked up on this. Sandy Berger was performing a service in the nations interest, he was testing security. …

Who’s Behind the Timing of the Sandy Berger Investigation?

Aljazeerah.info – Jul 23, 2004

… I deal with classified documents every single day. We know better, and Sandy Berger knew better,” Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia, told reporters. …

What was in Sandy Berger’s Underwear?

Men’s News Daily, CA – Jul 22, 2004

… with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught …

VRWC assholes and Aljazeerah.

Family In Need

Ridge tells colleagues he may retire:

Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary.

Maybe Mrs Ridge could get a job and clip some coupons or perhaps they could go on a budget.

I know it’s tough to get by in these terrible times and I do feel for the Ridge family. But, is it really difficult to send your kids through school on just 175K a year these days? Hey, maybe he should require them to, you know, take out a loan or something. Or they could do what the Governator says all those kids who can’t afford the state university in California anymore should do — do two years at community college to save money.

I know it’s class warfare to imply that the Republicans are out of touch with ordinary people’s problems, but when cabinet officials complain that $175,000 a year is chicken feed and campaign operatives are telling people that if they don’t like their jobs they should go on Prozac, you can see why people might get the wrong impression.

Nit Pickling The Times

In an otherwise good article about Kerry’s speech in the NY Times Adam Nagourney edits one quote in a very bizarre fashion:

“In this campaign, we welcome people of faith: America is not us and them,” he said. “I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago, and I want to say this to you tonight: I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve.

“But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday,” he said. “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side.”

That’s it. He leaves out the next line, “As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.”

Without the follow-up, the line “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side” sounds a little strange just hanging out there, don’t you think?

I Gotcher Iconoclasm For Ya, Right Here

It is quite shocking that in his speech tonight Kerry didn’t so much as mention our strategic situation with Egypt or explain the full ramifications of outsourcing, to be sure, but this seems a bit harsh. Gawd knows he should have at least produced a good long laundry list of arcane foreign policy goals to make the soaring oratory go down a little bit easier. But, hey, they can’t all be riveting AEI seminars.

Seriously, I think that Matt simply doesn’t like this type of political speech which is meant to engage the emotions not the intellect. Indeed, I was very worried that Kerry was going to do exactly what Matt wishes he had done. A State of the Union speech or a speech before the Army War College or something like that is the proper venue for addressing specific and detailed policy issues. A convention acceptance speech is like an inauguration speech. It’s about inspiration not specifics.

That Kerry is being rapped for not being dry and wonkish enough is very good news for his electoral prospects.

Blasphemy

Robert George, conservative pundit for the NY Post, just said on Larry King that unless Junior gets his message together this speech may have been the acceptance speech of the next president of the United States. And the reason is that the speech is likely to appeal to swing voters. I feel strongly that this is correct — and perhaps it is even more correct, although George won’t admit it, that it may appeal to a fair number of moderate Republicans.

Ron Reagan’s new article in Esquire (thanks Susie) explains why:

It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn’t hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, “but not this time.” There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the “Orwellian language” flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son’s misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people’s eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent.

Oddly, even my father’s funeral contributed. Throughout that long, stately, overtelevised week in early June, items would appear in the newspaper discussing the Republicans’ eagerness to capitalize (subtly, tastefully) on the outpouring of affection for my father and turn it to Bush’s advantage for the fall election. The familiar “Heir to Reagan” puffballs were reinflated and loosed over the proceedings like (subtle, tasteful) Mylar balloons. Predictably, this backfired. People were treated to a side-by-side comparison—Ronald W. Reagan versus George W. Bush—and it’s no surprise who suffered for it. Misty-eyed with nostalgia, people set aside old political gripes for a few days and remembered what friend and foe always conceded to Ronald Reagan: He was damned impressive in the role of leader of the free world. A sign in the crowd, spotted during the slow roll to the Capitol rotunda, seemed to sum up the mood—a portrait of my father and the words NOW THERE WAS A PRESIDENT.

The comparison underscored something important. And the guy on the stool, Lynndie, and her grinning cohorts, they brought the word: The Bush administration can’t be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committees—Paul Wolfowitz, who couldn’t quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at him—these were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That’s so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.

I have no statistics and no data to support the idea that there are moderate republicans out there who are ready to jump, but like Ron Reagan, I have seen a vast amount of anecdotal evidence in my own life.

An investment banker friend of mine who reports that formerly rabid GOP colleagues will not vote for Bush again. He’s perceived by these macho masters of the universe as a loser.

Veteran friends of my father who haven’t voted for a Democrat since Truman cannot vote for Bush. His arrogance on the world stage is offensive to them.

Libertarian relatives who have never voted much but who are afraid of the Bush’s overly warm embrace of the religious right and are talking to their friends about voting for Kerry.

An active Republican neighbor who is disturbed by the fact that there turned out to be no WMD in Iraq and expressed a very unusual desire to hear Kerry speak tonight.

I don’t know if there are any significant numbers of these people out there, but I felt the same shift in the zeitgeist when all the accumulated weight of “mission acomplished” and “whoops no WMD” and “Abu Ghraib” and “hair on fire” all seemed to suddenly weigh down the Bush juggernaut and wake up all those people in the middle who had been floating along with the left-over 9/11 conventional wisdom.

Kerry’s speech tonight spoke directly to those people, people who have serious concerns about whether a Democrat can adequately handle a national security crisis but who also see that things are not going well under Bush. Those people may have tuned in to see a Democrat speak tonight and saw a president instead.

John Kerry For President!

I think he absolutely nailed it. If you didn’t know John Kerry before tonight, the impression you got was of a tough, fighting Democrat who is taking the battle right to George W. Bush. He pulled no punches and he gave no quarter. And I think he tapped into something that people of all political persuasion are experiencing — the deeply felt need to feel a sense of pride in this country again.

And it sure sounded to me like he told everybody to play nice all week so that he could go for the jugular. This is the fighting spirit that people saw in Iowa and New Hampshire and I think the entire country saw it tonight. I loved it and I think Kerry’s got exactly the right idea of how to run this campaign.

The bad news is that the total assholes of the media gave him exactly 5 seconds before they brought in the GOP shills to trash him — Scarborough on MSNBC and Ed Gillespie on CNN. And Woodruff and Greenfield just blatantly started waving GOP talking points pointing out the shocking and disturbing fact that Kerry didn’t give a detailed run down of his senate career. They didn’t even try to hide it. Scum.

Huzzah

I’m a big fan of Wes Clark and I greatly enjoyed his speech. And it appeared on C-Span that the delegates liked him too. He will be part of the Kerry administration I have little doubt. His message tonight was simply that Democrats are patriots too, and we won’t let anybody say otherwise. He made the case that Kerry is a leader and a fighter. I think that’s effective politics. (In fact, he seemed to have channeled almost the exact words I wrote earlier in the day, weirdly. I guess I’ve always been on that guy’s wavelength.)

Naturally, CNN navel gazed through it and didn’t show it, but MSNBC did — followed by some good initial reviews by the whores until they realized that they were being much too easy on him and they remembered the script called for him to be called half crazy and uninformed. Luckily, they could move quickly to Sharpton and discuss whether the campaign was mad at him for last night’s speech and then rip him to shreds. (Whew. That was close.)

They’re Comin’ Ta Git Ya!

Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, Study Finds:

President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Talking about death can raise people’s need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

[…]

For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.

They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.

“That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special,” Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

The others were task-oriented — focusing on the job to be done — or relationship-oriented — with a “let’s get it done together” style, Solomon said.

The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.

Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.

“In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV,” Solomon said. “What we found was staggering.”

When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.

“They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq,” Solomon said.

Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person’s opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.

Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person’s political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

Interesting. Regardless of the scientific accuracy of the study, it seems clear that the Republicans will ramp up the fear factor. If nothing else fear tends to stifle change, which has it’s own fear factor — the unknown. People tend to stick with the familiar in times of stress.

Look for the presstarts to subtly take up the theme for them. Scary reports are all over the media here in southern California about some nutball who poisoned some baby food. He supposedly used Ricin. A bioweapon. Like the terrorists got from Saddam. What would we do if terrorists put Ricin in our diet cokes? It could happen. News at eleven.

We can’t run from this. Republicans are going to be flogging the “dangerous world” theme over and over again. I say we use that to our advantage. I firmly believe that Kerry can make the case that Bush doesn’t know what he’s doing on national security— he failed to act on 9/11 and he overeacted on Iraq. He is a failure. He’s made us less safe.

Thanks to the Donkey for the link.

Powermad

This article in The Guardian discusses all the people we have “disappeared” in the GWOT. It’s a very interesting article and reminds us of the stakes in this election.

Under military order No 1, issued by President Bush in November 2001, the president gave himself the right, in defiance of national and interna tional law, to detain indefinitely any non-US citizen anywhere in the world. Many ended up in Guantánamo where at least some of their names were discovered. Others simply vanished. They became in the US euphemism, “ghost prisoners”, an unrecorded host held in secret, their detention denied, hidden from the Red Cross, legal or family access barred, their fate in the hands of unaccountable and unnamed US personnel.

Perhaps Kerry would make the same decision, but I have to assume that he’s savvy enough, if not moral enough, to understand that these things can never be kept a secret. Imagine if you will the Republican congressional and senate hearings on this matter if President Kerry ordered such a thing and it became known. They went apeshit over Elian Gonzales, fergawdsake.

The article reminded me of perhaps the most sickening line ever uttered in an American presidential speech and one which should go down in infamy if there is any justice in this world:

In his state of the union address in February 2003, he said: “More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Put it this way, they’re no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.”

Notice that even he used the word “suspected.” His movie script tough guy lines may sound cute to some but when you actually look at that statement, and realize that he gave it in a national address before the US congress, he sounds like a sociopath.

Good thing this politics thing doesn’t matter. Did Teresa say anything kooky today?